Growing on the cheap! Korean Natural Farming

[curiouscat]

The idea is to use natural ingredients to feed and make your plants healthy, the soil too…

How it works? Well you use base ingredients rich in whatever nutrients you are after…

For example, in the vegetative state you want nitrogen and growth hormones, nettles are a good example… you get a fresh batch of nettles you then break down the original plant matter by adding lactobacilli culture and sugar and let them break down the original matter by fermentation and end up after a while with a natural fertilizer that is cheap, safe and healthy. With this technique you can make your own foliar amendments. Natural fertilizers etc…

[CrunchBerries]

Did you explain in great detail the health benefits for your gut flora? Whenever I get going a certain glazed look comes over most people’s faces. Ha!

[HeadyBearAdventures]

@Cormoran

You should write an idiot’s guide

I could probably do that; bear in mind (get it, BEAR?) that this is my first run utilizing these methods, but I can totally do a write up regarding how to put together the inputs, and how the KNF method recommends using them!
Then we’ll see how I did, based on how a few fem autos respond.
Does that sound useful?

@LegsMahoney

the wife made it clear she is NOT interested in eating any cheese I try making with em

I gotta be honest, the fresh “cheese” is pretty weird.
I ate some with a little salt, on some crackers and … Oh boy, it’s… Tangy? I guess? Not a culinary delight on its own. If one could age it at the appropriate temperature and humidity it might improve considerably, but as fresh cheese, my palate says “no thanks”.
Mixing with heavy cream and stirring would give you cottage cheese, which might be a little sweeter, or blending with herbs, pesto, olives or sun-dried tomato, also might make a passable “cream cheese” for bagels. An experiment for another day, I suppose.

[LegsMahoney]

@CrunchBerries yea, my wife gets that look pretty much as soon as I start talking

@HeadyBearAdventures chris trump has a video of him making what I think amounts to like a mozzarella with the curds, but yea the smell and look makes it a tough proposition to heat up and try for that

[Cormoran]

That definitely sounds useful, especially if you venture into idiotic methods of sourcing (like going to the grocery store ) because that’s probably all I’m gonna realistically use. Maybe after getting comfortable with the idea, I’ll feel more comfortable wandering the forest picking plants based on a chart, but I’d like to get hands on and just get a batch done without having to do a ton of research. The first posts of this thread start with 15 PDFs… and, though I’d like to use cheaper and more natural fertilizers, I’m kinda leery about the idea of putting in a hundred hours of research and legwork just to start and then end up FIMing the whole thing. I have a fertilizer that halfway works for me already, and it’s at least supposedly natural - just more expensive than it has to be, I’m sure.

[HeadyBearAdventures]

Alright, I’m gonna make a separate thread this week, and I’ll do a detailed write up of my experience with each input.
It’s gonna come out in sections, so I can get detailed, so it’ll probably take a couple weeks to complete.
I’ll tag you in the initial post.
In the meantime, @BeagleZ has a thread he’s already started, where people can follow along in real time. He also has more pictures than I’ll be able to post, because I didn’t capture each step as I synthesized the inputs.

BeagleZ KNF/homemadeInputs Shelf in the Corner

Hey fam! This thread will be for documenting all my attempts at homemade and Knf all natural inputs. Instead of me continuing to hijack the KNF thread;) I will document the successes as well as, more importantly the failures. As I travel down this hole I feel I am stumbling from time to time and hope I can help folks not make some of those same mistakes. This will all be for a small scale grower/gardener. I’m going to go back and put all the inputs I have done so far here in this thread fo…

[lotus710]

I made a fpj with a buncha goodies in it like 4 years ago. It still tastes amazing. I put it on some pancakes this morning. Sooooooo good. Cant feed our plants better than ourselves!

[BeagleZ]

My banana FPJ tastes amazing. Almost like a banana foster without the cream part.

I want to officially thank you @lotus710 for starting this thread and providing me/us with so much info and inspiration. You opened up a door to a huge warehouse of knowledge that I thought was only a closet

@HeadyBearAdventures please tag me along as well, I’d love to share the in the experience!
I think we are pretty much at the same point in this so will be good to bounce ideas!

@Cormoran , you don’t need to go into the wilderness, dandelion makes one of the best inputs and it’s everywhere, even in the city. Although you don’t want it polluted so from a wooded area in a park would be best prob.
If you have to go to the grocery just make sure it’s organic.

@CrunchBerries , I still get that look when you start talking (photosynthesis+,cough)

[Cormoran]

Dandelions I can probably manage, yeah. My own lawn has them, and I don’t have it sprayed or treated with any pesticides or anything. Bananas I’d obviously be going to the store for, but they’re pretty cheap. That would be for flowering, I guess? I know bananas are very high in potassium. I’ve thought about top-dressing with spinach since that’s loaded with micros, maybe that would work as well for flower since it’s also loaded with K. Would I just ferment some of those and start using them at 1:1000 for waterings rather than making compost tea and then top-dressing with the bagged fertilizer?

[curiouscat]

Simple template first you need to collect the lactobacilli and that is done by collecting water from washing uncooked rice. You end up with a milky water. This water is left outside in a sheltered place and covered with a muslin cloth. Once you have collected some bacteria you then transfer this rice water packed with bacteria to fresh milk
. Let that ferment and that is what everyone calls Labs this will be your foundation for the rest of the stuff you can make. You then add plant matter and sugar in the same proportion and add the labs. This will ferment and once done will render

Fermented nettles for vegetative stage
Fermented buds for bloom
Fermented flowers for the flowering
Fermented garlic and ginger for general plant health

Fermented seaweed for growth boom!!

And so on.

In essence you are using lactobacillus acidophilus and lactobacillus in general to break down food, fruit, vegetable matter into what you need to provide your plants with . Some of these preparations can be very stinky at some point so be prepared… nettles for example smell funky, then beerish then start to stink then reek and then it gets better and milder… but beware…

This is the simplest I could break it down. Hope it helps understand

[BeagleZ]

Yeah banana is good for flower.
As @curiouscat said, flower material for flower input, vigorous fast growing plants for veg.
Whatever that plant is or is doing will translate to the ferment if that makes sense.

On the spinach, not 100% on that as an input quite yet. @taiga and I were discussing this above when Legs mentioned it.

[Cormoran]

Ok… so when I made willow water the other day, I could’ve broken off a few extra branches and fermented those with LABS for some excellent veg/transition fertilizer, since willows are so fast-growing and it’s just starting to show some smallish buds? Maybe I should go get a muslin cloth and wash some rice tomorrow so I have it ready in a few weeks, the tree’s not going anywhere.

I thought about spinach mostly for the micros; it’s also extremely high in boron, amusingly enough.

[BeagleZ]

You want the leafy green material, not the wood and I’d have to look into where the nutrients are in the tree. If there’s enough n the leaf material to make it worth while.

This is from my limited understanding. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong

[curiouscat]

“Indolebutyric acid (IBA) is a plant hormone that stimulates root growth. It is present in high concentrations in the growing tips of willow branches. By using the actively growing parts of a willow branch, cutting them, and soaking them in water, we can get significant quantities of IBA to leach out into the water.”

[Cormoran]

I already do that regularly for my clones… just wondering if it’d be useful for a ferment too. If I could do all this with stuff from around my yard, it’s a lot more attractive than having to go to the park and bag up a few plants for everyone to be curious about. I live in a pretty densely populated area.

[curiouscat]

@Cormoran

just wondering if it’d be useful for a ferment too.

I don’t know if the fermentation would affect the hormones have look into this… but the nutrients like nitrogen will be there for sure after the fermentation

[CrunchBerries]

What? I was just trying to have a friendly chat about Purple non-sulphur bacteria. Give a guy a break. Ha!

[HeadyBearAdventures]

@BeagleZ

please tag me along as well

I will do that, and I would welcome your input as things progress! The sharing of multiple experiences is what will really answer people’s questions IMHO.
I’ll also be continuously directing people to your thread for additional information

[catapult]

@BeagleZ

You want the leafy green material, not the wood and I’d have to look into where the nutrients are in the tree.

For using willow, I believe the young growing tips are the best sources of IBA and salicylic acids. It’s the sap we’re after I think, as well as the thin layer beneath the outer bark. The leaves are discarded and the branches w yellow or green tips are used (not the brown woody parts).

I just use a simple tea extraction rather than a full ferment. Cause, well, it’s quick and easy and still works. It’s great for rooting clones and as a general booster for healthy roots.

[Cormoran]

Sounds like I’m already getting the most use out of willow that I can; maybe I’ll just keep it simple and dedicate a pot to vetch or clover since they’re nitrogen fixers, that way I can grow without depleting the soil and use it for a ferment at harvest. Natural sources doesn’t mean it has to be from outdoors, duh. I’ll cruise down to the river a few minutes away and see if there’s any nettles there, and if not, I’ll plan to use vetch.