Unusual Fertizilers

[chownah]

I thought I'd start a new thread to avoid cluttering up the fruit drying thread where it started.......

Using fruit for fertilizer doesn't seem too promising to me. Seems like most fruits don't have much in the way or N-P-K in them. Can you fill us in on what's up with this?

Chownah

Hi Chownah,

The local shop tells us to:

Take a 150 liter container and fill it 80% full of - in this case Linchee fruit. Other old fruit and compost will also work. Pour two liters of low grade sugur cane molsasses into this. Fill with water and stir. Cover and let sit for two weeks. Drain off the liquid and store in seperate container. This can be diluted one part per hundred and sprayed onto plants or around the base of them. They sell this liquid in the fertilizer shop for 120Baht for a four liter container.

The sludge in the bottom of the 150 liter container can be placed around plants, shrubs or trees as a fertilizer.

I did a "Google" and found that sugur cane molasses is excellent for making fertilizer. While for lawn care, beet root molasses is even better for it kills most of the weeds in the lawn while giving a nice dark green luster to the grass.

Cheers,

David

To continue the conversation......I have heard of these types of "fertilizers" before and even tried one out. The one I tried had me use vegetable scraps along with some sugar which were fermented in a container for a couple of weeks....then diluted just as you indicated. To see if this stuff would work I planted some vegetable (can't remember what it was) in soil that was only marginally fertile and then watered some of it with this concoction. The result I got was that the concoction made no difference in how the vegetables grew.

Of course this is only one attempt by me and I might not have gotten everything right in my attempt so I'm starting this thread to gather information and personal experiences about this type of "fertilizer".....I put quotes around the word because I am quite sceptical that these concoctions do actually work as fertilizers but as always I'm happily looking for someone or some information that can give me a better grasp of just how they might work.

Chownah

[Jamie]

After two weeks of fermentation, wouldn't you be looking at an alcohol? I've placed compost in cheese cloth and set it in water to make a compost tea. That works well.

[David2up]

I thought I'd start a new thread to avoid cluttering up the fruit drying thread where it started.......

Using fruit for fertilizer doesn't seem too promising to me. Seems like most fruits don't have much in the way or N-P-K in them. Can you fill us in on what's up with this?

Chownah

Hi Chownah,

The local shop tells us to:

Take a 150 liter container and fill it 80% full of - in this case Linchee fruit. Other old fruit and compost will also work. Pour two liters of low grade sugur cane molsasses into this. Fill with water and stir. Cover and let sit for two weeks. Drain off the liquid and store in seperate container. This can be diluted one part per hundred and sprayed onto plants or around the base of them. They sell this liquid in the fertilizer shop for 120Baht for a four liter container.

The sludge in the bottom of the 150 liter container can be placed around plants, shrubs or trees as a fertilizer.

I did a "Google" and found that sugur cane molasses is excellent for making fertilizer. While for lawn care, beet root molasses is even better for it kills most of the weeds in the lawn while giving a nice dark green luster to the grass.

Cheers,

David

To continue the conversation......I have heard of these types of "fertilizers" before and even tried one out. The one I tried had me use vegetable scraps along with some sugar which were fermented in a container for a couple of weeks....then diluted just as you indicated. To see if this stuff would work I planted some vegetable (can't remember what it was) in soil that was only marginally fertile and then watered some of it with this concoction. The result I got was that the concoction made no difference in how the vegetables grew.

Of course this is only one attempt by me and I might not have gotten everything right in my attempt so I'm starting this thread to gather information and personal experiences about this type of "fertilizer".....I put quotes around the word because I am quite sceptical that these concoctions do actually work as fertilizers but as always I'm happily looking for someone or some information that can give me a better grasp of just how they might work.

Chownah

When you speak of sugar, what type was it? In this case I wonder if molasses made from sugar cane makes the difference? As mentioned earlier, I did a Google search and it seems that molasses made from beets worked Very Well and even killed the weeds in the lawn while turning the grass into a dark rich green.

Glad you started this new thread - will be interesting to see what developes.

Cheers,

David

[chownah]

David2up,

I used a brown sugar which contains some molasses as that is what gives it the brown color.

I may have seen the same internet site that you refer to in the beat sugar molasses comment. The site I saw was produced by a company that did some development work on the product you describe....I'm alway sceptical when the developer of a product talks about its benefits on the internet. If the results were as spectacular as described then I'm wondering why this product hasn't become common knowledge....an organic fertilizer that makes your grass dark green and kills the weeds would be top news and I would think would be widely known...but its not....so I'm sceptical. If you have time I'd be interested in looking at the link you saw.

I've googled this a bit and am starting to get an impression of how this is supposed to work but I want to find some more references. I have noticed that alot of the references are about proposed research and talk about POSSIBLE savings and improvements instead of actual savings and improvements so its important to read these links carefully.

Chownah

Jamie,

I think you only get alcohol if air is excluded. With air you get organic acids like vinegar and related compounds...I think...but I'm not a chemist...nor a brewer.

The compost tea works fine and for easily understood reasons. Compost in almost all cases will have lots of N-P-K nutrients along with other minerals so it will make a good fertilizer whether applied directly to the soil or if the minerals are leached out into a tea and then the tea is applied to the soil...as far as I know....I have not used compost or manure teas much as I always just put the compost or manure in the garden directly.

Chownah

[chownah]

I found this link:

www.agnet.org/activities/sw/2006/794098668/paper-917859713.pdf

It is the best I've found so far. See what you think.

Chownah

[chownah]

I found this link:

http://www.agnet.org/library/eb/430/

This article seems credible...take a look....it doesn't specifically talk about fermented fruits with molasses but it does seem to be sort of related in that it talks about some of the microbial things used in farming in Japan.

[Gary A]

My mother always had a green thumb. She would save all her egg shells and put them in a cheese cloth bag. She them kept that cheese cloth bag in a pitcher of water. She used this water for her African violets and other difficult to raise potted flowers. I have no idea if it helped her plants but it obviously didn't hurt them.