A couple of weeks ago I was browsing the garden center of Home Depot and decided I ought to buy some fertilizer for the vegetable garden. I've heard great things about growing tomatoes with fish emulsion, but had never tried it, so this is what I came home with.
Just unscrewing the cap flooded the back porch with a stench the likes of which I've never experienced. It was like some awful sea creature voided its bowels and then died. It was so godawful I even Googled whether or not it was possible for fish emulsion to "go bad"! (Nope, it's supposed to be smell like that).
Holy shit, y'all. I had no idea! Even after diluting it down and pouring it on the tomatoes, the smell lingered in the back yard. It seemed like it was all over me, too, even after I took a shower. It's like the stench got stuck in my nose or something and I couldn't escape it!
Even if this stuff grows prize winning tomatoes, I'm not sure I'll ever use it again. That's how bad it smells.
In more pleasant garden news, here are some hydrangea blooms I picked for the house.
And guess who had to try it out first thing!
29 comments:
Nothing like a great new bed! Enjoy.
Fish fertilizer does smell like ick personified but in my experience, it works pretty well. But if you hate it that much, you probably should not use it.
I'm jealous of your hydrangea.
Oh poor you with that smell of fish!! I wonder if it is good fertilizer as nothing alive wants to go near it! Even weeds! I dearly love hydrangeas! I also have photo of a pink one on my blog too! It was a Mother's day gift from last year. I love it.x
Jennifer I hope it's okay but I couldn't help but laugh at your fish fertilizer story! You write well. :^) Very pretty floral pics, and congrats on the new bedroom!
As a bit of an historical reminder, when the pilgrims first came to America, the Native Americans taught them to bury a small fish with their seeds and seedlings.
Hope the tomatoes won't be stinky! ;)
Ghastly smells get in your airways and linger long,.
I'm sure your dogs are most grateful for 'their' new bed. Bliss!
I made the mistake of opening it on the porch and (as I discovered later) I put the little tab that came off the opening down on a table. It had a few drops of the liquid on it and that's why the smell persisted so long. Once I throw that away, it got better fast!
I love how long hydrangeas last as cut flowers!
I was hoping to make someone laugh! It was pretty funny!
Gregg and I kept talking about that! Dead fish goo is apparently very good for growth.
I only used it on a few indeterminates that aren't growing too vigorously yet. They don't have any small fruits so far. I'm hoping the nitrogen will boost the green growth!
The bed is so high Poppy can just barely jump up there. George doesn't even try! He's got his own comfortable dog bed on the floor and he loves it.
The terrible fertilizer smell will produce veggie miracles. An uncle once collected seaweed for his city garden, and he covered all his beds. Everything grew vigorously. That said, neighbors wondered where the ocean smell came from. It took weeks for the seaweed to decompose but the soil was greatly enriched.
Great photo of Poppy on the bed....or is it George?? When I first was reading your post and saw the fertilizer, I thought to myself that maybe I'd go out and buy some of that for my container pot tomatoes. But after you described the stench, I think I will pass. I hate the smell of fish anyway, so it is a no-brainer for me!
That's Poppy! George never has jumped on the bed, and at 13 years old he's no longer capable of it even if he wanted to.
Ok, well if it will produce a veggie miracle, I should at least finish off the bottle. :)
Some ladies opt for Chanel No.5 or Jean-Paul Gautier but you go for fish emulsion. No wonder you drive Gregg wild!
😅😂
I do hope your resulting Tomatoes don't absorb the 'pong'.
I was so glad to see a new post of yours - I was getting a little worried because there had not been anything from you for a bit (not terribly long, but it felt longer than usual).
Fish emulsion? The name alone would have been off-putting enough for me, and the stench is exactly what I expected.
The hydrangea blooms are glorious! My grandma had several huge pink-flowering shurbs in her front garden, her pride and joy. A friend of hers always asked to collect a few of the most perfect blossoms. She left them to dry and the spray-painted them gold, silver and copper. They made beautiful and unusual Christmas ornaments.
PS: The bed looks great! Modern, comfortable, cosy, sturdy.
Nice new bed! Blogger Reader is getting on my nerves. This post showed up in my feed two days after you apparently posted it. I’ve used plenty of fertilizers containing fish emulsion and they did smell for a little while, but nothing like that. Fishy tomatoes?
For some reason Blogger Reader has been really slow to update lately. I've taken to just clicking on my friends' blogs to check for new posts and very often there's one that hasn't shown up on my Reader feed yet. I guess we get what we pay for, huh? :) That's interesting about your grandma's blossoms that she turned into Christmas ornaments, because my grandma did something very similar with hydrangea flowers! I remember one Christmas she had dried them and put them along the staircase (with other more seasonal greenery) and on the mantle. They were beautiful like that!
I used it on the slower growing plants that haven't started flowering yet, so hopefully we won't have any fishy tomatoes! haha.
Thanks Mitchell! Hopefully no fishy tomatoes (see my reply to Cro) but wouldn't that be awful? It smelled so bad even the dogs avoided it...and they consider cat poop a delicacy so that should tell you something! lol
My hydrangeas bloom in July just in readiness for the flower show xxx
That last picture made me laugh out loud!
Your dog and your plants are beautiful.
Ooh. New bed! New mattress! New blankies! I will bet you could hardly wait to climb in it! Your fish fertilizer story. Oh dear! It brought a memory. Our manager managed to back into a case with a fork truck. We had to evacuate the store for a couple hours.
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