Caleb Gruber

Harry Soloman wrote:I understand their is a difference in jar size, amount with air ratio.  If their is a difference in original recipe than what you did perhaps this is a factor but I cannot recall this aspect 100% so I do not say as knowledge and more of what I think I recall.

As long as it smells more like cheese than the bottom of a whisky bottle it should be good.   Making sure the measures are accurate is better than just guessing amounts if that was also a factor.  

Keep refrigerated.  

Editing in:
Perhaps add some more sugar, I suspect fermentation started due to the curds forming again.

Hope if that helps any.

I don't think it needs more sugar. I added 1 kilogram white sugar per liter, actually even a little bit more. I don't think it is curds forming, because like i said it all passes through a fine mesh strainer....I was worried it was some kind of invasive bacteria, but i think it is just some part of the LAB culture.

Thanks for the video link! Definitely interested in learning more about this topic.

Hi Joy. Well...this is a very different substance than yogurt! Yes yogurt has some lactobacillus culture in it, but you wouldn't want to go dumping yogurt in your garden bed or spraying it on your leaves!

The lacto serum here is super concentrated and has a huge diversity of lactic acid bacteria. Yogurt only has one or two strains...this serum will also remain unspoiled for up to 3 years without refrigeration. The culture is so strong that other bacteria simply can't get a foot hold, the lactos just eat them all up. Which is why this serum can actually be used as disinfectant and deordizer. Can't use yogurt for that!

But yogurt is good for the gut flora. I endorse eating it...even better is sauerkraut or kefir.

I just made my first ever batch of lacto culture using the recipe from http://theunconventionalfarmer.com/recipes/lactobacillus-serum/

From anyone who has experience making this, I'm just curious what the final stabilized EM culture should smell/look like. I used plain white sugar to stabilize my serum (i just have so much of it from doing kombucha), but i know they generally recommend using molasses. My culture still smells like rotten milk, and some thicker white solution has formed on the top. I poured it through a strainer and all went through, so i'm not sure if this is just undissolved sugar that keeps floating to the top somehow, or if its some weird growth taken hold in the culture. The stabilized culture is about 20 days old.

So does the culture ALWAYS smell like rotten milk??

Thanks

This is a really great thread! So nice to see what everyone is up to, and Travis really amazing work getting CSA up and running in first year soil!! That's really ground breaking (pun intended) evidence that double-digging WORKS! I seriously doubt you could have done the same thing using sheet mulch.

I was recently inspired to do some double-digging myself and have actually been blogging about the experience. I want to share the knowledge with other people, but also do it in an entertaining way. So if you wanna see someone double-dig a garden bed in heavily compacted Colorado clay you should check out my vids & blog





The native soil i'm working with is virtually devoid of humus, with incredibly low levels of nitrogen and phosphorus. The pH is also around 7.3 which I am attempting to amend using coffee grounds (free from a local shop).

I have also turned this into a hugelkultur experiment. At the bottoms of the double dug trenches Ive placed lots of chopped logs, tree limbs and woods chips. On top of these I've mixed COPIOUS amounts of alpaca manure and rabbit manure that I found from some people on Craigslist for super cheap (150 lb of pure, dry alpaca manure for $30 and 300 lb of rabbit manure mixed with alfalfa for $20). Both of these manures are cold manure, meaning they do not need composting to be added into your soil.
Rabbit manure is extremely rich in nitrogen and phosphorus (2.4 1.4 0.6 NPK) where as cow (.25, .15, .25) or horse (.70, .30, .60) manure is much lower. Rabbit has more than 2x the nitrogen of chicken manure.

In the double dug trenches I mixed wood chips with the manure and also used coffee grounds from a local coffee shop. This was filled in around the chopped logs.

After I filled in the trenches, I mixed additional manure & coffee grounds throughout the bed (no wood chips in the top horizon because I'm concerned about them sucking up too much N), and I've also brought in some worms from a friend's worm farm. I've installed a few worm parties to encourage the worms, but I think they are going to have a feast anyway on all of the manure that I mixed into these beds.

When I dug down a foot or so into the beds, the soil was already smelling really great after just sitting there for a few weeks. The alpaca manure and rabbit manure has already begun to break down nicely!!

I'm pretty excited to see how this Soil will continue to develop. I haven't done any soil tests aside from the Home Depot dropper tests, but I want to do one in the future.

I'm also working on making my own EM culture using lactic acid fermentation. It just finished fermenting and I'm gonna try making some of my bokashi bran as well.

Lets keep hearing about what everyone else is up to!!

😃
The Abundance Gnome