Fish Amino Acid - Food for the Garden
FAA ready for dilution and garden use. All images by Emily Miller.
This is an excellent method to turn all the fish waste produced locally into an organic nutrient rich amendment your plants will love.
The practice is environmentally sound, closing the loop by preventing the loss of valuable organic matter to landfills.
Fish amino acid (FAA) is very rich in nitrogen, ideal for heavy feeders like corn and squash plants. The best time to apply FAA for bushy, healthy foliage is during the growth phase of young plants, before they begin to flower or fruit.
Ingredients
Raw fish scraps: Any kind, including guts, bones, or head.
Brown sugar: Equal in the volume to the fish scrap used.
Large-mouthed jar: Big enough to accommodate fish & sugar with room to spare.
Fish scraps ready for use.
Large-mouth jar filled two-thirds of the way with alternating layers of fish scrap and brown sugar.
How to Prepare
Collect your fish scraps. You can grind or chop scraps to accelerate breakdown, but it’s also fine to leave carcasses whole.
Fill your jar. Alternate layers of fish scraps and brown sugar. Top the contents with a “cap” of packed brown sugar so that no fish parts are exposed to the air. Only fill to ⅔ volume, to allow for bubbling during the fermentation process.
Cover the opening of the jar with a paper towel or cloth, secured with a rubber band. Do not seal the jar until the fish has fermented.
Store in a cool, dark place that does not go through a lot of temperature changes. Do not refrigerate, that will stop the fermentation process.
After 7 to 10 days, you can screw a cap on the jar. FAA is now ready to use, stable for storage or further breakdown. FAA remains shelf-stable for years in a cool, dark storage environment.
Notice that the fish has partly liquified due to the brown sugar. It can take around 6 months, but eventually the solid parts will actually fully dissolve. Don’t be afraid to check on the smell throughout fermentation and storage for a pleasant surprise - brown sugar effectively neutralizes any offensive odors and your mixture should be only vaguely reminiscent of fish, like an oyster cooking sauce.
Methods for Use in Home Gardening & Composting
Stronger concentration of FAA applied directly to soil prior to planting.
Plants sprouting from soil treated with FAA prior to seeding.
Fish Amino Acid must be diluted in water before being added to soil or sprayed on the leaves of your plants.
The official dilution ratio is 1 part FAA to 1,000 parts water. With these proportions, FAA will last a long time, even from the scraps of 1 fish!
The way I usually dilute without exact measurements is to simply mix a teaspoon (or less) of FAA into one gallon of water.
Apply this dilute mixture to the soil during the growing season to give your plants the nutrients they need as they create new leaves.
There are also pest control uses for spraying this dilute mixture on the leaves of your plants against mites and flies.
If you make large volumes of FAA, you can apply it in stronger concentrations to the soil of a garden bed at least 2 weeks before planting.
Mix one pint of FAA into a five-gallon bucket of water.
Pour into soil, mixing thoroughly to hydrate soil and distribute FAA.
Add the FAA dilution to your compost to give it a boost and accelerate the microbial processes.
If you already have a good amount of compost, and it is securely enclosed (boxed, fenced, etc), you can add raw or cooked fish scraps directly to your compost, without following the FAA process.
Bury the FAA or fish scraps well into the compost, and you will be amazed at how quickly the microbes eat it up. Make sure any animals at home can't get to it, they will love it as much as the microbes do!
