I’m starting this thread to share some ideas I have for lowering the input costs, sometimes in an unconventional way. Feel free to add to it.
1 Putting out bat houses with a modified tray beneath as a guano catch.
Best I can tell this isn’t really talked about it and I can find very little in the matter. There’s tons of info and designs for bat houses, but none that have a catch tray for the guano. I’ll make at least one and see how it works out.
2 Horse fly trap to turn those bastard into a meal (pun intended) for my plants.
There’s a couple different designs for making one of these, most use a form of a net to trap them. The more interesting one to me was a water troff design with Plexiglas slants at 45° angles on both sides so they fly into it and fall in water. The water has a surfactant in it so they quickly drown. From what Ive read one of those can gather a good number of horse fly’s and other insect each day. Even at night if you drop some glow sticks in the V the glass makes.
Very good point hanz. Perhaps it can be added to the outdoor compost pile to reduce the chance of inhaling the spores. Ive never personally used guano, but it’s in a lot of soil mixes and there’s mrsouls guano tea recipe in the FAQ. It doesn’t seem to be an issue in the super soil mixes which leads me to the composting it line of thinking.
Yes, I’m sure you are safe once it has been composted and made into a tea. Just wanted to make sure you knew it was marginally dangerous to handle the raw material.
Worm-casting bins are another great source, but I guess they are considered more conventional nowadays.
Good-Luck, man. I’ll be watching
I have buckets of charcoal outside from garden maintenance which I soak with urine and scraps from my bokashi bin, I let it cook for a long time then incorporate in my top soil when spring comes.
Also the unconventional farmer has a technique of making cockroach compost in a closed bin. Soil is rock hard in my area and not worm friendly but insects like woodlouses do a good job and can create fast compost, if you add a little bokashi for them too.
I do remember the books talking about urine and yes, i have used it in a grow back in the early 90’s, it was at a friends house and nothing really came out of it. Plus there were humidity problems. Urine man! Urine!
i guess like everything it depends a bit on your diet. it seems like it’d be kinda hot tho like you’d want to dilute it (not to mention it would stink!)
But using it to soak charcoal doesn’t bring any amonia smell, I have a full wheelbarrow of charcoal loaded with a lot of urine (alongside bokashi and kelp meal) and no foul smell
Haha! I’ve been the same ignorant and impatient grower armed for only knowledge of a bad photocopied underground grow guide full of bad or uncomplete directions. That’s where I learned about HPS for the first so I can’t be too harsh on this book
That’s the beauty of pure carbon. If you need too you can refill you carbin filters or even stuff a tube with it and use it as a gravity water filtration system.
