Can´t Touch This

A tree nursery is kind of like a science lab. You don’t just go playing, willy-nilly, with what’s in the test tube.

But one of my friends learned that lesson the hard way...

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Last week, we applied a different kind of organic fertilizer to my garden for the first time.

We had made a mixture of cow manure, brown sugar, yeast, weeds, milk, and water and let it ferment in a sealed container for seven weeks. It’s called biol.

With the anaerobic decomposition, this mixture becomes a very strong fertilizer at the end of two months. So strong, in fact, that it has to be diluted with 15 parts of water to one part of biol so you don’t burn your plants.

We opened the sealed containers for the first time last week, and it smelled horrible. Kind of a combination of fermented cow manure, mixed with spoiled milk. We only opened a small portion of the top of the tank, but it made the entire storage room stink for days.

So we started applying a few sample to see its effectiveness.

At about the same time that we were applying the biol to my garden, one of my friends came by to show the garden to some of her friends.

As is often the case, the mosquitoes were quite hungry. And they found my friend’s forearms the perfect place for a midafternoon snack.

So my friend, overwhelmed by the onslaught of mosquitoes, looked down at yellowish liquid we were applying to the plants. Thinking it was an organic remedy against ants and other pests, she decided to liberally apply some to her arms.

Well, as soon as I noticed what was going on, I asked her why she was applying fermented cow manure water to her arms. Then, she got a whiff of what she was putting on her arms and started freaking out.

We quickly went over to unstink her arms. She worked tirelessly at this for 15 minutes until most of the stank was gone.

On the positive side, she stopped worrying about the mosquitoes. So maybe she knew what she was doing all along.