GS Plants - "Fish & Kelp" liquid fert

TaoRich

Well-Known Member
I've been using kelp for close to 30-years now. I used to collect it washed up on the beach and compost it.
How did that work out for you?

I'm doing the same by foraging fresh kelp washing up locally, then slicing and dicing up to compost in small doses through my worm bin.

This year, I've discovered the wonders of lactobacillus for rapidly breaking down the structural parts of input amendments, and more quickly releasing and freeing up the nutrients in a microbe and plant friendly form. So I'm going to start a LAB kelp ferment soon, and let it brew and stew until bloom stage in March.

I'll use the 'tea' for watering and foliar, and spread some sludge as top dress.
 
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TaoRich

Well-Known Member
The fish guts are also great food for microbes in your soil. So using the hydrolysate can help you get more out of your soil and any other fertilizers by increasing beneficials, to break stuff down too.
Nice to know about the stimulation of microbes.

I'm planning a LAB ferment of that too. Just waiting to collect fish guts and heads and remnants from my local friendly Chinese takeaway.

Yes, I'm a cheap ass bastard - foraging for my own kelp, or bumming leftovers from restaurants or horse stables or micro breweries - but I enjoy recycling and upcycling stuff that would otherwise be seen as 'useless waste'. Easy on the wallet, and good for the planet. No transport, no packaging, no labels, and it works just as well without brand names. My plants can't read for shit.

Sometimes fresh is even better in my opinion. Half of what I collect is still alive, or actively decaying, and still feeding and harbouring microlife. Breaking it down using earthworms or bacteria preserves a lot of that life, and reduces once living material more gently into molecules that are readily available to the plant.

That has gotta be better for living soil than mechanical crushing, heating and dessicating all the way down to sterile inert elements that require the plant to use its own energy to reconstruct their nutrition needs.
 
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PJ Diaz

Well-Known Member
How did that work out for you?

I'm doing the same by foraging fresh kelp washing up locally, then slicing and dicing up to compost in small doses through my worm bin.

This year, I've discovered the wonders of lactobacillus for rapidly breaking down the structural parts of input amendments, and more quickly releasing and freeing up the nutrients in a microbe and plant friendly form. So I'm going to start a LAB kelp ferment soon, and let it brew and stew until bloom stage in March.

I'll use the 'tea' for watering and foliar, and spread some sludge as top dress.
Worked great. I would also add spent hops from the local brewery, spent coffee grounds from the local coffee house, and alfalfa scraps swept off the floor of the local feed and seed.
 
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