Is Beer a Good Plant Food?

Water

• Beer is 90 percent water, and your plants certainly do need water -- but dumping beer on your plants is a very expensive watering system. Water from your garden hose or tap should be adequate for hydrating your plants. Or, try club soda. The minerals and nutrients in club soda can accelerate plant growth and make your plant's leaves a healthier, deeper shade of green.

Carbohydrates

• The carbohydrates in beer are known as simple sugars. These carbohydrates provide almost no nutritional benefit to people or plants. The type of carbohydrates your plants need are complex carbs. Complex carbohydrates are used by plant cells for food -- for a better source of carbohydrates to feed to your plants, try mixing molasses with your liquid fertilizer.

Yeast

• It's unclear where the idea came from that yeast is beneficial to plants. Yeast is a fungus that is commonly used in baking breads and brewing beers. When added to plants, the fungus will grow in the soil and create an unpleasant odor with no real special benefit to your plants. In short, pouring beer on your plants wastes money, does nothing good for the plant and might make your garden smell.

Slugs

• Though beer doesn't make a very good plant food, it can help with pests. Slugs can be a problem in the garden and beer is known to attract slugs and drown them. For a home remedy that really works, pour stale beer in a deep bowl and leave it in the garden, buried slightly so that the lip of the bowl is even with the soil. Slugs will crawl in to the beer and die there.