Liquid fertilizer from weeds?? Is this true??

all we need from our teas is microbes. microbes can provide the organic matter, and all the available nutrients that we need as well as water, clay floculation and much, much more.

please see elaine ingham video:


the single most important video on farming or gardening you will ever watch. this is a paradigm shifter.

slideshow from this presentation: http://orfc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Oxford-Keynote-2014.pptx
video:

9:26pm Jan 1


i disagree with her about crop rotation. i believe plant diversity is necessary.

--
At the moment of commitment the entire universe conspires to assist you. Whatever you can do or dream you can do begin it now. Boldness has genius, magic and power in it. Goethe

Hi all, I know I'm pretty late to this thread, but this is my first experiment with making liquid fertilizer from weed and grass clippings. I started this 3 days ago, with a 45l air pump aerating the brew, and the fermentation took off. The pics below show how active the fermentation was at 24 hours in, and now at 72 hours. Its fermentation activity is drastically reduced.

My question is how long do I leave an aerated liquid brew like this?? I can only find info on non-aerated brews, but I'm not sure how long I can keep an aerobic brew like this going. I'm concerned that the rate of fermentation is greatly increased, and I shouldn't let it brew for as long as I would in an anaerobic brew. Or does it matter cause it's constantly aerated

Thanks!!! Happy gardening!

Hi Jordan Henry.

people use the aerator because it works very quickly. often 1 day or 2 days is enough. there is a kind of thickening that you see just at the peak when it is the best;.

after this peak it goes downhill (or you need to feed it, stopping it is best. we use feeding it when you cannot spray it right away.

He did say in the video that the ditution is 1 to 10 not 1-2 as quoted. In making nettle ferments if the nettle is used for a nutrient it is appled one way and if it is aged and allowed to ferment it is used for insect control . I do not think grass works the same as these herbal ferments . I feed my grasses to my animals .

i agree with sharon, i would not use grasses in the ferments. you can also use them for mulch.

Couple years ago we cut the weeds on a parcel of land about 6k sq meters. Got lazy and left the piles for more than 6 months, ended up with a form of compost. The next year we forgot a couple piles which were under some non-productive mango trees. Voila! We got mangos. At that point we moved all the rest of the piles (not under mangos) and scattered on our garden, which covers about 500 sq meters. Weed pulling there now takes about 30 minutes a week. The weed mulch covers the dirt (which hardens quickly under the sun here), maintaining the moisture. As a result, when we plant we no longer till, in fact, we no longer use a shovel, just digging with our hands. We then piled the cut weeds in our trenches (pathways) which pulls water from the drive and is about 2-3 feet deep in places. Not only is it soft to walk on barefoot, but it also protects the moisture and is cool on the feet. We love weeds. The 6k sq meters is slowly being converted into orchard, but there will still be weeds. We have another parcel about 2.2 sq meters that will be the new weed garden.
We have never used any commercial products on our land, which has never had commercial products before us.
We highly recommend weeds! Makes the job easier!

great weed story, pangas.

you can get similar results with a much smaller amount of weeds by fermenting some and spraying out the ferment. this is good because many of us do not have huge amounts of weeds.

Charlotte Anthony - If you mean fermenting for fertilizer, I am leery of doing that, as the weeds we use are 90% cogon or more, which is an invasive weed. We are careful to cut these weeds before flowering, as the flower contains at least 3000 seeds, and, when using as mulch we monitor every day for any sprouting and remove that immediately before the roots take hold. Until there is more research done on cogon fertilizer, I think we will refrain (unless we do a very small segregated test area). Beginning to research the silica crystals and uses. Cogon here is used for thatching, and many farmers use it for cattle feed (the cows turn up their noses at the cogon when it is barely a shoot, and when it begins to flower, only eating newly mature leaves - watching a cow turn up her nose is quite a site to see!).

Thekla McDaniels wrote:As Juan says, anaerobic fermentations, whether teas or piles, create substances toxic to plants.  The decomposition of your weeds or grass clippings is where this thread starts, but there are micro-organisms participating in the decomposition process.  Which micro organisms is determined by the conditions in the broth/pile.  The anaerobic organisms make some lethal things, and gasses are lost to the atmosphere as well.  Since we all breathe it, my bias is to keep it clean

Thekla

I would dispute the assertion that anaerobic fermentations create substances toxic to plants.  Anaerobic fermentations are used extensively in Korean Natural Farming to good effect.

Furthermore, gassing off of nutrients happens more, not less, in aerobic composting.  This is part of the reason why JADAM (offshoot of KNF) prefers anaerobic composting or fermentation.   The other reason is that it's easier and far less time/resource intensive than aerobic composting.   You need a container, lid, and water.  No airstones or vortex machines necessary.  I read how Paul Wheaton is no longer in favor of aerobic composting, since after all the gassing off and labor turning piles, you end up with 5% of the original volume.  

Actively aerated compost tea is touted to provide more of the "beneficial" microorganisms.  You also are supposed to get fewer undesirable ciliates.  JADAM says to stop thinking in terms of beneficial or nonbeneficial microorganisms.  JADAM says that despite recent advances, we still understand only a tiny fraction of what is happening in the soil.  

So we have a bit of a clash between two respected contributors to biology based growing methods.  I have to say that aerobic composting seems to be more trouble than it's worth here in dry southern california.  My compost piles dry out instantly, even in the shade.  I tried a hugelkulture, but it's a lot of work.  Anaerobic fermentation in mostly airtight containers seem like the lowest labor/input nutrient recycling method, the biggest downside being the smell if you don't use sugar (which feels wasteful in its own way).

I do this all the time, and mix weeds without any noticeable problem. I wonder why he says to do only one at a time.

This guy appears to have tested the nutrients NPK in "weed tea" and also mentions a paper on similar liquid fertilizer made in Zimbabwe from plants.  (you can find the paper by searching online)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB7cxfzPFQc

I use this kind of method quite a lot especially with weeds that have gone to seed or have resilient roots (the idea is that, since I only practice cold composting, seedy weeds or persistent roots would survive in the compost heap).  I let the vegetable matter rot completely in the water, and eventually the resulting slimy liquid becomes quite smelly.  This is accomplished in 2-3 weeks. All the seeds and roots rot together with the rest of the plant and are no longer viable.  After you use the liquid as feed, you can dump the remaining vegetable matter onto your compost heap.

 

I have also done this- leaving it to brew longer than intended for nearly 4 months in a 28 gallon bin the shade. It’s a take on one of the KNF techniques. The length of time required to brew will depend on temperature.  I controlled the odor by sprinkling some probiotic powder for livestock which has multiple strains of lactobacilli.  I poured the liquid over soil I was building up for a planting bed and the remaining sold matter easily composted without any seed problems in the finished product.

I have found leaf mold or finished compost sprinkled on top of the brew bucket can help reduce odors greatly.

Ben Zumeta wrote:I have found leaf mold or finished compost sprinkled on top of the brew bucket can help reduce odors greatly.

I have been trying to figure out how to reduce smells for the sake of my neighbors and this might be the ticket!

If you don't mind me asking how much do you use? I have some leaf mold and figure I might start with roughly a handful to a 5 gallon bucket and adjust from there.

I generally use the stuff to inoculate biochar, after a few days the biochar does a great job of neutralizing the smell. Those first few days however in an open air container attracts all the flies in the general vicinity. I use it to bait away them from the chicken coop!

Alina Green wrote:This guy appears to have tested the nutrients NPK in "weed tea" and also mentions a paper on similar liquid fertilizer made in Zimbabwe from plants.  (you can find the paper by searching online)

The correct take away from this video is that the amount of "fertilizer" in the "tea" water from fermenting weeds is low and diluting it makes it even lower.  The main benefit in adding it to dirt as previous posts highlighted is adding soil life.   Consider that the liquid contains the nutrient breakdown as it also happens in the soil and is immediately available in contrast to the weeds mixed into the soil or mulched on top.   In fact what I do is pour the liquid on the soil and leave the plant residue on top for mulch.  A Tai gardener friend put her weeds in plastic bags to ferment without water then put it on as mulch and watered through it to get the soil life and nutrients into the soil.

Hans Quistorff wrote:  The main benefit in adding it to dirt as previous posts highlighted is adding soil life.   ...In fact what I do is pour the liquid on the soil and leave the plant residue on top for mulch.  

Yeah, I figured he was missing the point; it's all about the microbes.

I never thought about the residue as mulch.  Although it's usually just the larger stems and woody bits, so it doesn't provide much cover.  But still, good idea.

Alina Green wrote:This guy appears to have tested the nutrients NPK in "weed tea" and also mentions a paper on similar liquid fertilizer made in Zimbabwe from plants.  (you can find the paper by searching online)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB7cxfzPFQc

That guy also endorses the use of chemical fertilizers instead of compost teas, and does seem to miss the point about how soil life chelates and cycles nutrients for much higher efficiency per unit of NPK etc. I’d never trust a “garden expert” wearing a tux!

Ben Zumeta wrote:

Alina Green wrote:This guy appears to have tested the nutrients NPK in "weed tea" and also mentions a paper on similar liquid fertilizer made in Zimbabwe from plants.  (you can find the paper by searching online)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB7cxfzPFQc

That guy also endorses the use of chemical fertilizers instead of compost teas, and does seem to miss the point about how soil life chelates and cycles nutrients for much higher efficiency per unit of NPK etc. I’d never trust a “garden expert” wearing a tux!

Watched the start of the video. The guy says that the tea can't possibly contain much NPK since the weeds are still intact and recognizable. That claim doesn't pass the... smell test (har har), as plants are made mostly out of carbon. Quick google search: 50% of dry weight of trees according to the USDA. it's probably a bit less in grasses and such. Since plants can obtain essentially limitless amounts of carbon from photosynthesis which only requires air and water, that's an element which doesn't need to be present in fertilizer.

I'm also skeptical of the microbes argument that's been suggested further upthread. Anaerobic bacteria mostly die once they are poured on your soil and exposed to a high oxygen environment. Common sense dictates that inoculating teas should always be aerobic. I'm not completely dismissing this possibility, but there needs to be a better explanation than "microbes = good". they're the wrong kinds of microbes.

My suspicion is that we're dealing with a reasonable but not huge amount of NPK, with a decent amount of rarer minerals such as iron. The theory would be that the partially broken down organic matter makes these substances much more bioavailable than just dumping a bag of mineral dust onto the soil, possibly equally or even more available than in compost. Plants don't need minerals in their elemental forms; they need them as parts of larger organic molecules. When another plant has already done the hard work of putting the nutrients into such molecules, the plant can work much more quickly with the product. That's bioavailability in a nutshell, right?

(I'm not an expert on any of this, don't take my word on it! But I'm pretty good at making educated guesses if I do say so myself)

Orthogonal to my previous post, here's someone advocating a different approach that hasn't been mentioned so far, namely letting the anaerobic process go through all the way to the end. Basically until the microbes die from lack of nutrients. That means no smell, no nasty diseases, no methane emissions etc. Apparently takes 2 years or so with the lid on.

Okay, I haven't read this scientific paper, and the thought of doing so makes my eyes glaze over, but I THINK it has to do with microbes being able to change from aerobic to anaerobic, based on the conditions they find at any given time...?

If that is the case, that would seem like something Nature would be able to do.  The planet (and our bodies) are FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR more complex and miraculous than we will ever understand, and I wouldn't be surprised if the microbes were able to adapt.  Kind of like how turtle eggs will develop into males or females, based on the temperature.

(okay, bad analogy, but you probably get the point.  Nature adapts.)

I mean, the fact that our bodies can heal themselves is beyond miraculous to begin with.  Then humans think they can add their own creations to that, to help?  Recent events show the folly of THAT paradigm!

If someone more astute can translate the study, I'd appreciate it.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/environmental-science/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2018.00139/full

If someone more astute can translate the study, I'd appreciate it. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/environmental-science/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2018.00139/full

 
OK I will try to give it a simple explanation.   All chemical reactions require a balance of electrons between the elements in the reaction.  Biological chemical reactions to be life sustaining need to have this happen in a non destructive way.   You may have heard about antioxidants in our food preventing damage in our body.  The same with plants. The N,P,K in ionic form is destructive [why it has to be so diluted] Each of those in an organic compound can bind with and be separated from other organic compounds without the electron exchange being destructive.

The objectionable odors are most likely anaerobic.  Elaine Ingham teaches that anaerobic processes are the origin of many toxic substances we don’t want in our soils.

A person could aerate the barrel of water and weeds…

There are some bacteria that can live in either aerobic or anaerobic conditions, it’s an ability called facultative I think.  

I believe that this has a lot of merit, for many years, so long that it became a ritual, at my house, two weeks before tomato planting I would start a five gallon bucket with six to eight inches of course chopped nettle, then filled nearly to the top with water.  The lid was placed lightly with a brick or rock to keep the lid in place.  We had dogs and cats!!  I would remove the lid to check this brew only once.  Being sure to turn my head as far as possible to the side (I'm sure that some of you know how I learned to turn away)

On transplant day I would pour the brew into other buckets to strain later.  Using a stick I placed a large glop of the former nettle material into each hole.  I would use the liquid once the plants were well established.  My maters really did well with this method.  Only used on the tomato patch, for some reason.

I think this may have come from some biodynamic reading.  May have been from one of Maria Thun's books.


Peace

I tried the stinky bucket method once and don't want to do it again for several reasons:

1. The stench is very strong. It can be a weapon to repel unfriendly neighbors,  it also repel people neutral to permaculture.  We have natural aversion to foul smells as they are linked to bad food, disease and death.
2. Many pathogens are strictly anaerobic so using the liquid on plants can have health issues. It's safer to use on ornamentals.
3. It is a slow process and taking up time and space.

It doesn't mean weeds can't be made into liquid fertilizer. The process can be done faster, cleaner and with less nutrient loss if different microbes are enriched to break down the plant tissues. Microbes that have a high pectinase and xylanase activity, similar to those involved in bio-degumming of plant plant fibers, are able to digest cell walls and turn the leaves into non-stinky high nitrogen fertilizer in just a few days.