Fish for fertilizer?

[oldjeda]

I can recall as a kid people using garbage fish as fertilizer in their gardens. One fellow used to bury suckers. Another collected the dead spawned out salmon in BC to dump in the garden. I remember the smell around his house was horrible. Both were batchlers which in hindsight isn’t a surprise.

Anyone else remember this happening or did my dad just make friends with a couple of nuts?

Maybe a use for the invasive fish species we are seeing in our native waters?

Just a thought

[windy67]

My Grandpa would do the same thing.

[Trochu]

Fish makes great fertilizer!

[Au revoir, Gopher]

You can buy fish meal fertilizer. Burying whole fish will just take longer to decompose.

ARG

[densa44]

Newfoundlanders do it all the time.

[Stinky Buffalo]

We used to keep the fish bones, guts, heads and skin and bury them in the garden. Seemed to work well!

[EZM]

Fun fact - before lobsters were a delicacy and food for the rich - they used to dump them in gardens all over the east coast as they were trash junk by-catch.

[bat119]

MyGrandpa would throw a carp and a handful of iron nails in the hole before planting a tree no idea what the nails did

[Coiloil37]

I put a lot of fish frame in my garden. Being as I grow year round it’s tough to find time and space to dig the hole but whenever I’ve got the room I sink a few into the dirt.

[riden]

Originally Posted by bat119

MyGrandpa would throw a carp and a handful of iron nails in the hole before planting a tree no idea what the nails did

I had to look it up:
Also known as ferric oxide, the rust in nails can provide iron to plants, which is beneficial for plants.


I'd love an old fashioned book, with real pages, full of old fashioned knowledge like this. A return to a more simple time would do a lot of us good.

[ron anderson]

Originally Posted by EZM

Fun fact - before lobsters were a delicacy and food for the rich - they used to dump them in gardens all over the east coast as they were trash junk by-catch.

I have a good friend who is 88 years old ... he likes to tell me that he grew up so poor in Nova Scotia, that he had to take lobster sandwiches for school lunch ... the richer kids brought bologna ...

[kinwahkly]

We used to plant suckered under our trees for fertilizer back in the day when I was a kid. It stopped when our pet dog a big Shepard cross dug some of them out one day after being in the ground for awhile and brought them back in the house. On a side note the trees were growing great.

[Sundancefisher]

I have found 20 perch buried under each potato plant meant a huge potato crop. So long as the skunks weren’t around.

Read this

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/732162

Massive loss of Atlantic salmon on the east coast of North America. Dams and netting salmon to fertilizer corn fields. They were also considered poor food so convicts and the poor ate salmon.

[GMX]

Originally Posted by Coiloil37

I put a lot of fish frame in my garden. Being as I grow year round it’s tough to find time and space to dig the hole but whenever I’ve got the room I sink a few into the dirt.

My grandfather told me it will help turn spruce trees into blue spruce with iron fillings in the dirt. Urban myth not sure but he had beautiful blue spruce trees in his yard. Fish decompose quickly making great fertilizer throw a few carcasses in the compost bin to help speed up the process. A buddy how grows commercial told me to fill a five gallon bucket 3/4 full of fresh grass clippings top up with water and steep for a few days. Drain the supercharged juice off into another pail discard the grass grows gigantic vegetables.

[Sundancefisher]

Originally Posted by GMX

My grandfather told me it will help turn spruce trees into blue spruce with iron fillings in the dirt. Urban myth not sure but he had beautiful blue spruce trees in his yard. Fish decompose quickly making great fertilizer throw a few carcasses in the compost bin to help speed up the process. A buddy how grows commercial told me to fill a five gallon bucket 3/4 full of fresh grass clippings top up with water and steep for a few days. Drain the supercharged juice off into another pail discard the grass grows gigantic vegetables.

Blue spruce need iron. I also did that when I had them in the yard.

[WayneChristie]

prussian carp are amazing fertilizer. foxes and dogs tend to dig them up but the plants grow much better

[pikeman06]

Yes, as Wayne says beware of animals digging up your garden. I tried it once and momma fox gave lessons to her youngsters on the fine art of destroying a garden by digging the entire row out from one end to the other looking for buried fish. There was alot of fox horseplay during these lessons and my beloved garden looked like a minefield. Lesson learned. I use bloodmeal, bonemeal and lime and the results are incredible. Buy a good P.H tester if you are serious about gardening. 9 times out of ten poor results are due to incorrect p.h. which prevents a plant from proper nutrients uptake.

[owlhoot]

My Grandmother and Mother used to toss a couple of smelts in each hill of potato's, In Ontario we used to net the smelts in the spring as they "Ran" up the creeks and rivers. They were good eating fresh but we had pails of them.

[Sundog57]

Supposedly the Iroquoian peoples (six nation and Wendat/Huron) would plant corn by putting the seed into the mouth of a fish - most probably an alewife or something similar and then burying.

[Sooner]

Originally Posted by Stinky Buffalo

We used to keep the fish bones, guts, heads and skin and bury them in the garden. Seemed to work well!

My Polish MIL has been doing this for years. All good until I come along with the mini rototiller and stir up that compost stench lol.

[Red Bullets]

it is better if you put the fish in a jar, put the lid on and poke a hole in the lid for gases to escape. Put the fish jar in the sun for a month or more and the fish will break down into a sludge. Pour the sludge into your soil. It will be more available to your plants as whole fish take a longtime to decompose underground.
There will be an inch or more of an amber colored oil on the top of the sludge. This can be syphoned off and used as a bait in trapping.

[does it ALL outdoors]

Originally Posted by Trochu

Fish makes great fertilizer!

Absolutely, and fish waste makes even better fertilizer.

If you have any aquariums suck up all the crap off the bottom then clean out your filters into that same waste water and you have some AMAZING fertilizer.

It's even sold as such at the grow stores and it's REALLY spendy, because it works so good.

My Mom keeps asking me for some water change water out of my tanks, she knows how good it is. Not fun transporting half a dozen 5 gal pails full of water once every week or two, but Mom's are totally worth it, mine is anyways.


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[58thecat]

Fish parts and seaweed went into moms garden every year.
Stuff grew fast and big but the stench occasionally had the neighbours looking over the fence

[Frank_NK28]

My Grandfather told me when he was a youngster growing up on the farm in Bathurst, NB they would go down to the beach with the horse and wagon at low tide following the herring spawn and load the wagon with herring spawn, take it back to the farm and spread it in the fields prior to planting oats. He said it grew oats very well. He also said that a heavy wind following the spawn would push the herring spawn ashore at times so thick he's seen horses and wagons stuck in it.

[Lornce]

Great for Tomatoes and other veggies. I chop them up in small pieces although Dad would put them through a grinder and put them in a ten-inch or foot-deep gound. Great use for Prussian Carp.

[NCC]

Originally Posted by 58thecat

Fish parts and seaweed went into moms garden every year.
Stuff grew fast and big but the stench occasionally had the neighbours looking over the fence

That’s a good way to condition the neighbors in the event that you have to bury a bigger body in the garden some day.

I thought I read somewhere that the North Saskatchewan was full of sturgeon until settlers discovered how good they were at fertilizing gardens.

[Stinky Buffalo]

Originally Posted by NCC

That’s a good way to condition the neighbors in the event that you have to bury a bigger body in the garden some day.

Absolutely! Keep on friendly terms with your neighbours as much as possible.