Tag: diy

DIY Fish Emulsion

Posted on by admin

What is fish emulsion? It’s fermented fish guts. Well, it’s not just guts, its also skins and scales and bones. It’s not a very pretty thing, if I’m honest, but it will make your plants pretty!

Fish emulsion is the grossest thing I’ve ever done for my plants. And the smelliest. I hate poultry manure, but I’d rather handle 500 pounds of that than one bucket of fish emulsion. But, plants love fermented fish. And buying that stuff is expensive! So why should I buy it when my best friend’s husband is a fishing guide and generously offered to give me a freezer full of fish scraps? I’d be stupid not to make this… Right?

Fish emulsion (or if we’re getting technical, what I make is fish Fish Hydrolysate because it isn’t processed with heat) is a great natural fertilizer for your garden. It contains organic nitrogen and soluble phosphorous and potassium. It’s also teeming with good bacteria that will feed microbes in your soil and improve your soil’s health. Remember: We feed the soil, not the plants. And fish emulsion is a great way to do that!

So I’ll tell you just how to make fish emulsion, in case you’re feeling brave and want to try it yourself. Then I’ll tell you what I did so you can laugh about it. Or gag. Blech!

Ingredients:
Fish scraps
Leaves
Water (non-chlorinated)
Molassas
Bucket with a tight lid

Instructions:
1. Cut fish scraps in to small pieces, or blend them in a blender.
2. Fill bucket roughly half full with leaves (these help trap the good nutrients)
3. Add fish to the bucket
4. Add water in a ratio of 3:1 (three parts water, one part fish)
5. Add about 2 tablespoons of molasses for every liter of water/fish scraps
6. Stir. Then cover tightly with the lid.
7. Open the bucket and stir every day or two. You should see bubbles–this is a sign that the fermentation is taking place.
8. Once the smell is no longer offensive, your emulsion will be ready to dilute and fertilize. This may be as soon as 2 weeks, or if you’re me, you’ll wait two years. Because you’re scared to open the bucket.

To Use:
Strain the liquid and mix 2 tablespoons of emulsion (liquid) with 1 gallon of water and apply to the soil. You can also add 1/2 tablespoon to a gallon of compost tea. Add the solid remains to your compost pile.

Emulsion can be stored for later use. Leave the cap loose until the bubbling ceases, then tighten the cap and store.

So Here’s my Story:
I got a few large bags of frozen fish scraps: skins, fins, tails, bones, heads and guts. I brought them home and left them outside overnight to thaw slightly, and the next day I collected two 5 gallon buckets, one with a tight fitting lid. I put a few handfuls of leaves in each, filled the buckets with fish scraps, added some molasses and topped them off with water. I stirred the contents and wondered if I had filled them too full. I just had so many fish guts! I put the lid on one bucket and covered the other with a Rubbermaid tote lid and placed some large rocks on top to weigh it down.

I returned to the buckets after a day or so to stir them. The fish scraps had swollen, and they were, indeed, fermenting! The buckets were overflowing and smelly and messy and there were flies everywhere! I found a third bucket and divided the contents between the three.

Soon the buckets were filling with maggots. Barf. I could hardly stomach stirring them. And after another day, I kid you not, I was sitting at my desk, looking out the window, and I saw a vulture circling. The smell was so bad that it was drawing vultures to the homestead! Vultures! I went outside to prevent the vulture from landing, but I soon abandoned the buckets and left them to their own devices. I didn’t lift their lids, I didn’t stir them.

It’s been two years since I tried to ferment fish guts. I think this year I’ll peek inside the buckets to see what’s there. What will I find? I don’t know. But I hope the smell won’t be too bad. And I hope I’ll have something good inside for my garden. If there’s liquid, I’ll use it as it’s meant to be used. If there isn’t, maybe I’ll add some water (and molasses?) and see what happens. Either way, I will either spread the solid remains thin and deep in my garden bed, or I’ll add it to my compost pile. I just hope that all that trouble will be worth it!

DIY Pallet Composting System

Posted on by admin

You can never have enough compost, right? That stuff is garden gold! The thing is, it takes lots of time to get your compost heap from start to finish. And if you keep adding things to it, it’ll just mean that you start over again from the beginning. The key is to have a composting system that allows for two or more heaps so that they can be at different stages in the composting process.

Before we get in to the system, let’s discuss a few key elements that will ensure your composting success:

Materials

Compost should include a variety of material, both green and brown. Green materials are things like fruit and vegetable waste, grass clippings and animal manure, which are nitrogen rich and provide lots of protein for your compost. Brown materials include dead leaves, hay, straw, wood shavings and cardboard. Brown materials provide energy, meaning they are food for the microbes that will be breaking down your compost and turning it in to garden gold. Naturally, the smaller the size of your compost materials, the faster they will break down, so consider shredding boxes or paper, mowing over leaves to cut them up, and breaking garden waste in to smaller pieces.

Moisture

Your compost pile needs to be watered to stay alive. Consider keeping it in the shade so the sun won’t dry it out, and/or keep it covered with plastic. Alternatively, if you have a very wet summer, you might consider covering your system with a piece of plywood to keep it from getting too wet.

Size

The ideal size for a compost heap is about 3 cubic feet. Compost generates heat as it breaks down, which is a necessary component of the process. If your heap is smaller than 3 feet tall, wide and deep, it might not get hot enough. Going bigger than 3 cubic feet won’t hurt, though going too big will make the next part difficult, which is…

Turning

Your compost heap needs to be turned regularly. Mixing will introduce air in to the living pile and help it break down. If you want to make the process as quick as possible, turn your pile weekly. This will give it time to heat up between turns. The ideal temp to look for is 140-160 degrees Fahrenheit.

The DIY System:

Materials:
5 wood pallets
Nails or wire ties (such as electric fence wire)

Instructions:
Place two pallets on end, in a row and secure with wire ties or nails.
Place remaining three pallets on end and perpendicular to the first two, one on either end and one in the center. Secure with wire ties or nails.

And that’s it! I built my composting system against a garden fence, but you could place yours against a shed, or if it needs to be freestanding, you might consider pounding some posts to secure it to.


As you can see, I use one section of my system for a hotbed. The bottom of the hotbed is hot, un-composted manure, so next year I’ll mix and remove the compost on that side. When I removed the material from last years hotbed this Spring, the horse manure had broken down very nicely! This year I’m using chicken manure and straw, so we’ll see how it looks next Spring; it may return to the compost pile. Although my composting system is a nice place for a hotbed, I’d really like another place for a compost pile! I think I’ll build on another section to my system. And that’s part of the beauty! You can customize and make 10 sections, if you have the space and materials. Let me know if you try it out! Happy composting!