How To Use Sourdough Starter In The Garden (2024)

One of the most interesting ways to use sourdough starter is in your garden. Now I'm not just talking about composting your sourdough starter. I'm talking about actually using your sourdough starter (and discard) to fertilise your plants!

Whether you're an indoor or outdoor gardener, this blog will teach you how to use sourdough starter to boost your soil and plants.

Teaming with good bacteria and microbes your soil and plants will love, your fermented sourdough starter could be the best homemade fertiliser you've ever used!

You can use sourdough discard in your garden in the following ways:

  • Use diluted sourdough discard as a liquid nutrient boost
  • Use dried sourdough starter as a soil conditioner
  • Add it to your backyard compost pile
  • Place it into a bokashi bucket
  • Feed it to your backyard chickens
  • Add to your vermicompost or worm farm
How To Use Sourdough Starter In The Garden (1)

Why Use Sourdough Starter In The Garden?

Sourdough starter is teaming with good bacteria, yeast and microbes which your will enrich your soil and make your indoor and outdoor plants thrive.

It is a living, thriving culture. In fact, you may have heard it referred to as a "scoby" which stands for symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast.

It's alive!! Just like your plants and soil.

Using sourdough starter discard in your garden may not be something you've ever thought of ... until now. Maybe you've only been using your discard in baked goods?

Using sourdough starter in the garden is a great way of managing sourdough discard without waste. It completes the cycle of life, going back into the soil to enrich food we grow.

I have a large collection of indoor plants that are all thriving, as well as an ever growing outdoor garden full of edible vegetables and herbs, as well as evergreens and flowers.

They all love sourdough starter as part of their regular fertilisation schedule.

Given that sourdough starter is made from wheat, which is grown in soil, it seems only natural to continue the cycle of enriching the soil.

You should never use bleached flour of any kind in your sourdough starter.

This is because the bleaching process strips the flour of many of the natural yeasts and microbes that are required when creating a sourdough starter.

How To Use Sourdough Starter In The Garden (2)

How To Feed Sourdough Starter To Indoor Plants

Feeding indoor plants can be a little tricky. You don't want to have messy fertiliser that will stain floors or furniture.

While sourdough starter can be diluted with water to create a liquid fertiliser, it can stain plant leaves and leave a white residue. Not what you want for glossy indoor plants.

The easiest way to use sourdough starter to nourish indoor plants is to use dried sourdough starter as a soil conditioner.

Add the dried sourdough starter to your soil when potting up your indoor plants or sprinkle on top of the soil for a microbe boost. I use around 15g of dried sourdough starter per small pot and 30 to 50g for larger pots.

If you are able to take your indoor plants outside to water, you may be able to use liquid sourdough starter to feed them.

Add 100g of sourdough starter discard to a 1L jar and top up with water. Give the jar a good shake. Now add this liquid to a large tub and top up with water. Once it has a few inches of water in it, gently place your potted indoor plants into the water.

This is called bottom watering and it allows them to take up the water through the bottom of the pot. It's an easy and fairly mess free way to apply sourdough starter to your indoor plants.

Let the plants sit for a few hours, before drying the bottom of the pots and returning them to their place in your home.

This bottom watering method will avoid the white stains on the leaves. I often use my laundry tub or bath tub for this too as it saves me taking all my plants outside.

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Using Sourdough Starter In Your Outdoor Garden

If you have outdoor garden beds that you would like to fertilise, there are a few ways you can add sourdough starter to them. You need to worry less about mess in outdoor garden beds, so you can be a little more liberal with your starter.

  • Add 100g of sourdough starter discard to a jar and top up with water. Give the jar a good shake. Now tip the liquid from the jar into a 9L watering can and top up with water. Use this watering can to liberally soak your pots and garden beds. You can pour the liquid over your plants/leaves or just around the soil. The liquid will leave a white residue on some foliage plants. It can be easily rinsed off the next time you water.
  • Alternatively, you can use pulverised dried sourdough starter as a soil conditioner. Add the dried sourdough starter to your soil when potting up patio plants or sprinkle on top of the soil in your garden beds for a microbe boost. I use around 15 to 30g of dried sourdough starter in my outdoor pots (depending on their size). I sprinkle it liberally on my outdoor garden beds with great results.
  • Add your sourdough starter discard to your compost heap to give it a microbe boost.
  • Sourdough discard makes a lovely treat for backyard chickens. You can see how to give sourdough discard to chickens here.
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How To Compost Sourdough Discard

If you have a compost pile, sourdough discard can be a welcome addition. You can add it straight into the compost without doing anything to it.

The microbes, yeast and bacteria in the sourdough starter will be a great boost to the microbes already active in your compost.

It's an easy and waste free way to manage sourdough discard.

Sourdough starter is also suitable to add to a Bokashi Bucket.

Can You Feed Sourdough Discard To Worms?

Yes you can add sourdough discard (unfed sourdough starter) to your worm farm or vermicompost. You should only add small amounts at a time, since sourdough discard is wet and you don't want to overwhelm your worm farm.

Give Your Plants Even More Love

If you want to give your plants an even bigger boost when feeding them sourdough starter, you can add some of the following to the mixture:

  • Soak 1 - 2 banana peels in a jar of water for 24 hours. Add the jar of water to the watering can with your sourdough starter liquid for a boost of potassium.
  • Add 1 litre of milk to the watering can with your sourdough starter liquid for a boost of calcium (it's best to bottom water indoor plants so you don't stain their leaves).
  • If you are adding dried sourdough starter to your soil, add some dried egg shells and/or coffee grinds to your food processor before you pulverise it. This will give your powder even more nourishing powers and add calcium and nitrogen to the soil, along with the goodness from your sourdough starter fertiliser. I dry egg shells and coffee grinds and then mix with sourdough starter and use a few scoops when potting up plants.
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Things To Be Aware Of When Using Sourdough Starter In Your Garden

Sourdough starter or discard is made of naturally occurring ingredients, however there are still a few things you should be aware of when using it in your garden:

  • Don't add too much dried sourdough starter to your soil at a time. If you overload your soil, it can become moldy when you water it. Less is more!
  • Diluted sourdough starter can leave a white film on the leaves of your plants. This is not so much a problem outside because you can easily rinse it off when you water next. But it's something to be aware of when using it inside. Bottom watering is best in this case!
  • Like any fertiliser or soil booster, consider which plants you are adding it to and their nutrient needs. Some plants will do better than others and you might need to adjust the amounts you use. I tend to use more in the summer and back off in the winter when my plants are dormant.
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How To Use Sourdough Starter In The Garden (2024)

FAQs

How To Use Sourdough Starter In The Garden? ›

If you are able to take your indoor plants outside to water, you may be able to use liquid sourdough starter to feed them. Add 100g of sourdough starter discard to a 1L jar and top up with water. Give the jar a good shake. Now add this liquid to a large tub and top up with water.

Can I use sourdough starter in my garden? ›

If you've been looking for organic fertilizer to help your garden flourish this spring, you might need to look no further than your kitchen cabinets. Sourdough starter is an easy way to give your plants a well-rounded fertilizer that will help them grow and even prevent diseases.

How to properly use sourdough starter? ›

To Activate Your Sourdough Starter:
  1. Place starter in a vessel. ...
  2. Add 45 g each of all-purpose flour and room-temperature water. ...
  3. Wait. ...
  4. When the starter has roughly doubled in volume, it's likely ready to go. ...
  5. If it doesn't float after 24 hours, add more flour and water (equal parts), stir again, and wait.
Nov 7, 2019

How do you grow and maintain a sourdough starter? ›

Maintaining A Sourdough Starter:

Like anything living, it requires food and water. The location you keep your starter in will determine how you maintain it. What is this? Leaving it out on the counter, it will need to be fed equal parts water and flour every 12-24 hours.

What can you use discarded sourdough starter for? ›

How to Use Up Your Sourdough Discard
  • Pizza. Sourdough Pizza Crust. ...
  • Pancakes & Waffles. Classic Sourdough Pancakes or Waffles. ...
  • Chocolate chip cookies. Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies. ...
  • Quick bread. Sourdough Banana Bread. ...
  • Miscellaneous. Sourdough Granola. ...
  • Crackers. Sourdough Crackers. ...
  • Sourdough. ...
  • Biscuits & Shortcakes.

Can I put my sourdough starter outside? ›

If you're feeding and making bread with your starter regularly (once a week or so) you can leave it out at room temperature. If you're going away for a bit or if you don't use it that often (once a month or less), store it in the fridge.

How do you compost sourdough starter? ›

It's perfectly fine to compost sourdough starter. If anything, it will actually add more good microbes to your compost! Since it's pretty wet and gooey, try to mix and/or bury the starter with leaves, straw, or other “browns” in the compost pile. We occasionally compost discarded sourdough starter in our worm bin too.

What else can I use sourdough starter for? ›

10 ways to use up sourdough starter
  • Sourdough crumpets. Add your sourdough starter to crumpet batter for a super light and airy texture. ...
  • Sourdough crackers. ...
  • Sourdough pancakes. ...
  • Sourdough pizza.
  • Sourdough scones. ...
  • Sourdough focaccia. ...
  • Sourdough toad-in-the-hole. ...
  • Sourdough hot cross buns.

When should you not use sourdough starter? ›

After a few days, your daily 1/4 cup flour and water won't be enough to sustain your entire jar of starter, and your starter will be slow and sluggish, not much better than discard itself. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, depending on what you want to bake with it.

How long should sourdough starter sit before using? ›

It's not a good idea to use a sourdough starter right after feeding. Ideally you should wait at least 2-4 hours.

How do you keep sourdough starter alive for years? ›

Storing: Crumble Into Dry Flour

This is by far my preferred method for long-term sourdough starter storage. Place a large dollop of your ripe sourdough starter in the bottom of a large bowl. Cover the starter with lots of flour—you can use the same flour used for feedings or 100% white flour.

Does sourdough starter continue to grow? ›

Once established, a sourdough starter will go through a predictable cycle of bubbling, growing to about double its size, and then falling, and will take a similar time to complete this cycle if held at a consistent temperature.

How to tell if sourdough starter is bad? ›

Typical signs of food spoilage and mold include pink, orange, or green colors, white fuzzy spots, or sometimes areas that are darker with white areas on top. If you see any of these signs, I would recommend throwing your starter away and creating a new one.

Can you eat raw sourdough starter? ›

No, it's not advisable to eat raw sourdough starter. While some people claim to have healed their gut problems by eating probiotic rich sourdough starter, it's not really advisable. Raw sourdough starter contains uncooked flour which can harbor harmful bacteria among other things.

Do you have to discard sourdough starter every time you feed it? ›

With each sourdough starter feeding, you'll be discarding some to avoid it from becoming overly acidic. Most will compost or trash this discard, but you can save it and use it in other recipes!

How do you dispose of old sourdough starters? ›

Of course, there are plenty of other ways to get rid of it. If you compost, scoop it into your bucket or bin; it will quickly disappear into the mass of fermenting organic materials. If you want to throw it away, it's best not to do so in its liquid state, as it can start to smell.

Is sourdough good for compost? ›

With this in mind, we gathered some ideas and recipes to use your sourdough discard in ways that can help the planet, your community and your own household! Throw it in the compost! Unused starter is actually great for the compost pile.

What do you do with sourdough starter when you go out of town? ›

If your trip will separate you and your starter for a short period of time—say, for up to a week—store your starter in the refrigerator. The day before you leave, feed it, let it digest its meal for a few hours and bubble up, then stash it in the refrigerator.

What grows in sourdough starter? ›

A sourdough starter is a culture containing a stable blend of wild yeasts and suitable lactic acid bacteria. The culture is maintained indefinitely, fed with fresh flour and water (also called refreshing) consistently.

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