Michelle Kelley

Thanks everyone for your input....this is a great topic. I will try a brown sugar sold locally and will go back to get more whey this season. I also appreciate the comment about using powdered pumice instead of basalt in recipes. Local "feed" stores here do not sell molasses but I recently heard if you have a connection with a sugar refinery, you can get some from there and farmers use it for feed for pigs. Interesting. Need to network, I guess. Just as a reminder, we live in a VERY rural area of Jalisco, Mexico and many items you are all used to buying at local stores are just not available here. As a result, we are improvising on a daily basis. Appreciate the ideas.....
Saludos!

Appreciate the response and we do have a rich source of animal waste to use including worm castings which are made in the next town over, we even have our own worms and use the castings and tea.

What I am most curious about is the microbes and adding to our hard, cement like soil to help break it up and create soil in sand and clay like conditions. Maybe the worm castings or tea would work?

I seek easier recipes. With ingredients I can find locally. FYI, farmers here love love love Dow and Monsanto so when we go to the local seed stores, they sell tons of chemicals and seeds covered in chemicals. Fortunately, we found a first ever local organic and native seed festival where purchases were made but nobody had information on microbes.

Can I use powdered pumice in any recipes as a substitute for basalt? someone gave me a recipe that uses manure and among other items, ground basalt. Hmm.

Hey all! I appreciate this discussion and have a question for the group.

We live in rural Mexico and many ingredients are either impossible to find or people stare at me like I have lost my mind when I ask. (one seemingly easy to find ingredient was molasses....it is just not available in stores here)
Last year I found a very easy recipe using milk and whey, then letting it ferment to use as fertilizer. The cost of milk started adding up but the whey is available from a local cheese maker for free.
I heard about local greenhouses using whey, diluting it, and using that to water plants as a fertilizer.

Has anyone just used liquid whey as a fertilizer? I did not do a proper study....and we have only been on our land a year and half.....but after using the whey last year our pistachio and cherry trees started producing just this season. May not be related but you never know.

Comments? I am trying to reduce ingredients to make it simple and very easy to find so we don't lose hope. Our ground is quite hard as this was a corn field for many years and while we have some mature trees now, we still need help to break it up and create new soil.
Thanks!