Fermented Fruit Juice

I've been researching natural farming methods. I started out exploring Beneficial Indigenous Organisms (BIO's) and came across Fermented Fruit Juice (FFJ). I was thwarted in my effort to grow BIO's, so I tackled FFJ. I have a batch ready in the shed and I'm going to try to document what happens. Has anyone else tried FFJ? It cost me about $30 for the supplies for the FFJ, buying organic when I could and using the least processed brown sugar I could find. I may have been able to do it more cheaply, but I don't want chemicals in my food, so I tried not to put them in my FFJ

Here's a link with information about FFJ:

http://nfe.localgarden.us/index.php?title=Fermented_Fruit_Juice_Recipe

I have never heard of making Fermented Fruit Juice that is good for the garden!

It looks fairly easy too.

Let us know your results.

Other than the pain in the neck of cutting up the mangoes, it was really easy! I'm planning to spray half of my lettuce seedlings and leave the rest so I can compare I'll take pictures!

It's basically homebrew hooch -- perhaps you could get the same effect with leftover wine with some sugar added to it, which would be cheaper and a LOT less smelly?

At a dilution ratio of 1000:1, that 5-gallon bucket is going to be around a LONG time.

And please don't drink it or give it to your family -- there's not even a thought given to any kind of sanitation (which is fine for garden use) -- but anything teeming with that much open-air microflora can't be a good health risk, even at minute concentrations.

I'm only using it for my plants, and I'm going to use it in the compost and spray it around the areas where I wish manure would break down faster (around the goat and horse pens). I have no intention of ingesting it.

The bucket is nowhere near full, I used three pounds of papaya (which was only one), mango, and banana, and I let them over-ripen before I cut them up, then added nine pounds of sugar. The bucket is maybe 1/3 full, and that's with the fruit material still in there. I'm not sure exactly how much FFJ it'll make, since I'm going to draw it off a dose at a time instead of extracting it all at once.

I drew some off today and mixed it in a spray bottle, then sprayed one side of my winter bed. I'm going to track the progress and see if it helps the plants. The battery on my camera is dead so I didn't get pictures today, but I'll do so very soon so that I can keep visual records.

Edit: I forgot to mention... it doesn't stink The weather is cool now, which may help with that, but it doesn't smell any worse than rising bread or brewing hops

I forgot the second link! This is actually the method I used to make mine:

http://www.uhdp.org/DOC/Gardening%20Activity%20-%20Fermented%20Plant%20Juice.pdf

the second link makes a LOT more sense!

Sunday I poured off the last of the fermented fruit juice and I can't wait to use it! I'll try to remember to get before and after pictures.

For the record, the FFJ smelled fermented, but I wouldn't call it stinky at all. I poured off one Mason jar in the fall and then the rest sat in my shed until Sunday, and while it smelled fermented, it wasn't unpleasant to work with at all. I can't believe how much I got from that bucket! I have three large mason jars full, which is a LOT considering that you dilute it down quite a bit. Now to find a backpack sprayer...

miinva wrote:Sunday I poured off the last of the fermented fruit juice and I can't wait to use it! I'll try to remember to get before and after pictures.

For the record, the FFJ smelled fermented, but I wouldn't call it stinky at all. I poured off one Mason jar in the fall and then the rest sat in my shed until Sunday, and while it smelled fermented, it wasn't unpleasant to work with at all. I can't believe how much I got from that bucket! I have three large mason jars full, which is a LOT considering that you dilute it down quite a bit. Now to find a backpack sprayer...

It sounds like a cool idea, and I wouldn't expect it to smell a whole lot. I look forward to seeing your pictures!