A Foul-Smelling Concoction

If you'd take a peek down into one of many 5 gallon buckets I have in the garden, I'd like to show you something.  Let me take the lid off of it first.  It's a good thing you cannot smell this loathsome "brew of poo."  When I tell you it stinks, I'm not exaggerating.  Some of it splashed on my hand, and I learned a valuable lesson to be more careful next time.  

We're trying our hand at producing our own liquid fertilizer.  In order to do so, I filled a bucket halfway to the top with rainwater.  Then I added a whole bunch of chopped up cabbage leaves as well as weeds that I had pulled from the garden along with some chopped up tomato plants that froze this winter.  Then I walked out to the pasture with a shovel and harvested a shovelful of fresh cow poop and added it to the bucket, chopping up the contents repeatedly, and finally topping off with more rainwater to fill.  I closed up the bucket.

The bucket sat in the sun, percolating, fermenting, baking and aging.  Once a week, I'd pull the top off and stir up the concoction with an old broom handle.  Over time it turned into a slurry of sorts.  You couldn't really tell what the contents were as it all turned into this thick, malodorous liquid.

After months, I want to test out our liquid fertilizer.  I gasped at the smell once I removed the top and then dipped out a third of a gallon of the smelly stuff and poured it into a smaller one gallon bucket, trying to leave any solids in the 5 gallon bucket to continue to break down.

I filled the remaining available space in the gallon bucket with rainwater to dilute the homemade liquid fertilizer.

I poured this concoction at the base of my crookneck and zucchini squash that had been burned by a recent frost.  The leaves on the squash were yellowed and looking sickly.  I was unsure if they would be able to be saved or if we'd need to replant the entire squash crop.  Well, in a little less than a week, the squash responded favorably to our homemade liquid fertilizer!  Look how healthy the plant is!:

Last week I transplanted some straightneck yellow squash in the last row near the sugarcane.  The plants are small and, as you can witness, the leaves are yellowed.  They are needing something.  I'm thinking it is calling out for some homemade liquid fertilizer.  You asked for it, you got it.  I poured some at the base of the squash plants.

We will keep checking on the squash in order to see if it reacts the way that the other squash did.  We still have some experimenting to do regarding concentration rates.  I don't want to burn the plants, but on the other hand, I don't want to dilute it so much that it doesn't provide the plants with the food they need to be healthy and grow.  If this works, just think about it.  We're able to create fertilizer with garden scraps and a cow patty - an affordable circle of fertility for our garden.

An Experiment in Making Liquid Fertilizer

We haven't done the chemical fertilizer thing in quite some time.  Generally, we use a multifaceted approach to soil fertility.  We amend lots of compost into the soil, leaves, biochar, organic matter.  Then we use fish emulsion for foliar feeding as well as around the base of the plant.  Prior to planting, we incorporate composted wood chips with composted cow poop and chicken poop into the soil.

I've been looking at other ideas and wanted to do an experiment on a small scale prior to going full-throttle with it.  It has to do with making liquid fertilizer concentrate with things you have not far from the garden.  Weeds!  In my hand below is an assortment of winter grasses.  I got a sling blade and chopped a 5 gallon bucket full of weeds.  Weeds have everything you need to get started.

The next thing you need is leaf mold.  Leaf mold can be found in the moist forest floor.  I didn't even need to go to the woods.  I dug into the wood chip pile that is decomposing and found plenty of it.  Leaf mold contains mycelium.  Mycelium are the white thread-like fungi that are working behind the scenes to turn wood and leaves into topsoil.  In addition to your 5 gallon bucket of weeds, add a handful of leaf mold.

Put both the weeds and leaf mold into a bucket.

Fill the bucket with rain water.

Snap the lid on the bucket securely and set the bucket in your garden in full sun.

Leave for several weeks and let it "cook."  Then use the liquid to fertilize your plants.  I'm told that you must dilute it, starting off weak so as not to burn your plants.  We'll update you in a few weeks when we pop the top off.  I'm told this stuff stinks to high heaven, so we were warned not to get it on your clothes.  Maybe this will be done by the time we need to fertilize the cucumbers you see behind the bucket.