I found this on another site . very interesting .
How to make your own fish fertilizer:
Buy a fish.
TIP: Any kind of fish will work. In fact, you might as well use trash fish, or fish discards like fish heads, guts, etc. I like to use whole fishes though as I think that makes for a better product.
Now, ideally you would throw the fish into a blender to mash it up into little pieces. I cut my fish into 8ths or so and then chuck it into my kitchen blender but I’m a bit of a caveman. If you’re squeamish, buy a separate blender for this, just make sure it is powerful enough, mine is 500W and works fine for small-medium size fishes. Remember, the finer the fish bits, the more effective the fermentation.
Add water. You can use a simple guide of 3:1 – 3 parts water to 1 part ferment material. 1 roughly 8in tilapia comes to about 500mL when ground up, so I add about 1500mL water.
TIP: ALWAYS USE NON-CHLORINATED WATER. Chlorine kills microbes. Simply let your chlorinated tap water sit for several hours, allowing the chlorine to dissipate. I let it sit overnight generally.
If you are using a blender, blend up the mixture. The water helps keep it loose so it blends much better after you add the water.
Add lacto bacilli to blended fish mixture. I use 2tbsp per L. You can use more or less if you want. 2tbsp/L is plenty though.
Add 1/3 parts sugar. This should be 1/3 the amount of fish you’ve added. Sugar will be either molasses or normal cane sugar.
TIP: Try not to use cane sugar since it is chemically bleached. Raw(unrefined) sugar like muscovado is best. In the Philippines we use molasses because it is cheap, but any glucose source works – syrup, honey, etc. Just use whatever is cheap. Glucose gives microbes energy. Whatever you have access to cheaply, go for it.
If using sugar, the equivalency is about 1KG sugar = 1L solution. So if you have 500mL like my tilapia, you want 1/3 of that in sugar. You’d use about 167g sugar, or roughly ¾ cup.
I blend the whole mixture up a bit. It’s good to have it as fine as possible.
Up to you how much you blend it, I blend until I don’t hear so many bones crunching in the blades of the blender.
Now you have liquefied fish, sugar, and lacto. Pour this mixture into a container. Loosely cover the container. No need to seal, because the container will explode as CO2 is released by fermentation. You just want to make sure other things don’t get into it. I use a container with a lid and loosely screw the cap on top (just make sure you don’t seal it because it WILL explode).
The process takes anywhere from 3 weeks to over a month. How do you know its finished? By the smell.
You know when it’s done when there is no smell anymore. During fermentation there is a nasty smell, but once completed, there will be almost no odor. You can open it, and put your nose right up to it. Take a whiff. Nothing but a faint vinegar smell. Now you know its done. Congratulations! You’ve made your own Fish Hydrolysate!
Now, usually I transfer it to a smaller container, usually just a smaller water bottle, just for convenience. At this time, I use a strainer and a funnel to strain the bones and scales out of the hydrolysate. But don’t expect a lot. From a whole 8-10in tilapia, you will only get a little tiny pile of bones/scales. They will feel kind of rubbery, not brittle. Throw these in the compost pile or garden, they are excellent fertilizer and microbe food, already inoculated with microbes!
Leave the cap on the strained concoction loose until you see no more little bubbles forming. Then cap it and store it for use as your own natural fertilizer.
How to use this fish fertilizer:
Mix 2tbsp/gal for applications.
Plants
Use as a soil drench as opposed to foliar spray.
Inoculate compost to boost fungal population. This is huge – major growth booster of fungus.
Use in compost teas to boost fungal growth, add Nitrogen. Use at ¼ strength for this application(1/2 tbsp per gal).
Mix in water when watering plants, as a natural fish fertilizer and to enhance populations of micro-organisms in the soil
Animals
Bim
Beneficial Indigenous Microorganisms(BIM) is a fermented microbial solution that can be used for many applications around the farm. It is loaded with microbes, and is a cornerstone of Gil’s Natural Farming method. It’s an incredible tool with a myriad of applications, some of which are discussed below.
How to Make:
The idea here is to collect microbes from natural healthy ecosystems. Different areas have different types of microbes in the soil – for example an old growth forest will have microbes that grasslands don’t and vice versa. To get the greatest diversity of microbes, you want to collect them from as many different habitats as you can. For starters, at least get from forest, grassland, and the boundary area between them.
TIP: Plant-specific microbes! If you are growing vegetables, find areas where natural veggies are thriving. If planting ornamentals, look for areas where wild ornamental type plants are. Also, target nitrogen-fixer plants since they have rhizobium bacterial strains present – legumes, as well as some other plant genuses such as Alder or Bayberry fall into this category.
Here’s how to collect microbes and make BIM:
Cook a carbohydrate source to use as the attractant. Rice, barley, wheat, oats, etc should work no problem, most often rice is used here in Asia.
Get a wooden box or perforated plastic box and fill bottom with rice. The rice should not be too deep, around 1 inch usually, otherwise it will take too long for all the rice to become infected. Don’t pack the rice, leave it loose to allow airflow. The whole idea is to create more space for the microbes to infect – the surface area of the rice.
Mark side of box with date and intended location.
Cover box with something that’s breathable – nylons stretched over, or newspaper, just something to keep big critters out – secure with string around top of box.
Dig a little depression in the desired location, a place with undisturbed soil where a healthy population of native microbes is likely to flourish.
TIP: In forest, look for areas where leaves build up and mold. In grassland, look for areas where grass is most thriving.
Place the box in the depression and loosely cover with the dirt and leaves around it.
After 5-10 days (depending on temperature), the first colony of microbes you will notice are white molds. Then different colors like yellow, green, black, etc if you leave it much longer. Generally we harvest when it is in the white mold stage. Disregard rice if black molds have formed on it, this is generally a sign of non-beneficial microbes. In nature when there is plenty of food the beneficial microbes dominate. When there is less food, the opportunistic, non-beneficial microbes tend to dominate.
At this time, remove container from habitat and transfer rice to a plastic container/jar, and mix with sugar
Mix 1:1 with sugar. E.g. 1kg cooked rice with 1kg sugar/molasses(molasses is great and cheap)
Mash up the mixture with gloved fingers until it’s mashed but don’t overmix or you’ll destroy all the mycelia
Cover this mixture for 3-7 days.
When it is quite liquid, add 3 parts water.
TIP: 1kg=1L, so if you start with 1kg cooked rice, you’ll add 1kg sugar and then 6L water to that
Leave this diluted mixture for 7 days. Cover the top with something air permeable just so animals don’t get to it – cheese cloth, nylons, newspaper, etc
You should end up with a mud-like juice. Strain the liquid out of the mixture into a glass jar but don’t seal the top – let it breathe until bubbles in the bottom stop forming.
After you stop seeing bubbles forming in the jar, seal it up
Now you have your microbial inoculant for that ecosystem
Repeat the above steps for each area you are collecting microbes from. The more ecosystems you collect from, the better!
To make the final BIM product, combine all your microbial extracts. To increase efficacy, combine this concoction 1:1 with lacto serum. Lacto is the workhorse and is good to have in combination with other microbes. Now you have created your BIM inoculant!
How to Use:
This is a powerful tool in the natural farming arsenal, with a myriad of applications! It’s a microbial inoculant, so it can be used wherever you are trying to increase/establish populations of microbes – the most basic level of a healthy ecosystem!
Add 1-2tsp per gallon of water.
Plants
Apply as a foliar spray or soil drench. Greatly enhances growth and health of plants by establishing a healthy population of microbes in the soil and on leaf surfaces. Check out the benefits:
Transports food to roots
Builds a healthy ecosystem from the ground up. This is an invaluable job and the greatest benefit of this serum.
Aids disease resistance – fights pathogens, occupies spaces that could otherwise go to harmful bacteria/molds.
Aid composting – massively enhances compost – there will be a whole separate post on this concept
Aid organic fertilizer. Add to your nutrient solution, microbes break down organic nutrients into bio-available forms that plants can utilize directly. Another key feature
How to make your own fish fertilizer:
Buy a fish.
TIP: Any kind of fish will work. In fact, you might as well use trash fish, or fish discards like fish heads, guts, etc. I like to use whole fishes though as I think that makes for a better product.
Now, ideally you would throw the fish into a blender to mash it up into little pieces. I cut my fish into 8ths or so and then chuck it into my kitchen blender but I’m a bit of a caveman. If you’re squeamish, buy a separate blender for this, just make sure it is powerful enough, mine is 500W and works fine for small-medium size fishes. Remember, the finer the fish bits, the more effective the fermentation.
Add water. You can use a simple guide of 3:1 – 3 parts water to 1 part ferment material. 1 roughly 8in tilapia comes to about 500mL when ground up, so I add about 1500mL water.
TIP: ALWAYS USE NON-CHLORINATED WATER. Chlorine kills microbes. Simply let your chlorinated tap water sit for several hours, allowing the chlorine to dissipate. I let it sit overnight generally.
If you are using a blender, blend up the mixture. The water helps keep it loose so it blends much better after you add the water.
Add lacto bacilli to blended fish mixture. I use 2tbsp per L. You can use more or less if you want. 2tbsp/L is plenty though.
Add 1/3 parts sugar. This should be 1/3 the amount of fish you’ve added. Sugar will be either molasses or normal cane sugar.
TIP: Try not to use cane sugar since it is chemically bleached. Raw(unrefined) sugar like muscovado is best. In the Philippines we use molasses because it is cheap, but any glucose source works – syrup, honey, etc. Just use whatever is cheap. Glucose gives microbes energy. Whatever you have access to cheaply, go for it.
If using sugar, the equivalency is about 1KG sugar = 1L solution. So if you have 500mL like my tilapia, you want 1/3 of that in sugar. You’d use about 167g sugar, or roughly ¾ cup.
I blend the whole mixture up a bit. It’s good to have it as fine as possible.
Up to you how much you blend it, I blend until I don’t hear so many bones crunching in the blades of the blender.
Now you have liquefied fish, sugar, and lacto. Pour this mixture into a container. Loosely cover the container. No need to seal, because the container will explode as CO2 is released by fermentation. You just want to make sure other things don’t get into it. I use a container with a lid and loosely screw the cap on top (just make sure you don’t seal it because it WILL explode).
The process takes anywhere from 3 weeks to over a month. How do you know its finished? By the smell.
You know when it’s done when there is no smell anymore. During fermentation there is a nasty smell, but once completed, there will be almost no odor. You can open it, and put your nose right up to it. Take a whiff. Nothing but a faint vinegar smell. Now you know its done. Congratulations! You’ve made your own Fish Hydrolysate!
Now, usually I transfer it to a smaller container, usually just a smaller water bottle, just for convenience. At this time, I use a strainer and a funnel to strain the bones and scales out of the hydrolysate. But don’t expect a lot. From a whole 8-10in tilapia, you will only get a little tiny pile of bones/scales. They will feel kind of rubbery, not brittle. Throw these in the compost pile or garden, they are excellent fertilizer and microbe food, already inoculated with microbes!
Leave the cap on the strained concoction loose until you see no more little bubbles forming. Then cap it and store it for use as your own natural fertilizer.
How to use this fish fertilizer:
Mix 2tbsp/gal for applications.
Plants
Use as a soil drench as opposed to foliar spray.
Inoculate compost to boost fungal population. This is huge – major growth booster of fungus.
Use in compost teas to boost fungal growth, add Nitrogen. Use at ¼ strength for this application(1/2 tbsp per gal).
Mix in water when watering plants, as a natural fish fertilizer and to enhance populations of micro-organisms in the soil
Animals
Bim
Beneficial Indigenous Microorganisms(BIM) is a fermented microbial solution that can be used for many applications around the farm. It is loaded with microbes, and is a cornerstone of Gil’s Natural Farming method. It’s an incredible tool with a myriad of applications, some of which are discussed below.
How to Make:
The idea here is to collect microbes from natural healthy ecosystems. Different areas have different types of microbes in the soil – for example an old growth forest will have microbes that grasslands don’t and vice versa. To get the greatest diversity of microbes, you want to collect them from as many different habitats as you can. For starters, at least get from forest, grassland, and the boundary area between them.
TIP: Plant-specific microbes! If you are growing vegetables, find areas where natural veggies are thriving. If planting ornamentals, look for areas where wild ornamental type plants are. Also, target nitrogen-fixer plants since they have rhizobium bacterial strains present – legumes, as well as some other plant genuses such as Alder or Bayberry fall into this category.
Here’s how to collect microbes and make BIM:
Cook a carbohydrate source to use as the attractant. Rice, barley, wheat, oats, etc should work no problem, most often rice is used here in Asia.
Get a wooden box or perforated plastic box and fill bottom with rice. The rice should not be too deep, around 1 inch usually, otherwise it will take too long for all the rice to become infected. Don’t pack the rice, leave it loose to allow airflow. The whole idea is to create more space for the microbes to infect – the surface area of the rice.
Mark side of box with date and intended location.
Cover box with something that’s breathable – nylons stretched over, or newspaper, just something to keep big critters out – secure with string around top of box.
Dig a little depression in the desired location, a place with undisturbed soil where a healthy population of native microbes is likely to flourish.
TIP: In forest, look for areas where leaves build up and mold. In grassland, look for areas where grass is most thriving.
Place the box in the depression and loosely cover with the dirt and leaves around it.
After 5-10 days (depending on temperature), the first colony of microbes you will notice are white molds. Then different colors like yellow, green, black, etc if you leave it much longer. Generally we harvest when it is in the white mold stage. Disregard rice if black molds have formed on it, this is generally a sign of non-beneficial microbes. In nature when there is plenty of food the beneficial microbes dominate. When there is less food, the opportunistic, non-beneficial microbes tend to dominate.
At this time, remove container from habitat and transfer rice to a plastic container/jar, and mix with sugar
Mix 1:1 with sugar. E.g. 1kg cooked rice with 1kg sugar/molasses(molasses is great and cheap)
Mash up the mixture with gloved fingers until it’s mashed but don’t overmix or you’ll destroy all the mycelia
Cover this mixture for 3-7 days.
When it is quite liquid, add 3 parts water.
TIP: 1kg=1L, so if you start with 1kg cooked rice, you’ll add 1kg sugar and then 6L water to that
Leave this diluted mixture for 7 days. Cover the top with something air permeable just so animals don’t get to it – cheese cloth, nylons, newspaper, etc
You should end up with a mud-like juice. Strain the liquid out of the mixture into a glass jar but don’t seal the top – let it breathe until bubbles in the bottom stop forming.
After you stop seeing bubbles forming in the jar, seal it up
Now you have your microbial inoculant for that ecosystem
Repeat the above steps for each area you are collecting microbes from. The more ecosystems you collect from, the better!
To make the final BIM product, combine all your microbial extracts. To increase efficacy, combine this concoction 1:1 with lacto serum. Lacto is the workhorse and is good to have in combination with other microbes. Now you have created your BIM inoculant!
How to Use:
This is a powerful tool in the natural farming arsenal, with a myriad of applications! It’s a microbial inoculant, so it can be used wherever you are trying to increase/establish populations of microbes – the most basic level of a healthy ecosystem!
Add 1-2tsp per gallon of water.
Plants
Apply as a foliar spray or soil drench. Greatly enhances growth and health of plants by establishing a healthy population of microbes in the soil and on leaf surfaces. Check out the benefits:
Transports food to roots
Builds a healthy ecosystem from the ground up. This is an invaluable job and the greatest benefit of this serum.
Aids disease resistance – fights pathogens, occupies spaces that could otherwise go to harmful bacteria/molds.
Aid composting – massively enhances compost – there will be a whole separate post on this concept
Aid organic fertilizer. Add to your nutrient solution, microbes break down organic nutrients into bio-available forms that plants can utilize directly. Another key feature
, but looks like I'll have to come back for that 
.
