Put some fish in your garden

Did you know that Native Americans use to place a dead fish on every corn seed they planted for fertilizing the ground? The results were amazing to say the least. The Plymouth settlers were awestruck by the Native methods, how could rotting fish encourage the harvest to become so plentiful? There are several reasons why fish is good for the ground, plants and in turn the consumers.

While the fish is decomposing, millions of microbes are flourishing, protecting the environment from fungus, harmful bacteria and irritating insects. It is almost as though you are equipping your plants with an immune system! Fish also provides vitamins, amino acids, and enzymes. Fish as fertilizer in general is not only preserving the healthy soil but it is also feeding your plants, making them strong and even more nutrient dense. Give your garden a feast this spring and go fishing! Here is a recipe for making your own fish fertilizer:

Make your own Organic Fish Fertilizer

You can use fresh fish parts or any cheap canned fish. The juices, sauces, or oils in the can can be used to breed beneficial microbes and supply extra proteins in the tea, so use it.

(NOTE: If you use canned fish products, you may want to let it decompose mixed with some finished compost, good garden soil, etc. in a separate closable container for a few days before using. Since most canned meat products contain preservatives, this will guarantee that the good microbes in the tea will not be killed off or harmed in brew making.)

You can use any fresh or dried seaweed. Fresh seaweed has more N in it, but that really isn’t important for seaweed teas. You can buy fresh or dried seaweed at most oriental grocery stores. Seaweed decomposes better if chopped up or liquefied first in water before brewing. 

If you are using fresh fish, you need to compost it separately in a 5 gallon closable bucket. Fill bucket 1/2 full with extra browns like sawdust, leaves, or straw. You can add molasses to the fishy mixture in order to build up microbes in order to speed up decomposition. The sugars will also help control odors too. Open the bucket and stir the fishy paste daily or every other day in order to get air in the mix for better decomposition and better aerobic microbial growth in the emulsion. Let this paste rot for at least 1-2 weeks. The browns help control offensive odors and absorb organic nitrogen from the fish so that it is not leached out or evaporated. 

Since commercial fish emulsions contain sulfur in the form of sulfuric acid, if you like you could add 1-2 tblsp of Epsom salt to the mix for extra magnesium and sulfur. Or to mimic the acidity of sulfuric acid and add extra trace elements you could add 1-2 tblsp of apple cider vinegar to the mix. NOTE: Recent studies have shown that unsulfured molasses or dry molasses powder is best for faster microbial growth in tea brewing. 

You can now safely take the decomposed fish paste from the 5 gallon bucket and add it to your regular hot composting piles or add it to your special compost tea recipes. The more vegetable or fruity organic matter that you add to fishy compost the better you remove the offensive smells and the more trace elements you add to your compost and teas. This of course is optional. 

You can add molasses or brown sugar to your teas also. Sugars are high carbon substances that not only can cause speedy microbial growth, but also sugars are an excellent natural deodorizer. 

At this point you may want to decide whether you want to make a simple tea or an aerobic aerated tea for your needs. 

When you make fishy tea, you need to add the seaweed at brewing time. Let it brew for at least 1 week, stirring every few days. If you decide to brew it aerobically with an air pump, try up to 3 days, or until the brew has a “yeasty” smell, or has a foamy top layer on the tea. 

You can apply this fish/seaweed emulsion at a dilution rate from 1:1 to 1:5 ratio (5 gallons of tea to 25 gallons of water).

If you like, you can add a few drops of mild liquid soap per gallon as a wetting agent to get better coverage as a foliar feed at application time. (NOTE: If you are concerned that using soaps may harm the beneficial microbes in your teas, you may want to just use liquid molasses, dry molasses powder, fish oil, or yucca extract as a spreader-sticker.)

You can use this tea as a foliar feed or as a soil drench or both. Soil drenches are best for building up the soil microbial activities and supplying lots of beneficial soluble NPK to the plant’s root system and the topsoil texture. Foliar feeds are best for quick fixes of trace elements and small portions of other soluble nutrients into the plant through its leaves. Foliar feeds are also good for plant disease control. Foliar feeds work best when used with soil drenches or with lots of organic mulches around plants. You can poke holes in the soil around crop roots with your spade fork, to get more oxygen in the soil to further increase organic matter decomposition and increase microbial activity in the soil.