This could be considered the next step in organic farming. The following recipes are from The Unconventional Farmer ( hXXp://gilcarandang.com/)
Lactobacillus Serum
This is the workhorse of the beneficial bacteria well be discussing here. We use it for everything! Foul odors, clogged drains, cheaper pig/chicken/etc farming, aquaculture, the applications are amazingly diverse. Learn how to make and use this and you will have a powerful tool in your farming arsenal.
How to Make:
Get container, fill halfway with rice-wash. Rice wash is the water leftover when you rinse fresh rice. For example, go buy rice, whatever kind, bring it home, put it in a pot with warm water, swirl it a bit and then drain the [now milky colored] water. The water is now a rich source of carbohydrates. In this step, you can substitute rice with another carbohydrate source if you dont have rice, as long as it is complex (dont use simple carbohydrates like sugar, honey, syrup, molasses, etc). You can use wheat, barley, kinoa, other carbohydrates as the base to make your carbohydrate wash. This wash will attract microbes from the air, among them lacto bacilli.
Cover loosely and let stand for a couple days to a week
When is it done? When you see a light film on top (molds) and it smells a little sour and forms 3 layers. This is indicating the rice wash is infected with various microbes. This happens more quickly in warm temperatures because microbes are more active. Thus it is all relative since we dont do this in controlled laboratory conditions.
The layers are distinct
Top layer: floating carbohydrates leftover from fermentation and possibly molds
Middle layer: Lactic Acid and other bacteria (cheese buffs will recognize this as a makeshift rennet). We will use this layer.
Bottom layer: Starch, byproduct of fermentation
Extract the middle layer using a siphon. This layer contains the highest concentration of lactic acid bacteria and lowest concentration of the unneeded byproducts
Get a new container, larger than the first. Take the extracted serum from the last step and mix it with 10 parts milk. By saturating with milk (lactose), we dissuade other microbes from proliferating, leaving L. bacilli. E.G. if you have 1cup of the serum, mix it with 10cups milk.
TIP: The best milk to use in unpasteurized natural milk. However, any milk will do, even powdered milk. In our experience, the best is unpasteurized natural but just use what is available. We just want to saturate with lactose to promote L. bacilli bacteria.
You want to keep this stage anaerobic as much as possible. You can use something like rice bran, barley bran, wheat bran, etc sprinkled on top of the milk. I use a sealed container with a one-way valve.
After about 1 week (temp dependent), youll see curds (made of carbohydrate, protein, and fat) on top of the milk. The water below will be yellow colored this is whey, enriched with lactic acid bacteria from the fermentation of the milk.
NOTE: Microbes like L. bacilli are more active in warmer temperatures. The curds you see are a byproduct of the fermentation process. Fermentation is generally associated with microbial processes under anaerobic(no oxygen) conditions. Now, L. bacilli is a facultative anaerobe, that is it can live and work with or without oxygen, but less competition in anaerobic conditions.
The water below(whey+lacto) is the good stuff. You want to extract this. You can either skim the curds off the top, pour through a strainer, or whatever other methods to accomplish that
NOTE: Remember the curds, or byproduct of milk fermentation by L. bacilli, are great food. They are full of beneficial microbes like L. bacilli. Feed the curds to the soil, compost pile, plants, animals, humans whoever wants them! They are full of good nutrients/microbes. No waste in natural farming.
To preserve at room temperature, add an equal part sugar/molasses to the serum. So, if you have 1L of serum, add 1kilo sugar or 1L molasses. Otherwise store in fridge to keep.
Example Recipe:
1 L rice wash
10L Milk
10kg sugar
After rice wash and milk remove curds around 1L
= 20 L lactic acid bacteria serum
Plants Growth Aid:
When added to water for plants, nutrient uptake efficiency is increased, which increases growth!
Improves growth of plants when applied as foliar spray and soil drench. Improves their efficiency in uptaking nutrients so naturally, growth is enhanced. With the use of these microorganisms, the nutrients you spray or drench to feed your plants become more bio-available and easily absorbable by the plants. Technically, you can say that plants do not use organic nutrients directly. Microorganisms convert organic nutrients to their inorganic constituents which the plants utilize. Utilizing microbes, you will notice better plant growth and health.
Disease Resistance:
This is a consequence of the increased efficiency of nutrients. More nutrients available at smaller metabolic cost.
Lacto suppresses harmful bacteria in food/water that animals consume, enhances their gut flora so that line of defense is working optimally, etc.
Aid Compost:
Mix 2tbsp/L and spray on compost pile to improve decomposition. This is a huge topic that will be expanded upon in another post.
Aid Organic Fertilizer:
Add 1-2tbsp per gallon water-nutrient solution. Lacto consumes organic nutrients making them bio-available to plant roots.
Plants dont use organic fertilizer! Microbes break it down to inorganic constituents, and plants take those up. This product makes that process more efficient.
Aquaculture:
Lacto works in aquaculture just fine if you dont have BIM available. Add lacto at roughly 1L per 700m3 of fish-containing water. Example: you have a pond that averages 20m wide by 30m long by 2m deep. So, 20 x 30 x 2 = 1200m3. In this case you would add roughly 1L of BIM or Lacto
Microbes digest fish wastes, cleaning up water and improving water quality.
Allows fish to grow larger due to digestive efficiency
Allows higher population of fish in the same amount of water! Literally, increases the carrying capacity of your body of water! This is awesome for aquaculture setups
thank u very much :icon_smile::icon_smile::icon_smile:
