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[fairdinkumseeds]

Thought you might be interested in how we make fert?
Huge wall of text, but might be worth a look.
Picture 1.
We started with a 500l rainwater tank with a well fitting lid. I Made a giant "sock" out of 6 layer of shade cloth. The sock is twice as deep as the tank so it bunches up in the bottom heaps. That means there about a foot of scrunched up shade cloth in the bottom of the tank as filtration and a much larger surface area for the bacteria and yeast to grow on. Surface area is very important with this system as is the right "starter culture". If you get a build up of the wrong bacteria, the tank stagnates the culture dies and the stink is incredible!
Picture 2.
By volume, we aim for about 40% water, 40% fresh green weeds/lawn clippings, 5% ash from the fire(increases alkalinity, if you dont have ash a bit of lime will help every now and then) 10% roadkill/fish/meat/bones/eggshells/other and 5% household compost like citrus peel, tea bags, paper, fruit and vegie scraps/onions/rotten food/whatever else you find laying around.... Oh yeah, that skippy in the pic was a victim of the local roads, not by me by the way. I figured why let it go to waste, so I tied it to the roof racks an brought it home for the tank. Worked so well I do pretty often now.
Picture 3.
We drain the tank of half its fluid content daily and dilute it 1part "Juice"(think of it like a tonic not a fertilizer, like "worm wee"or "seaweed/fish emulsion") to 4-5parts water and use it sparingly on the garden. As the bacteria count can occasionally be quite high, only water on the roots of plants, and never on plants you will be harvesting with in a couple months. The sludge/soil/mud in the bottom of the tank can be shoveled out every 3-6months and is a great base for raised garden beds. Just layer cardboard then sludge, cardboard, sludge, cardboard, then good topsoil and plant into that. The cardboard and sludge layers really give plants a boost when the roots finally work there way down into them, and that's when they need it too, as they are nice and big by that time. The layering really helps maintain moisture levels too. The cardboard is free(love free!) and adds humus which is really lacking in our dry rocky soil. The high nitrogen, and trace element content from the sludge speeds up the cardboards decomposition.
The bones and feathers you see in the trolley are really soft like wet chalk, and if you were really keen you could crush them up with the shovel. I don't bother as they will be buried anyway, and with in another couple months underground, there won't be anything left at all, except an awesome garden!

2 Likes dEEcor and LIBERTYNY like this.

[TBM]

Great post! It's nice to see how you've got a use for everything, even the sludge leftover after you've pressed out the 'juice'.

[fairdinkumseeds]

I absolutely HATE wasted anything.
I reckon its really cool that at least the odd skippy didn't die in vain.
I would need a lot bigger tank to process all of them though.

[TBM]

I recall watching a show (maybe How It's Made?) where they were showing what happens to all that roadkill, the company the show followed would take all the carcasses collected (deer, raccoons, rabbits, skunks, etc) and bury them in sawdust to decompose them into compost, this was on a large scale using roadkill from hundreds of miles of roads, I'm not sure if they ever mentioned where this place was.

[Shpongle Lover]

Wow.  On the one hand, I'm glad to see nothing going to waste.  OTOH, dealing with butchering up a Roo that size (and I'll bet that's a small one!) in order to accomodate the size of the barrel must be a gruesome task.  Do entrials and all parts get used, or just some portion of the animal?

I have no idea what becomes of the possum, squirrels and racoons that litter our roads.  We have rodents - squirrels rabbits, and chipmonks galore, but only the occasional turkey or deer in the yard and on the roads.  Rarely do I find anything that has died on our property.  Our composte is purely vegetable-based.

S.L.

[fairdinkumseeds]

I just chuck it in whole as these are "Whip tails" here mostly, so they aren't as big as the big reds/greys. They are wallabies technically, but we call them all roos.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiptail_wallaby
I normally see about 5 on the drive into town, but I only grab the fresh ones first thing in the morning(before they have started to cook and rigor hasn't kicked in yet), and only one or 2 a month.
Every couple months I see one mangled on the side of the road that has been hit, had every bone broken, and has zero chance of survival, but not actually killed and I have to finish it off, which is quite stressful for everyone especially since we are not allowed to cruise around with guns here.
Get quite a few eagles, goanas too as they come to feed of the wallabies the redneck dipshits hit, then leave in the middle of the road.(cats foxes dingos wild dogs too, but they are all introduced pest species, and I don't mind if there is less of them to be honest)
Every day I drive into town, if I haven't pulled a roo off the middle of the road on the way into town, there will be one in the middle of the road on the way back.
Really makes you wonder about people?
They do jump out in front of you and they are hard to avoid at times, but for there to be that many on the road I am sure lots of arseholes don't even slow down when they see one.
Sorry for the rant, just makes me furious.
Back to the topic, the high protein level makes the fert awesome, and its just like blood and bone/dynamic lifter.
The fermented grasses in the belly of the road kill roos contains the correct bacterial to keep the smell to a real minimum too, and without it, the grass/manure/meat/ash/water mix would be quite putrid in the sun.

[Shpongle Lover]

Wow.  People can be heartless.  It makes me sad to hear of so much carnage on the roads.

If you hit something that massive at any kind of speed, the damage to the vehicle must be extensive.  My son hit a raccoon which only weighs maybe 12 - 15 lbs (at most) with his Nissan Ultima at about 60 mph (~85 kph) and it destroyed his front spoiler and bumper and damaged the cooler to the air conditioning so that it no longer worked.

Hitting a Wallabie must be ten times worse.

S.L.

[fairdinkumseeds]

All the locals have big 4wd or utes with bullbars/roobars on the front for that reason.

I'm out in the scrub a bit and its mostly dirt roads here,
You don't see many cars with aircon let alone spoilers........

[dan54i]

i find myself very like your fertilizer, that way you waste nothing and bring the manure to useful subtance, i wish i have a space like yours to grow any plant i want and make any frt. i want (:
I have a space for only limited amount of plant so i dont need 500L fertilizer, but for now make my frt. in the following way:
at first i recognize my plants by the leaves and other method and check the elements they missed.
mainly i use a few ingredients,
Bannana shels for potassium (if it'snt the seoson i use smothing else according to what i have)
greens manure for nitrogen
eggs shells for calcium
a half of teaspoon epsoum salt for magnesium. etc.... i usually add all of the manure i have at the kitchen in the  same time.
then i put all of this in large food processor add some water and ground all of it to a liquid, then i add water nd put it in large galon to make the things work in there (:
that is my fertilizer (: and it works as well as my plants growing 
i also make compost tea with many microorganisms a few time a year.