With a dual purpose of recycling fish waste and tapping his knowledge of soil science, Jim Syzmanski has engineered Sea to Soil, a locally produced fertilizer with proven results.
Syzmanski’s fertilizer is a hydrolysate setting it apart from emulsion fertilizers that separate out fish meal and oil in the packaging process.
“People have known for years that fish in your garden is a good thing,” Syzmanski said. “The hydrolysate is fermenting the fish into usable proteins, enzymes, and minerals such as nitrogen and phosphorus, but it’s the lactobacillus that soil organisms love. It’s a soil conditioner.”
Syzmanski, who calls himself the “mad scientist” behind the product, makes the fertilizer by first creating a serum to ferment the fish, the bacteria in dairy products called lactobacillus. He gleaned his soil science skills from growing up on a farm in Pennsylvania.
He cultures his own lactobacillus by mixing rice water and milk. It is then placed into an aerated tank with fish waste and non-chlorinated spring water, adding a little organic molasses and seaweed to feed the microbes that are created in the fermenting process.
“Then, the lactobacillus goes to work and breaks down all the fish,” he said. “It stinks to high heaven for about a week, then as the pH level drops the odor drops as well and it doesn’t smell bad at all.”
Gardeners Mardell Gunn and Leslee Downer both used the product last season with positive results.
“Latest science is finding that microbes are really what allow the plants to get the nutrients,” Gunn said. “Jim has taken and created a bottle of microbes.”
“Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web” author and Anchorage Daily News garden columnist Jeff Lowenfels said that plants feed themselves by putting out chemicals to attract microbes, which in turn feed the plant.
“The difference between hydrolysate and emulsion is night and day because the hydrolysate is basically fish whereas the emulsion is generally a byproduct of manufacturing the fish into other things,” he told the CVN. “(Manufacturers) take the oils and usable products out and what you’re left with is basically a weak, very smelly tea. It’s not nearly as good as the hydrolysate, which has a pleasant yeasty smell.”
Gunn said she used Sea to Soil late last season for two crops that she’d unknowingly planted in poor soil. “I had given up but I started putting this stuff on it and I got a crop of broccoli and brussels sprouts,” she said.
Last summer, Leslee Downer tracked her results with potatoes treated with Sea to Soil fertilizer versus untreated. The treated crop yielded double the amount as the untreated and were noticeably larger. “From the season testing, it appears that the Sea to Soil is very effective,” she wrote on Facebook.
Downer said she applied the fertilizer onto leaves once a week through July, then twice a month in August and nothing in September.
Cannery owner Harry Rietze is partnered with his father-in-law to market the product to nurseries in the lower 48. Rietze said a nursery in Jefferson, Oregon is trialing the product.
Sea to Soil is sold in Mountain Market’s recycled gallon milk jugs at Alaska Sport Shop and The Haines Packing Retail Store. One gallon costs $30 and makes 250 gallons of fertilizer.
The serum can be used on anything, Syzmanski said, including trees, shrubs, grass, gardens, indoor plants or even compost.