Balancing with Nature: SHL approach to producing effective micro organisms for farm use Part 1

From the Open Farm Day on April 19, 2015, many are interested in using and/or producing their own effective micro organism solutions. Effective Micro-organisms is apparently a trademark name so I will henceforth use a different terminology. The use of these beneficial micro organisms or friendly bacteria  is really using what is available naturally to improve the farm soil quality and at the same time enabling nutrients and health benefits to our plants and trees.  Being a totally organic farm, we try to utilise what we have to further improve the quality and quantity of our produce.  It is a common saying that "seeing is believing".  We try to promote cost-effective organic produce from fruits to vegetables and one of the ways is to utilise what nature has to offer like what our tag line is: "Maximizing Nature's Bounty".

So, how do we produce our organic beneficial bacteria solutions.  First, we use pesticide-free and herbicide-free ingredients as our base organic matter such as fruit peels and vegetables waste from our farm which will provide the beneficial bacteria and enzymes.  For the ladies, I am sure you are familiar with fruit peels that provide beneficial enzymes for our skin cell renewals, well the same principle applies for our plants and trees.  Remember our biology lessons from school  - bacteria can be easily killed by toxic chemicals and the chemicals do not distinguish between friendly and harmful bacteria.  Common sense tells us that if we start with organic waste that have been sprayed with pesticides, they will tend to remain on the peels and skins.  It doesn't take much to kill these bacteria which you cannot see with your eyes.

Next element is the food for these friendly bacteria to feed and multiply.  They like simple food - unprocessed or unrefined sugars such as molasses, raw sugar or cane sugar.  An option for us, going local, is gula nira or gula melaka.  We are encouraged to stay away from refined sugars but instead go for unrefined sugars - same principle here.

The third element is water and this item is just as critical as the first two.  Everyone is aware that our water is treated with all kinds of things to kill bacteria and it remains in the water.  As our "tap" water sources are often contaminated, all kinds of other things are added to "clean" it which will remain in the water.  Check your tap water - is it "crystal" clear? When you leave it for long periods of time in a container, is there a sediment?  Is there an odour to it?  All these things tell you that the water is not healthy.  If it is good, there would be no need for people to buy water filters or water filtration systems costing thousands of ringgit.  You need good, clean water free of "introduced" chemicals such as chlorine.

Now that you have the ingredients, the ratio most commonly used is 3 parts organic matter to 1 part sugars to 10 parts water.  Place it in a closed container, out of sun and allow the gases produce by this fermentation to escape daily initially and then 2-3 days interval followed by weekly, depending on the amount of gases produced.  Allow three months for the fermentation process.  If you do not release the gases regularly, your container may "explode" or burst from the gas build-up.

And there you have our recipe for producing beneficial bacteria for use on your plants.  The dilution we use from this concentrate to create the spray is 1:100 or 10 ml per litre of water and the water we use for dilution is also good, clean, "introduced chemical" free water.  Always remember we are using beneficial living organisms so do not kill it when you want to use it by using the wrong type of water.  Happy "using beneficial bacteria" in your gardens :)

Part 2 will be all about increasing the value of your beneficial bacteria solutions and in shaa Allah, will be written in the near future.  The experiments continues.........