

It will smell, so store it where the odor won’t knock you out. If you need less than 5 gallons, halve or quarter the recipe. This brew will keep for at least a year, but you might want to make fresh each season. Half a cup per gallon will give your compost pile a kick start. Just make sure to apply it by misting during the cooler parts of the day, not drenching the leaves in the heat. 1 Tbs per gallon of water makes a good foliar fertilizer. What you have is a supply of bio-available nutrients in a soluble form.įor a soil drench, use 2 – 3 Tbs per gallon of water and apply to the roots on a monthly basis during the growing season. Others keep everything together and stir the mix well before taking what they need. Some folks will strain off the solids, put them in the compost pile and use the liquid as a concentrated “tea” to be diluted with water. There are a lot of ways to use this brew, so be creative. Once it has brewed for a month, it is ready for use! Give the contents a good stir every couple of days. Let it brew for at least 2 weeks, a month is better. Stir well and cover with a lid to control the odor, but not tightly as it will build pressure as it brews. If you need extra sulfur and magnesium, add 1 Tbs Epsom salts. Add the chopped or powdered seaweed to the mix.

To supercharge the brew, add 1/4 cup of blackstrap molasses to provide sugars and minerals to the fermenting process. The juices or oils in the can will breed beneficial microbes and supply extra proteins. Add water to about 2 inches from the top, put in the cans of fish, rinsing the cans with the water to make sure you get every last drop of the “good stuff”.
#Fish emulsion full
Sourcing these from a dollar store or scratch and dent store makes perfect sense, as you don’t care about the can and aren’t going to eat them.įill the bucket half full of well-aged compost, aged sawdust or leaves, or a combination of all three. Trust me you won’t want to use it for anything else once you’re done! Buy 10 cans of herring type fish such as sardines, mackerel or anchovies. To make your own, obtain a dedicated 5 gallon bucket for this project. Dried seaweed is available at most oriental grocery stores. The seaweed or kelp transforms the emulsion into a complete biological fertilizer. Adding seaweed or kelp to the brewing process adds about 60 trace elements and natural growth hormones to the mix, really boosting the effectiveness of the fish emulsion. It is usually applied as a soil drench, but some gardeners swear by using it as a foliar fertilizer as well. One of the benefits of fish emulsion is that they provide a slower release of nutrients into the soil without over-feeding all at once. In order to ship, commercial emulsions have little to no active bacteria, because they make containers swell as they continue to grow! All fish emulsions are good organic nitrogen suppliers, but they also supply phosphorus, potassium, amino acids, proteins and trace elements or micronutrients that are really needed to provide deep nutrition to your soil community and plants. While we can’t do anything to help you with the fishy smell, we can help you make your own fish emulsion that will not only save you a lot of money in product and shipping costs, but just might make a better product than you can buy! This homemade fish emulsion will almost always supply more nutrients than commercially available, but also supplies much more beneficial bacteria from the brewing process.

The main drawback to commercial fish emulsion is the cost and the smell. Read more about Terroir Seeds below the article and be sure to check out their website at Now back to Stephen:
#Fish emulsion how to
Stephen is going to teach us how to make our own fish emulsion for use as a fertilizer and foliar spray. This week we'd like to extend a special welcome to guest blogger Stephen Scott, co-owner of Terroir Seeds, a family owned and operated heirloom seed company that focuses on the "Cycle of Terroir"- from the soil, to the seed, to the food you eat, providing heirloom seeds, education and information for all phases of the cycle. Did you know you can make your own fish emulsion fertilizer instead of buying it in the store?įish emulsion is an essential product for the organic and natural home gardener for years, proving its effectiveness in feeding the soil and plants with biologically available nutrients while increasing soil and microbe health.
