Amerindian Magic, Japanese Genius, and Mother Nature.

[MrFista]

Haven't had much EM in this thread, the japanese genius part of the thread title. A conconction of microbes to do many jobs.

This week my EM will be employed to break down/work on/in two things: Hardpan clay & pond sludge/algae and biomass.

The chickens are not going to live in the greenhouse now, but they will get to be greenhouse compost making machines when the weather is a little cooler and the soils had a conditioning:

I changed my pond pump for the larger one I used in the old system and created a permanent flow in the pond that can be diverted to the irrigation with the turn of a tap. In doing this I created a clean bottom at one end of the pond and the sludge etc draws down to the deep end where a pump takes it up to a sump (plus duckweed/algae production in sump) and solids collect there before water goes off to the watercress. The fish are STOKED!

Anyways, this sump now has a full load of sulphurous foul smelling poos and thick algae and scum to be distributed around the rockhardpan dry dusty floor of the greenhouse. There is 22 gallons of the pond waste, added to 66 gallons of water with 100 ml molasses and 250 ml EM-A.

I will slowly wet with this concoction and poke holes in the soil to a fork depth and then strew the place with deep rooting weed and other seeds greens parsley and celery they can all fight it out and make a big mess/chicken feed. These are good in hardpan but not good eating, I mean, they grow small but the tap roots start penetration and so are useful but not so nice to eat as the same species allowed to flourish in a soil with good tilth.

This will start the soil healing process of the greenhouse soil - opening it up for the next succesion of plants. Inedible bolting greens and weeds are possibly the only viable "crop" in peak summer anyways till some tropicals get established in there.

 

[mad librettist]

heya fista,

are you using a fork to purposely exclude air and continue fermentation? when a fork goes in it always compacts as much as it aerates, or so I've been told of late. (though I can't see how that is true if you just wiggle it)

Otherwise maybe use slender cylinder of some kind with sharp edges so you can pull plugs out? I'm trying to think of a household/shop item that would work.

also, have you tried rucola sylvestris? When it bolts it still tastes good, and it's a pretty good little soil worker too. Needs light to germinate kinda thing. Also in your parts perilla (shiso) would be quite prolific, if maybe a bit hard to control.

 

[MrFista]

The fork only got in two inches. This is HARDpan. So I add the EM concoction with pond wastes and throw seeds about then I went on holiday for a week.

Returned to a greenhouse floor partially covered in spinach celery parsley and some kind of brassica seedlings, no dandelions yet but added a lot of seed. The roots can do the rest of the digging the soil is too hard for me.

Garden went boom while away. No rain for over 8 days with temps very high and not even the lettuce was wilted. My swales kick ass.

Found an easy fish food trick. Add a bit of manure to water the mossies come from miles away to lay in it. Got about 100 gms larvae out of a barrel today before spreading the liquid around.

Making my first comfrey fertiliser in a drum of worm rum/rainwater, the comfrey plant is doing really well finally.

The algae/duckweed is interesting. As it gets more polluted the duckweed slows and the algae goes nuts, when it's cleaner the duckweed goes nuts and the algae does very little. Self buffered fish food system.

Found the hot plate for my char set up, need a gas axe to cut it loose...

My latest mission is a solar dehydrator to start preserving excess food and retain max nutrition - without having to rely on power (freezing). Might cut a piece of the plate steel out for a heat absorber in the dehydrator too.

FUN!

 

[jaykush]

i was hoping you would update soon.

i like the mosquito trick, bait them in, let them breed, then use the larva as food for farm critters, slowly solving( or reducing ) your pest problem.

im building a kick ass solar dehydrator/smoker this summer. for drying herbs, veggies, fruit and lots and lots of jerky. its going to be real big with a huge capacity. i also just downloaded a few old books on solar dehydrating if you want the links to them.

 

[MrFista]

Those links sound good Jay.

On insect trapping for fish. A simple light bulb above the pond will see plenty of moths hit the pond. I tried to find a solar light that would do this as well but no luck. I think I mentioned earlier grasshoppers will jump for yellow so a yellow thing (balloon, float, board should work) a bit offshore just out of reach of their jumping distance will also provide plenty of food in season cos grasshoppers are dumbass and think they're better at jumping than they actually are.

I've spent $6 for an entire years fish food. This for the pond, a tank, then there's the new pond outdoors but I never add food to that and it's pumping out fish and algae at the moment.

I think outdoor aquaculture without inputs will still produce well with the correct insect attracting plants around them. Add a few yellow boards, maybe a solar light... free fish.

 

[jaykush]

ill get you the links

are you growing fish to eat?

 

[Floralfaction]

I heard a permie talking about growing a tree over his pond that moths like for breeding. Shaking the branches every couple weeks makes a fish feast. Can't recall the species involved but he had learned the trick from local fisherman who grow the trees to harvest caterpillars for trout fishing, and since this guy raises trout in his pond that works out nicely.

blessings

 

[MrFista]

"Are you growing fish to eat?"

The edible ones are pets hehe. I'm growing fish for the eel and chickens to eat, guppies which sounds like an expensive treat except I can breed hundreds every couple months easily without any effort at all they bear live young and are a nice eel/chicken treat size.

This is just a bonus from a fertiliser producing system (pond doubling as bird bath and algae culture). It gives the birds some really nice protein. I also have the watercress which chickens love. This produces very dark tasty eggs and chooks lay prolifically on it. I've been quizzing local farmers and hippies while on holiday. Gambusia and watercress is a favourite of the hippies for great eggs.

 

[jaykush]

chickens eat fish? live fish? ill have to remember that for later some day. i dont think that would go over well with the vegan who lives here lol.

we have LOTS of local watercress, so much i don't even need to grow it ( pretty hard to do on a hilltop too) are you feeding the chickens the gambusia?

 

[mad librettist]

Heya Fista, I don't see it mentioned, so I'll mention another little bit of Japanese magic: the daikon radish. Fukuoka gives credit to this amazing vegetable in The One Straw Revolution. He used them to loosen up hardpan, harvesting some but leaving some (they ar biennial i believe).

They may do well for you in the winter... grows in full sun, shade, whatever. Also the edible material per square foot of daikon planting is just outstanding, about as good as smaller roots with edible greens like turnips, only they don't need full sun.

 

[MrFista]

Daikons - yes, got some seeding in a friends plot for some serious additions next season. got some hard stuff to test em out on.

I don't feed gambusia as the guppies fill their niche - I will feed guppies. Chickens are sauropsid dinosaur descendants they'll eat them all right. Only wee little fish. Chickens eat plenty of insect meat, vegans would starve if they really wanted to be pedantic. Insect parts on near every bit of produce they eat I'd wager.

We don't need nearly as much meat as we eat, but if you are a protein type, vegetarianism is not a healthy option. I know a few vegan students and I could take ten of them with a slap each - pathetic and rather unhealthy. A couple of others are thriving -cooking skills are essential for anyone going the veggie route!

For the record the better half is vegetarian, very healthy, but also an amazing cook. Knowledge as usual is essential.

 

[jaykush]

not all vegans are the same, most of them are the fad vegans. they go to the store, buy products that pass off as vegan with the ingredients, they dont each that much fresh foods, and a ton of them dont even grow there own salads. but there are some that are above and beyond, some of the healthiest strongest people i know are vegans. they have there system down. like you said though most are malnourished because of poor diet balance.

did you have to train your chickens to eat small fish? seems like mine would look at me and say WTF?

as for the diakon, we have them growing here, letting them grow wild. but i find the better soil breaker is the sweet potato, specially if you live in a cold climate and you leave them in the ground to die. MASSIVE inputs of organic matter, big fat roots, lots of greenery on top to end up as mulch, they grow in poor soil, and if you need it you can dig them up in loosened soil for food in the fall while eating the greens in the summer.

 

[mad librettist]

n

as for the diakon, we have them growing here, letting them grow wild. but i find the better soil breaker is the sweet potato, specially if you live in a cold climate and you leave them in the ground to die.

I did not know that! I always thought sweet potatoes were a southern climate thing.


I'll see your sweet potato and raise you a burdock root. As long as you don't plan on eating it, because it will be impossible to harvest in the hardpan.

 

[jaykush]

sweet potatoes will do better, they spread like mad, and take root when tips hit the ground. this create a LARGE area that is now naturally "tilled" by the SP. they are a southern crop, but for soil building they are just as good up north, you just dont get food out of it. think of it as a cover crop which eats clay soil and spits out organic matter.

the best though would probably be a guild of all the deep rooted soil building plants.

 

[MrFista]

Sweet potatoes also have 'nonfloral nectaries' that feed beneficial insects even when they are not in flower. A seriously underrated crop - why - because potatoes grow faster therefore more $$$.

Nutritionally, sweet potatoes are well superior.

 

[mad librettist]

ok, but let's not knock heirloom potatoes... especially little ones.

they already taste like butter sometimes.

 

[jaykush]

thats why potatoes are grown in fertile soil so you get a lot of them. fresh dug potatoes for breakfast is good stuff.

 

[norichips]

hey mr fiesta, i love this thread! i've always been really interested in permaculture, aquaculture and anything organic really! watching nature at work is amazing to watch

a couple good free fish food tricks i've picked up over the years are

1, shrimp/daphnia cultures, easy to start and easy to keep alive, any pool of water will do, i used to have an old bathtub in the backyard with a culture of glass shrimp, daphnia and mosquitos would also lay their larva in there. It was nothing fancy just filled with aged water with a few pond plants to help keep water fresh. i would throw old fish tank plant cuttings and sometimes some filter scum into this tub and i had a free source of great live food for my discus. The daphnia are high in calcium and easy to gut load with spirulina and other goodies (they are filter feeders) They also do an amazing job at clearing up green water in fishtanks if you put them in a guppy net so they are safe from fish. Awesome little guys i love em!

2, Anthoer good culture is blackworms, a clean blackworm culture is the BOMB! get the worms from a good source and keep them in clean water for a couple weeks to get rid of any dying/sick worms. Make sure to change the water at least once a day and remove all dead worms. Once the sick and dying are gone, set up a tank with substrate and some airation. under gravel filters are great for this, but just an airstone works too

i used an 80L plastic tub and filled 1/3 to top with gravel, and then water. The healthy worms were put into this tub and fed with aquarium plant clippings and algae pellets occasionally. The water was changed with tank water whenever i did a waterchange, so it was done minimum once weekly, and i would change min 50%. I imagine if you plant duckweed or water sprite in these tubs you would be able to get away with much less water changes, but mine was in a closet so no light

when it comes time to harvest there are a few options. My fave cos it was the laziest was filter floss. Get a large peice of floss and lay it over the substrate, put some algae pellets on top and leave for a day, when you come back the next day there will be a big load of worms in the floss feeding, just pick up the floss and there you go, clean worms ready to eat. i used to just hang the floss off the side of the tank for the discus and they would have an hour of fun picking worms out of the floss. Great cos they don't sink straight to the bottom but instead are picked out slowly so less worms are lost into the tank substrate.

Another way was a small bottle with holes drilled out the bottom, and some gravel in the bottle about 1/2 way full. i would put some algae pellets in the bottle on top of the gravel and stick the bottle into the substrate of the culture. Wait a day and take out the bottle, there will be a load of blackworms feeding. Just empty out into a container, swoosh the water around with a chopstick and most worms will form into a nice big wormball, easy to take out and feed.

A lot of people say you can't culture them they need to be in the fridge etc, but i don't know about that since i had my blackworm culture running from age of 16 to 21, so thats 5 years without having to spend money on worms. And i fed a LOT of the buggers to my discus and community tank, they LOVED them! Also i started with a huge amount of worms, something like 200mls if i recall correctly.

3, for larger fish outdoors, if you aint grossed out by maggots, hang a dead bird/rat/rabbit etc or any meat over the water. Blowflies will come and breed in this rotting meat and soon hundreds/thousands of maggots will appear. As they crawl around they will sometimes fall; landing straight into a hungry waiting mouth! i have never tried this myself cos all my tanks were indoor, but some swear by it. You end up with a tank of fish waiting underneath the maggots waiting for the next maggot to fall A amazingly easy, fresh and high volume free organic food.

 

[jaykush]

method 3 sounds good except for the visual factor. an easier way would be you could just toss the carcass in a black soldier fly bin, they eat it in less than 2 days, then they will self migrate out the tunnel you provide right into the pond(goes to our chicken coop here).

 

[mad librettist]

well I have a bokashi eating dog... not very handy at all!