Biofertiliser

So today we are making biofets. We've been applying liquid slurries to our crops, but now it's time to make a big batch of this. We have also got a big batch compost tea that's going all over the beds. So we're diluting this down to give us enough volume now to get over all the beds. And the little bioferts that we already have is going on our trial beds. So we're making 180 liter drum and the ingredients can vary, but what we like to put in is 40 liters of cow manure for nitrogen and bacteria. 1 liter of fresh milk, that's sugars for bacteria, 2 liters of sugarcane molasses that's full of trace minerals and sugars for bacteria. We're putting in some of the ash from the fire that's got different minerals in. And rock dust we have here sears rock dust. It's a volcanic rock dust and it is used for lots of minerals. It's wonderful stuff. You can read about that on their website. Then we're putting in humic acids, which is more food. And dried yeast is used just to expel the air. This is an anaerobic fermentation. We need a plastic bottle and an airlock because we need to allow carbon dioxide and methane out and the oxygen in. And then we're putting a bit of bone and blood meal in just for extra nutrients. So it's got to have an airlock, which is something we need to work on out of bits of old plumbing. Kristin's found some pieces from a box of old plumbing. Essentially we've got a bung that's got a rubber flange so we can push that up from the inside and put a sort of hose attachment on the outside. And as long as we drill the right size hole, that will give us an airlock and we will have an anaerobic digestion. This is a dead beetle with mushrooms popping out of it. Crazy thing, if we cut this open, you might find less ceiling running for chlorine free water is very essential. Chlorine free water. Now obviously you could scale this recipe down to like that little drum which has got 20 liters of manure and stuff in. Like, you can scale that how you like. You could do this in an ibc, obviously with a thousand liters and you could do this in an Olympic swimming pool also, you know, the recipe is the same. So critical points. Let's start at the critical points. So the cow manure is critical. That's a nitrogen source and a Bacteria source. So your recipe should always have cow manure. At that ratio, fresh milk is good. This should be raw milk, but that's sugar and bacteria. So we've said a few times, right, anything you put in your soil, processed through biology first, this is anaerobic, so it automatically produces plant toxins. But they're all air soluble, so when we water it, they're volatizing in the air. It's very different to having an anaerobic compost where the whole material is anaerobic. It's not the same. This is using anaerobic bacteria to mimic a cow's gut and digestion process. But then any of the toxins are soluble. So we want fresh milk for feeding bacteria with sugar. If it was raw milk, it would have even more bacteria in it. That's been mixed in already into here. So Dominique made up the molasses and rock dust. No, we haven't done rock dust yet, Joan. Milk molasses, that's essential and you don't want too much. So this is minerals and sugar and sugar cane is better than sugar beet. But if you can only get sugar beet, that'll do. So if you put too much of the sugars you can get ethanol and things like that. So you don't want that. So that's an important one to keep in ratio here. So if you want to make an IBC you just divide 1000 by 180 and times it and you've got your recipe. Now the sauna ash, that doesn't matter, that's trace minerals. That one you can add or leave at your own desire. I often don't put ash in rock dust. I definitely want to put in and that's phosphoric rock, that's phosphorus and minerals. Now we are using this product from Sears. And we don't have so much left but you can see this is volcanic rock dust. This is from Sears in Scotland. Natural volcanic minerals and trace elements to boost soil and compost fertility. And it says on it for soil and compost. Remineralized Sears rock dust is 420 million year old volcanic rock finely crushed to release a wide range of minerals and trace elements to boost fertility in organic soils and compost for high yields. Healthy fruit, vegetables, flowers, trees, lush lawns and pastures as demonstrated at the Sears Centre. You can look up their website. They have massive broccoli heads and all kinds of. So you can use it as an annual top dressing on your soil and you can use it up to 5 kilos a square meter and that gives a big boost. That's the maximum dose. Rock dust is not an instant fix. It may take several months to improve microbiological activity and soil fertility. But rock dust can help improve overall yield, flavor and aroma, nutritional value, pest resistance, worm population, health and vigor, flower quality, shelf life, disease resistance, drought resistance. And in compost, it can improve microbial activity, nitrogen fixing, odor reduction, temperature, composting speed and fertility. And then the environmental benefits of rock dust, which you must take into account. They have a whole mining industry to get it out. It improves the soil's ability to absorb and utilize CO2. But they probably use more CO2 getting out than it absorbs, you know, reduces dependency on synthetic fertilizers, boosts nitrogen fixing bacteria, increases microbial activity and biodiversity. So it works well with all soil conditioners, animal manures and plant foods. And adding lime is not recommended. And they sell it in one ton bag. So that's rock bisque. We want three kilos of that. So that's giving us a big source of phosphorus. That's important. Then 250 milliliters of humic acid. So that could be like, you know, a yogurt pot of worm castings from your worm bin. We've used that product that we put in the compost tea because that's all we have. So you want humic acid, dried yeast, you need that's here, just warming up to get it activated. And that's what will push the initial air out to make it anaerobic straight away. So we're just putting this in last to how much dry juice is. It doesn't matter, just like a packet, you know. Does it need to be dried? No, it could be fresh yeast. We're just using that just to expel air straight away. And then these anaerobes that are in all the mixed, you need an airlock. Obviously bone meal and blood meal, they're not essential. We're just adding them as nutrients. So you can, it's up to you what you want to add. Additionally, you could add, you know, a lot of humic acid, you could add a lot of fish meal. You know, you could add anything that you want to have. If you needed magnesium in your soils and you wanted to put magnesium there, you could add, you know, anything you want to add specifically. You could chuck it through here so it gets processed by biology first. That would be a pretty standard recipe. And it's the correct ratio. So you want to follow that ratio however you scale it. And you can add like these things should all be in it. But you can add to that. And the only thing that's to be considerate of is humic acids. That's a product we bought. But you can just use worm castings or worm juice. If you have a worm bin or someone, you know has a worm bin, just a bit of juice, that's fine. You don't need to go and buy anything. Essentially, that's one of the, you know, all these things we're doing. They're all things you can do with stuff lying around. You know, you can find a blue barrel, you can find some way to make an airlock. Molasses you can buy anywhere in the world. Milk you can find. Cow manure you can find. But it's specifically cow manure. It's not horse manure or chicken manure. It's specifically cow manure because it's a mimic of what's going on in a cow, kind of a little funny cow. So the dried yeast is one packet. Yeah. Or two packets, whatever. I think we had two. Just because we had two joined together. It doesn't matter. It's a small amount that's producing CO2 and that's expelling the oxygen. And this will start bubbling pretty soon. Like, we want to hear this farting. It's a cold day. It's not so warm, so it will take a while because we're filling it with water at like 4 degrees or something. But if it's sitting out in 20 degrees, it will start regularly farting and it will be farting. Methane, just like a cow. Methane and carbon dioxide, just like a cow. All anaerobic digestions. Methane, carbon dioxide. Does it have to be organic or can this process. It shouldn't be full of anything that kills microbes. So if you fill cows with things that kill microbes, then it won't work so well. Yeah, but by default, what we're talking about is organic. Like, we're talking about farming. So milk, molasses. Ideally, you use raw milk. We just don't have any right now. But milk is full of sugars, just lacking some of the bacteria. And then we're mixing everything else that's going in here into the milk and molasses, except the bread yeast. We'll put that in warm water and put that in last, just to expel the oxygen. So it's a big old chemistry experiment. But this is a wonderful MPK replacement. That is a biostimulant stimulant. It's giving MP and K in homeopathic doses. And you can see by the Amounts, you know, this is typically diluted 1 to 10 after one month fermentation and then applied all over the plants, under the leaves, all over the leaves in the ground. And it does give NP&K from the materials we're putting in, but at homeopathic doses, you could say. And it's acting as a biostimulant and growth hormones and putting nutrient down that has been synthesized by biology. And that's the key to all of our soil preps, is we're using biology to put nutrients in the format that plants evolve, to take them up by their own choice. So this is another arm in our strategy to rectify our fertility problems that we've been talking about. Bone meal with phosphorus and other nutrients, calcium. And then we've got blood meal here, which is obviously full of nitrogen. 40 liters of the freshest. Look at this. Beautiful. But this is leaking. So we've identified that we potentially need to get rid of this little flak on the edge. This must be airtight, otherwise it won't be anaerobic. We think this is airtight, but we're not totally sure. So we're going to test it. And then we're filling this up. We've got to leave a little bit of an air gap so that this doesn't bubble up outside of the airlock. And so we're putting 40 liters, very fresh manure just full of nitrogen and bacteria. And we'll start filling it and mixing it as we add the other ingredients here at the correct ratio. It's birthdays for Ed's Birthdays mean cakes. Look at this little beauty. What do you call it? Special chefs. Chefs and chefettes. What do you call a cake? What should it be? Swedish mystery cake. Swedish mystery cake, yeah. Served going out. They've got micros, mitsuna, scallop, pearls, mustard mix, first of spring, onions and herbs. Then we've got some nice salad heads going off to restaurants. First, eggs. Eggs are becoming regular. Our favourite eggs are really amazing eggs. We've got eggs, chickens, salads, all kinds of stuff going up today. Very nice. New delivery van working. Good. Johanna's going so I can get out and go and pick up Ragnar. So Ragnar's here and that's the end of the video. I just wanted to share a bit about making biofuels. It's a great MPK replacer, you could call it. Even though it's not a direct replacement, it's basically a plant stimulant that's causing plants to photosynthesize. At a faster rate, put out more sugars and proteins into the ground, and subsequently have the soil microbiology release more food for the plants. So it's a great thing you can make at home at different scales to suit your needs. And it stores forever once it's finished. So you can keep that and have it for your garden for the entire year. So it's a nice thing to do. All of the soil preps we're doing this week as part of the internship, all things that you can do with stuff lying around on a typical farm, making compost, teas, bioferts, biochar, etc. So we've just been having a bit of a hands on week learning how to make all of these preparations for helping support building healthy soil and soil ecosystems. Hope you enjoyed the video folks, and we'll see you very soon in another video. Bye for now.