How To Make Seaweed Fertilizer: High Quality Liquid Gold!
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- čas přidán 5. 09. 2024
- I harvested bull kelp from my kayak in Sonoma. I let it ferment and decompose into a liquid garden fertilizer. I love gardening and making things with my own hands.
If you want to make a fertilizer use this method, if you want to make a biostimulant foliar spray with all the hormones, enzymes and stuff preserved use the KNF method of 1:1 with brown sugar and let it extract for 5-7 days. You can then supersaturate the sugar by adding more until you notice it leaves a ring of dissolved sugar. This will preserve a lot more actives from the kelp and when kept in the fridge it will last a long time. As a biostimulant you only need to apply @ 1:500 or 1:250 as a foliar every week or two. Add a surfactant and 8mL per gallon apple cider vinegar to do it in full KNF fashion.
I use seaweed every year as a top dressing just chopped and dropped on bare soil, Keeping it simple. I usually collect it from the high water mark. There's literally tons of the stuff that's broken off and washed ashore. No need to harvest it, nature does that for me. Jim.
Do you have a daily limit you are allowed to collect? I can only take 10lbs at a time so I figure making it into a liquid solution is a good way to make it last a long time. I definitely don't go kayaking just for seaweed. This trip was about fishing, whale watching, mental health, and also to collect seaweed.
There is literally 100's of tons of seaweed wash up onto the high water mark here in the UK, each year. I collect what I need each Autumn then chop and drop it onto any bare soil and forget about it until Spring by which time most of it has been recycled into the soil by nature. I have done a number of 'collecting seaweed videos', this is one you might like. Jim. czcams.com/video/sQgrBYUTR-M/video.html
Great Video! I would recommend looking into the JADAM Ultra Low Cost Organic Farming techniques using the "Leaf Mold" to accelerate the breaking down process. Which is basicly adding about 4 double handed scoops of fully finished compost right to the buck you used. That makes your brew action packed full of microOrganisms to get Natures process underway. I would also recommend any DIY gardener watch "Garden like a Viking" chanel.
Although it would take a little more time...and a blender, I think your results would've been better, had you ground it up first. Just like making fish hydrolysate, throw in a handful each of good compost and leaf mold(for the microbiology-bacteria and fungi). Cheers!
I've always read that the OG kelp collectors rinse then blend it all up into a liquid solution with a blender. this is my first year making my own kelp fertilizer and that seems to be working well.
I actually started pricing out big, industrial immersion blenders bc of your comment. $160 from Home Depot might do the trick.
Would kelp meal work the same if i do the same process?
Thanks for your information 👋ℹ️ please ☺️☺️☺️☺️
Welcome 😊
Muito bom
would putting an aerator in the mix help similar to a compost tea or worm tea?
Good observation. I’m not sure why I did not do it here. I use an air bubbler and aerate my worm, compost tea, it just didn’t cross my mind to do it for this. I am currently making a new batch of comfrey tea, and I added the aerator to it after I saw your comment last week. It already looks better. I will definitely keep using the aerator for all of my liquid fertilizers from now on.
@@OutdoorScienceDad ive noticed even a slight agitation really helps move things along! glad its working
You’re better off going anaerobic without a bubbler. The fermentation process breaks down the nutrients into plant useable form. I have 50/50 fish &brown sugar mixed and covered in a 5 gallon bucket to make fish amino acid fertilizer, got the calcium from the bones and all (bought filleted fish, heads spine and tails from a fish market people buy for chum). It takes 6 months so I started in January and it's June now but it's alright to use after 3 months. After 3 months all the fish were still intact but now with warmer weather and 5 months in, all of the heads are disappeared and just a few spine bones are present. It doesn't smell horrible either. I just went to the beach and got 3 large trash bags of seaweed to make compost and try the seaweed fertilizer like he did but mine is not kelp but whatever washes up. Seaweed has growth hormones and tons of micro nutrients that can't be beat! It filters the seawater and extracts minerals and other micronutrients into it's tissues that when fermented get released into a readily available source for pant intake, watering or foliar.
@@cowboyblacksmithyeah I was thinking the seaweed fermentation process was anaerobic too but I'm not sure. Also when you make the seaweed fertiliser, does it become a concentrate like the stuff from the store? How much do you dilute it
Shouldn’t you have gave it a quick rinse to rinse the salt off
I thought that too, but somewhere I read that the salt content is minimal, and it adds minerals to your soil. I also dilute it pretty heavy when it is time to be used.
Yeah my concern also
How do you think it actually performs as a fertilizer/ biostimulant now that you have had quite some time to use it? I'll add my experience, and I've tried lots of extracts with gathered seaweed. Fermented ones perform the worst. I think the bio-active/ growth stimulating compounds get broken down and largely absent. I've had much better success with an alkali extract, specifically potassium hydroxide.
I anecdotally think it works great. How do you make potassium hydroxide?
@@OutdoorScienceDad Hi, sure no probs. Potassium hydroxide you buy, it's used in soapmaking for eons..First chop seaweed, I usually go at it with garden shears in a bucket beforehand. Then into a very big pot on the stove (stainless steel NOT aluminium is important because you are dealing with a strong alkali which will react). I have enough water so that it is a stir-able soup but as little as necessary. If I have 5L in the pot, I will add 72g of potassium hydroxide (KOH). I heat below boiling for about an hour and then bring out the kitchen stick blender and it will blitz to mush. With that quantity of liquid to KOH, you will have 10mg of potassium(K)/ml which is easy to remember . It will be impossible to filter so you can dilute it first, but be aware that it may not keep. Undiluted it keeps forever. Let me know if you try it. It is amazing as a foliar. I use about 30ml in 1L
What about a large emulsifier to blend the rest?
Damn, cool idea. I'm blaming you when my wife gets mad at that purchase tho. LOL.
@@OutdoorScienceDadshhhhhhh. Don't tell anyone
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How often would you apply?
I tend to use fertilizers every 2 weeks or so. When production is really cranking out produce Ill apply it weekly. To date, I've made my own fish fertilizer, seaweed fertilizer, and comfrey fertilizer. I'll pour a few tablespoons of each in my watering bucket , fill it with water, and apply it that way.
@@OutdoorScienceDad Thank you.