HelpfulGardener.com

I was offered some Bio flora crumbles to use in the garden. It has fish meal, chicken manure, and humic acids. Does anyone use this product? How do I use it. It is organic nutrients, but do I mix it in the soil or in the compost? How much over what area? The product is old and the bag was falling apart.

The website link below

https://www.bioflora.com/products

I haven't used it, but given what the website indicates as its minimum NPK analysis (8-3-6 or 6-6-5--yes, the website indicates both!--and 8% Ca), direct soil application at half the recommended strength shouldn't hurt the plants. (My usual approach when adding fertilizer to, say, my cymbidiums is to add it at half strength; that way, if I actually get my act together soon afterwards, there's no chance of over-fertilizing. )

Sounds like a great product!

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

Thanks Cynthia.

Not something I've heard of either, but sounds like good stuff and way too valuable to waste in your compost pile. Add it to your soil.

Do you not have trouble with fish products in your garden and critters? I haven't tried other fish products, just fish emulsion. But I can't plant anything with fish emulsion (even seedlings that just were watered with a little fish emulsion in the water, while they were still indoors and now are being transplanted out). The critters (I'm suspecting mainly raccoons, but could be cats or others) go crazy for it and always dig up the seedling trying to find the fish (like the old joke, there must be a pony in here somewhere? )

This has been sitting in bags for a while. It has a very pungent odor. It does not look like the feral cats or mongoose like it because it has been out probably a couple of years and they have not touched it. Being out that long, I would think that some of the nitrogen has already volatized off.

Crumbles are not as fine as composted chicken manure. They are coarse pieces like pea gravel.

I am concerned about the feather meal, chicken manure and 8% calcium. The bag did not specify the form of calcium. I don't use chicken manure in the garden because the pH is 7.4 and pH 7.8 in two of the plots. It can still be used in the third plot which has a pH 6.4, but I actually prefer this plot to remain slightly acidic.

Adding chicken manure and calcium will increase pH probably another half a point. There is some sulfur in the form of sulfate of potash in the mix, but I would probably have to add more sulfur to keep the mix neutral.

I tested the soil in all three plots about 4 months ago and all of them are already high or extremely high in phosphorus, calcium and potassium so the report recommended nitrogen only. That is why the thought was to feed it to the worms instead.

One of the worm vendors uses chicken manure and another rabbit manure as bedding and food source for their worms.

Fish emulsion in the garden does attract the flies and cats. Mongoose go after the grubs attracted to the fresh greens and kitchen scraps buried in the garden, but they have not really gone after the meat meal product we have used in the garden.

The meat meal is sold as bone meal. It is made from basically commercial waste meat and fish products that is ground up and boiled. It is sold to farmers for 9 cents a pound. It has to be used in a relatively short time because it will ferment and smell of rotting meat, which is basically what it is. The flies go after this too, but it really does not attract any of the critters. I did make the mistake once of not spreading it out enough and some of it remained in a pile. Nothing would grow on it for a while.