Hey everyone, I hope you all are doing great . I’ve been wondering for some time about the use and making of anaerobic fermented liquid fertilizer. Its often mentioned in KNF (that’s all I know about it) and it was mentioned a few times in a podcast episodeI listened to. I’m pretty lazy, and the tough of mixing organic matter in a jar and getting super strong liquid fertilizer is really appealing.
Now my question is, is it possible to do this with dry amendments? I have some:
Gaia green 4-4-4:
Feather meal,
alfalfa meal,
bone meal,
blood meal,
glacial rock dust,
natural rock phosphate,
fishbone meal,
mineralized phosphate,
potassium sulphate,
Insect frass,
basalt rock dust,
humic acid,
Gypsum,
kelp meal,
oyster shell flour,
greensand.
and 2-8-4:
bone meal
mineralized phosphate,
fishbone meal,
rock phosphate,
mined potassium sulphate,
glacial rock dust,
insect frass,
feather meal,
basalt rock dust,
kelp meal,
humic acid,
gypsum,
greensand,
blood meal.
I also have some chicken manure pellets 4-4-7:
Hen manure
Potash sulphate
Bone meal
Feather meal
and 4-6-8:
Hen manure
Potash sulphate
Feather meal
What do you think? Does this even make sense? If so what are the things I’d have to add, besides water (and maybe some kind of sugar…? Or not?)
Knf inputs are generally made from stuff you’d find in the kitchen or garden. Fermented plant juice made from new shoots of fast growing plants or plants that offer other benefits, those are used for veg. Fermented fruit juice from scraps that contain things like P and K and used for flower such as melon, banana, papaya, squash, etc. for both the fpj and ffj those things are layered in a jar with an equal amount of sugar and left to ferment for 7-14 days before being strained and used
The process for OHN for fermenting dry ingredients involves rehydrating with beer first and then adding sugar not sure if that would come into play here or if trying to ferment all the additives at once in a mix like the gaia would be a problem because they also recommend to ferment all the ingredients separately. OHN Recipe
I know that buildasoil sells a lacto fermented Insect Frass but I don’t know the exact process to go about doing it either.
Thanks @MWgrower@taiga! After some reading and a bit of research, I found out what I wanted to do is not really related to knf. I got the wording wrong, I wouldn’t be fermenting, but dissolving like making tea. And it’s pretty easy to do: 1-2 cup of dry amendments to 1 gal of distilled water. Let sit for 1-2 days and stir as much as possible. According to the internet. It’s definitely worth a try!
I sometimes will do a similar tea, I use less though, 1-2tablespoons / gallon in rain water w handful of compost or ewc. I have run into pH issues in the past though at times. Back before I would check such things. So you may want to consider that. Visible burning of leaf tips when it happens.
How far would this tea go? 1-2 cups would be enough to amend 90 litres or more of soil. Used dry at 15mL per gallon, two cups would do 33.3 gallons based on the topdressing application rate.
Most KNF recipes are diluted significantly before application. Does this same principle apply to fermented amendments?
From the KNF talk I attended, he would make the anaerobic solution by mulching up everything he had and tossing it into this giant container of water. He wasn’t specific about what to add but said weed seeds are ok and any kind of shredded plant material. Let that sit and stagnate for a while because you want the stinky but faster process of anaerobic decomposition to deal with the plant material and seeds. Then before he used it he would bubble air through that for 48 hours to kill off all anaerobic pathogens then filter out the remaining plant sludge and use the liquids left behind.
So, as you already said, this wouldn’t be a fermentation, but more of a tea. The tricky part here is that the majority of components aren’t water soluble and thus wouldn’t be extracted or dissolved; you would lose significant concentration of those amendments.
I did used to do this, but then was reading on the Down-to-Earth blog, and they have an article discouraging the use of amendments in teas, for the reason above.
I use molasses, kelp meal, gaia green 2-8-4, 4-4-4
Dash of bat guano, worm castings dolomite and fine endo. Warm water to around 85 degrees. I throw a water pump in there for water circulation and let brew for about a day. Your plants will love it
Its the first question in my mind when you can use a small amount of kelp meal in such a way:
Which is perfect for a cheapskate like me. This way I can really stretch out the inputs I have on hand.
All of my attempts at FPJ just resulted in a mold farm. LABS I managed to make no problem, though it’s not one of those nutritive inputs and with the 1:1000 dilution I had half a litre of this stuff sitting in my fridge for a month until people started asking questions.
Can you elaborate on any of the proportions of these inputs?
Cant you just cover your mulch layer with plastic and let it rot by spraying it with LABS every now and then. I keep adding more fresh cover crop and stuff among other things sprouted, dried and powdered legume seeds and malt. I haven’t tried the fermented teas mostly because the plant doesn’t need watering much.There was a lot of mold on top before i added more fresh mulch.
. I’ve been wondering for some time about the use and making of anaerobic fermented liquid fertilizer. Its often mentioned in KNF (that’s all I know about it) and it was mentioned a few times in a podcast episodeI listened to. I’m pretty lazy, and the tough of mixing organic matter in a jar and getting super strong liquid fertilizer is really appealing.
