Homemade fish emulsion is a great way to upcycle fish scraps—or your whole catch—to make a potent fish fertilizer for plants.
How to Make Fish Emulsion Fertilizer
Fish emulsion is a good fertilizer for lots of garden vegetables—and other plants too. It has an N-P-K ratio of about 5-2-2, plus the added bonus of micronutrients.
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Store-bought fish emulsion is made from the by-products of fish used for other purposes, like making fish oil or canned fish. Using fresh fish that still have all their parts intact should be even better than commercial fish fertilizer for plants.
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The Only Recipe You Need for Fish Emulsion
Image by Zdeněk Chalupský from Pixabay
You can make fish emulsion fertilizer at home in a bucket—or in several buckets if you have a lot of fish. I’ve done this with scraps I had left from cleaning fish I caught, but it should work fine with whole fish too.
- Fill the bucket about 2/3 of the way full by layering fish scraps and brown organic matter (like leaf litter) in equal parts. If you’d like, add molasses and seaweed to get more nutrients in the emulsion.
- Fill the bucket with water to cover all the material. Cover it with a lid, and keep it out of the sun.
- Stir the mixture every few days for several weeks, and then it should be ready to use.
- Pour off the water and catch it in another bucket—this is your fish emulsion. You can use the remaining fish scraps and leaf litter to brew another batch, or just put them in your compost pile or worm bin.
- To use the fish emulsion fertilizer, dilute it with water. Use about a cup of emulsion to a gallon of water. The dilution can be used to pour on garden soil or to spray on leaves.
What Do You Think?
What’s your favorite way to use fish emulsion fertilizer? Have you successfully made fish fertilizer for plants using other methods? Let us know in the comments below!
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