Our lawns and gardens are craving something natural to help them thrive, the way nature intended. Fish emulsion has been a prime organic fertilizer used by our ancestors for centuries. I’m uncertain as to how anyone ever thought that synthetic fertilizers would benefit our environment, but someone did. Hands down, though, organic fertilizer out shines chemical fertilizers every time.

The best fish by-product to use for an organic fertilizer comes from the Menhaden fish. Menhaden meaning “that which manures”. Such a great name since manure is an excellent fertilizer too. The Menhaden fish is an organic and renewable source, serving North America for centuries as an extraordinary organic fertilizer. For centuries our ancestors used the Menhaden fish to make crops grow incredible yields?way before synthetic fertilizer was a twinkle in anyone’s eye.

A much desired quality of fish emulsion as organic fertilizer is that it offers instant gratification. One misconception many people have is that all organic fertilizers don’t act fast enough. True, some organic fertilizers are slow acting but not fish emulsion. Your plants benefit almost immediately after its application. Some other organic fertilizers leave you waiting. Often their ingredients need some time to decompose and release their nutrients. You have to be careful to store fish emulsion at room temperature so that it doesn’t degrade before you want it to as it will in excessive heat.

How many times have we heard the term “you are what you eat”? More times than we’d like to, but the more chemical filled foods we eat, the worse we feel. Sadly, the average person doesn’t spend enough time thinking about where their food really comes from. Surely this is indicative of how much time is spent pondering on the role that farm fertilizer plays in the food that they put on the dinner table every night. It’s only practical to keep our primary source of produce and grains on our homeland. This makes farm fertilizer a vital component in today’s farming industry.

Fish emulsion has played an important part in farm production, and with the results farmers have experienced, the use of fish emulsion is on the rise. It is an important ingredient in today’s farm fertilizer.

Fish emulsion has proven itself to be the best farm fertilizer to use. Our farms supply us with the basics we need for survival. Our farms have no choice but to produce a healthy harvest to supply our country with what we need to stay alive. Our suffering economy has been losing jobs and we can’t afford to outsource our food production. We shouldn’t trust our food to anyone else anyway. The farmer’s career is secure as long as fish emulsion is in the equation.

What fish and parts of the fish are used for making fish fertilizer? By-products or waste materials from various types of fish are used. And although technically several varieties of fish can be used, mostly Menhaden fish that contain few amounts of meat and used for making animal feed are used.

The first step is to cook the fish and to squeeze its juice and oils by pressing. The oil is removed while the leftover solids can be ground and baked into protein meals and fed to animals. The juice of the fish is brought to a boil until it becomes more concentrated and results in a fish emulsion.

A small amount of phosphoric acid is added to the fish emulsion to lower the pH. Lowering the pH makes the liquid fertilizer more acidic, which prevents it from decaying and fermenting into gas. Before phosphoric acid was added in the manufacturing process, containers of fish emulsion were known to burst from fermentation. Because the amount of added phosphoric acid is so small (less than one percent by weight), the product is still considered organic.