# Fertilizing with whole fish?



## MidwestMatthew (Mar 12, 2016)

Being a novice fisherman, I didn't realize the sunfish I caught last week weren't big enough to be worth cleaning. After frying one up and enjoying two small bites of meat, I decided they might make better fertilizer than food.

We have raised beds that we're doing square foot gardening with. My thought was to bury a fish in each square as soon as we're done with it after harvest.

I have two concerns about this:

1.) Will a whole fish (each about the size of my palm) reliably decompose before spring planting? We're in Zone 5b and would likely bury the fish in late September or so.

2.) Will fertilizing with fish cause an "off" or "fishy" flavor to next year's vegetables?

Also, would there be any benefit to cutting the fish up a bit before burying them?

Would appreciate any thoughts on this, as I could easily catch plenty more of the little guys to do the entire garden.

Thanks!

Matthew


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## jwal10 (Jun 5, 2010)

Palm size, perfect for filleting, zip, zip, skin fillet. I would only take the bigger fish and let the rest grow up big enough to eat. I always have plenty of fish waste. Problem with using whole fish is they rot down and leave a void. I like them buried a foot or so to keep cats and other varmints from digging them up. I use a lot of fish waste under plants, not under seeded beds. Another thing that works well is to make tea, chop up small let set, strain and add to watering can.

Yes, it would decompose. No detected flavor change....James


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## 1shotwade (Jul 9, 2013)

First,why would you not eat the fish? I can't concieve of it not tasting good! Other that that you can do a lot with fish. One person bow fish's for carp all summer. They are a high oil fish.The smaller fish say 15" or so down will be filleted and eaten. The larger will be filleted then cut into chunks about 1" cube,packed in pint jars and made into"Poorman salmon".

All the heads are given to the chickens to clean the meat off of then dried and ground into bone meal for the plants.The rest of the waste is ground in a meat grinder and stored in five-gallon buckets with lids for 1-3 months.After that the liquid is poured off and let set over night to separate. The next day the oil is collected to use as a trapping lure,the remaining liquid is cut 10 to 1 with water and used as a compost tea and the remaining solids are saved and sealed in five gallon buckets to be used as a fertilizer,being placed 8-12 inches under the row you are intending to plant. Absolutely zero waste. 
Wade


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## Murby (May 24, 2016)

I can't speak to the fish, but I can tell you a bit of interesting experience I'm having right now.

We have pigs behind a 4ft chain link fence with a elec. fence wire on their side that is off set from the fence about 12 inches.

When I feed our pigs, I dump all the veggies into the tractor bucket and just dump it all on the ground over the fence.

The pigs tend to push a bit up against the fence and they can't eat it because its too close to the hot wire that keeps them away from digging under the chain link.

Anyhow.. the food rots there up against the fence, the soil turns deep black color.

We have beans growing on that fence this year... its about 300 feet worth of them and in the area's where I dump the food, the beans are going crazy!!! and I mean crazy! 

Seems to me it all rots in a couple weeks... especially once the bugs get a hold of it.


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## MidwestMatthew (Mar 12, 2016)

I hadn't thought about cats coming along. Maybe I'd better wait to bury them until I can cover the beds tightly with black plastic? Otherwise I guess I could mash up the fish a bit and add them to our compost bin - although I imagine that could stink like crazy!

The fish I tried tasted OK, but perhaps jwal10's palm-sized sunfish are fatter than mine. These things literally have no meat other than about a 1/4" strip along the backbone. There's no fillet whatsoever, and the effort to clean and prepare them hardly seems worth it if I can make some other use of them. The area where I caught them is totally overrun with sunfish and I have since found out this lake is known for its sunfish having very poor body composition. The recommendation is to take as many as possible in the hopes that less competition will help them begin to grow bigger.


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## 1shotwade (Jul 9, 2013)

I agree! Contrary to what most people believe,fishing is the very best thing you can do to an enclosed body of water.I think more in the terms of ponds rather than lakes but it applies in either case.

X amount of water will only hold Y pounds of fish. You have a choice of Y pounds of many little fish or Y pounds of a few bigger fish! Either way you can not increase the carrying capacity of the water very much.It's just a matter of what you desire.

What you can do is introduce more food to the water to increase the carrying capacity.This is best done by hanging a metal screened cage above the water with road kill in it. It provides the right habitat for flies to lay their eggs and the spikes fall into the water.

Wade


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## geo in mi (Nov 14, 2008)

Didn't get to this summer, but I usually reserve one plot of the garden to grow a mixture of oats, crimson clover, grocery store beans, and turnips to mature sometime just before frost. I will weed whack it all down, rake it up and use it for next year's "compost makins". Next year I will add kitchen waste and coffee grounds, eggshells, etc, PLUS I will bury all my sunfish scraps deeply enough that the racoons won't dig them up--or the flies can't burrow into to lay their eggs. The next year, it gets used in the planting holes for tomatoes, squash, brocolli, etc, etc--my super duper fish-enriched compost. I have tried burying whole fish from the first Spring catch under the tomatoes and such, but they are nearly always get detect and dug up--taking the tomatoes with them......

Come next Spring, I'll be on the lookout for some bales of alfalfa hay to use for compost makins'

Yes, too many put into the heap or not buried tightly enough, and there will be a bit of an odor--but I like to get back at my neighbor for burning his trash every week........ 

If you live in a state with generous possession limits on sunfish(Michigan is 25), then you should take as many little ones as you can. In a given body of water there is only so much protein to go around. Too many sunfish, and they will stunt. You can also add predators(bass, usually) in a 1 to 100 ratio to eat the tiny sunfish and allow the others to grow to a better size. The problem is that a female sunfish can lay 5,000 eggs at a single setting......

geo


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## vintagecat (Jan 26, 2016)

_"I will bury all my sunfish scraps deeply enough that the racoons won't dig them up--or the flies can't burrow into to lay their eggs." _

The above would be my concern as well.

In AK fish waste attracts *big *predators causing big problems for them and the neighborhood. Yet we used dried fish fertilizer up there (processing waste) that had been neutralized and it was great for plants. Without having a fish processing plant to take care of it, burying fish *deep* in the compost pile or some of the other proposed solutions to break it down in this thread would be superior to burying the whole fish by garden plants as others have already said.

My twist? I'm not kidding here when I suggest that you get a "bass-o-matic". Find an old beater blender that still works well. Put your killed fish in, add a bit of water and grind them up to start the breaking down process then bury the slurry deep in the heap. Rinse the blender with the hose and do not store in the kitchen.


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## MidwestMatthew (Mar 12, 2016)

Good idea with the composting plan. Lord willing, I'll be able to do that someday when we get our country place. Until then, it appears I have few, if any, good options for using these fish.

There is actually no limit on sunfish here, and I can pull them in about every 60 seconds. It would be nice to be able to use them for something and do my bit for conservation at the same time. If anyone else has any other ideas, please share!


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## 1shotwade (Jul 9, 2013)

I have a friend that lives on the ocean. He keeps all his waste and runs it through a grinder then freezes it for "chum". This is very overlooked in fresh water. You like catfish? Grind your waste and freeze it in ice cube trays. Next trip catfishing throw them in a mesh bag and make a chum slick to bring them right to you.
Wade


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## Rain23 (Aug 27, 2015)

People here use fish waste chopped or ground up in their gardens, and if you bury it deep or mix it in good it doesn't smell. Never noticed a taste in the veggies either. My neighbor used it when she hilled up her corn and it's beautiful. The squirrels don't seem to like digging around it, either. 

Just an urban PNW perspective, no matter how deep you go, if you buried a _whole _fish here you'd raise a fine crop of raccoons


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## geo in mi (Nov 14, 2008)

MidwestMatthew said:


> Good idea with the composting plan. Lord willing, I'll be able to do that someday when we get our country place. Until then, it appears I have few, if any, good options for using these fish.
> 
> There is actually no limit on sunfish here, and I can pull them in about every 60 seconds. It would be nice to be able to use them for something and do my bit for conservation at the same time. If anyone else has any other ideas, please share!


Long time ago, we had a place on a small lake noted for its small bluegills. My kids would ask if they could keep them, and my answer was, if it's as long as your bobber--four or more inches--then they could keep them....

Cleaning the little buggars was a chore--but I learned to use a very sharp Rapala knife along with a whetstone. If you cut _through_ the rib bones, then turn the fillet over and cut the ribs out with the curved edge of the blade, you have a chance of not wasting the meat. Most of the videos and instructions will have you trying to cut around the rib bones--which on a small fish, is almost impossible to do without slippage and waste(meat left on the fish carcass). And by laying the fillet on a hard, flat surface--such as the end of the fish cleaning board with the clip on one end--you can slip the blade between the meat and the skin to cut off the skin, too....no scaling.....Give it a try, see what you get, with some practice, you can get a meal....

geo


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## Lady89 (Feb 22, 2014)

dont know if there is any truth in this story, but my grandmother told me that when the old farmers planted corn they would put a minnow or other small fish right in the hole with the seed for fertilizer


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## rockpile1 (Aug 24, 2016)

Small live Sunfish make good Catfish Bait.

I would be afraid of the smell in my Garden.

These are Goggle Eye, fun to catch in river by the house. Next year they have to be 7 inches long so I'm going to be throwing more back so I'll be using Jigs instead of worms.



rockpile


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## City Bound (Jan 24, 2009)

My neighbor buries large blue fish remains after he cleans the fish he catches. I never smell anything. His garden is not booming but it is productive.


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