Fish Remains for Garden

[Land of 10,000]

Should I throw all the remains into the garden including the bones, head and the skin?  8"-12"Yellow Perch remains is what I'm usually cleaning.  How many is too many, or the more the merrier? 

I fillet the yellow perch.  Boneless fillets.

Wondering what everyone does.....

Just a big radish garden.  Nothing but Radishes.  14'x14' garden.

Thanks.

[Gills-only]

U will have every raccoon within miles digging there if not buried deep. I don’t usually bury mine in garden, skunks opossum, coon they all love them !!

[FishGut]

Fish just need dirt on top to keep the varmints from getting too nosy. If all you do is throw them in the garden, throw them into the neighbor's. That way the raccoons and opossums will squabble on the far side of the fence.

The soil is frozen now, but if it was summer, I'd suggest trench composting. That puts those nutrients down at root level.

[wolverine]

Besides the animal problems that you could experience, if you dig them up you will not be happy as the stench is atrocious. Been there done that. If you do decide to bury in your garden as stated before bury them suckers deep.

[buuddy]

With a root crop you may want to limit how much you put down. I remember a coworker adding fish scraps to his potato patch, when he harvested the potatoes in the fall they had a fishy taste. That prompted some friendly teasing when it was said that his potatoes were good for making fish and chips.

[Ice Surveyor]

I've buried fish guts in my garden also.  I would dig a hole at least a foot deep, add guts, and cover up.  Most of the time, the next morning, there would be a big hole there.  The varmints could smell it, and went to town.  Now, I just put my guts in a brown grocery bag, put in the freezer until garbage day, and then they were gone for good. 

[Seamonkey84]

If you have an active compost pile, just mix it in well when you turn it over. Otherwise burrying at least 2ft deep. Or make some fish broth first with the bones and head, then composte/burry. The guts you could also set aside for baiting minnow/cray traps, or coyote bait if your into those type of things.
Then again you could use them to grow your own bait by just leaving them out for a while once it’s warm 

[DR.SPECKLER]

my raised bed garden soil is loaded with fish carcasses.i grow huge tomatoes and peppers.the fish are broken down by the time late spring arrives to plant.all my salmon,panfish,pike and suckers get thrown in and buried after I'm done filleting them.

[SirCranksalot]

Fish offal will do wonders for your garden!!

[RapShack]

Fish offal will do wonders for your garden!!

One winter I kept dumping dead minnows outside the back door.  When the spring came the grass in that area grew about 3 times faster than the rest.

Always buried my guts about a foot down and never had critter problems, not many raccoons in town though.  It does make great fertilizer and certainly a better use than just throwing them in the trash. 

[beershanty]

i gave my buddy at work two nice walleye remains to put in his garden, he came in and told me his neighbor came over to him and said were ya out fishin last weekend? ya leave any fish on your backstep? my buddy was like no, why? his neighbor said because the dog brought a dead fish in the back door and we found another one in the backyard, she ate em both clean, she even ate the cheeks!! I died laughing i cant believe the dog got the one all the way into the house!

[SirCranksalot]

One winter I kept dumping dead minnows outside the back door.  When the spring came the grass in that area grew about 3 times faster than the rest.

Always buried my guts about a foot down and never had critter problems, not many raccoons in town though.  It does make great fertilizer and certainly a better use than just throwing them in the trash.

Dead coons may make even better fertilizer!! Gimme your address and I'll send a few of ours down!!

[Idahogator]

Remember the Pilgrim's teachers.        

Three fish to the hill of corn.

[Sandcountrylivin]

Your post got me to thinking, and I started on a journey to google and YouTube. Got off track and watched a half hour video on vertical vegetable beds. And finally got bored with youtube an hour later. I clicked on the shanty and remembered I had set out on a mission to learn what to do with my fish scraps. Most commonly it is suggested to bury 12-16" in any area you intend to plant veggies or flowers. It eliminates the smell and the animals most of the time. Second is to put them in a sealed compost bin that has plenty of 'brown' compost. I.e. Leaf matter or straw. The brown compost is highly recommended for lessening the smells. I also saw people grinding or chunking the fish and putting them in pales with water and some compost and making a slurry. But this process seemed extreme as the smells were dangerous and they were having to mix them often. I do believe they were able to speed up the process and get a product they could spread on top of the soil at the base of the plant. But it didn't look pleasant. My ideas was to take 55 gallon drums and keep them behind the garage with critter and water proof lids. I would keep some buckets of soil in my basement in winter and after I had a mess of scraps I would head out and plant them in the barrels and cover with a layer of sawdust or soil and lock down the lid. I would have to have a vent to allow gasses to excape. Also I heard if you drizzle some sugar or molasses on the fish scrap it will help in keeping the smell down and feed the organisms that are working in the compost. If anyone one with more knowledge than I (about 2 hours of surfing) would tell me if this is a viable option and save me any trouble that would be great!

[perch chacer]

I put my fish scraps in totes with snap lids outside.   In winter not much happens but once the sun gets higher in the sky the remains really start to work.  You get a good slurry come spring for garden tilling time.  Man does it stink, but good for the soil.   

[DR.SPECKLER]

heck I get possums,skunks and coons in my front room thru the cat door eating the cats food but they have not dug in my raised bed garden at  all and its totally full of fish right now.no room to dig holes anymore without hitting guts.lol.the key is don't get lazy digging the hole dig it  over a ft deep.coyotes haven't dug it up either..

[perchnut]

Critters love em   I then did the mulch bin gig, and that worked ok, but as someone mentioned, if they are not fully decomposed the odor is horrific when dug up....Now I have chickens, so I really have all the nitrogen and nutrients I need for my garden.  I would suggest perhaps starting up a compost bin away from other stuff, and that one gets the guts, and just leave it go for a year.....guts dirt/compost/ repeat.....In a year you would have some good stuff.....Good luck....Then again, not sure radishes need all that good stuff, do they?  You need a bigger garden... 

[SirCranksalot]

If you live in an area with dry summers fish offal added 'raw' will add some moisture right where it's needed. Yup---need a more serious crop than radishes to use all that fish stuff!

[StevenB]

One late fall, I was putting some lobster bodies along with seaweed in my garden to add nutrients for the following spring and a young neighborhood child from another country saw the bodies and asked me what I was doing. Just for grins, I told him I was planting them for next year. The next summer to my surprise the poor kid genuinely asked, how did my lobsters grow, I burst out in tears laughing and had the longest time trying to explain to him it was all a joke. I felt so bad, I marked him a couple tomato plants that he could pick whenever he wanted fresh tomatoes for his momma.

[Osage]

Plant them in the garden,having been raised on the farm,we fertilized with pretty much all the leftovers from everyday farm life.

[ItsmeitsmeitsJSG]

I put a bunch of leftover frozen mackerel in my compost pile this fall, im hoping it'll be good to go for this spring

[Gamalot]

I went fishing for Bluefish with a couple buddies last spring and we hit them good in the LI Sound. All about the same size around 15 to 20 pounds each and the big cooler was full with at least 20 fish. When we got back home none of the guys wanted any fish so I ended up with all of them. Wife cooked up one that night and it was the most nasty tasting fish we ever ate. To the garden they all went and I tilled up two long rows burying them about a foot deep. A couple weeks later I ran the tiller through the same spot again chopping it all up. A little stinky but it made for nice soil. That summer we grew all sorts of vegetables in the garden and the ones we grew in that section were absolutely much larger and better than the same ones grown a few rows over.

My neighbor grows Christmas trees and goes spear fishing for suckers every spring. He puts a sucker in every hole about 10 inches deeper than the seedling trees he plants and he grows some of the best trees around every year.

Gam

[eriksat1]

I gave my dad a bucket full of fish guts once and he buried them and planted cucumbers and zucchini squash on top. Ended up with the most and biggest of any off of those plants.

[32footsteps]

The Wisconsin DNR used to net bullheads out of a lake by my mom and dad’s because they were overpopulated. Dad offered to take them and we dumped them on his corn fields before working the soil and a truck box always went into the garden. There was a very noticeable difference in yield in the years they didn’t net them and give them to us. Now each spring my brothers and I get out bullhead fishing early in the spring and load the garden up with them.

[tater140]

I bury all the time in my garden.  Usually just a shovel's worth deep.  My best guess is they get composted within a month.  I don't have any fancy research to back up the nutrients in the soils.... Heck maybe i've even loaded it up with too much fish, but the garden keeps producing nicely.  I haven't had too many problems with critters digging them up.  I just make sure I get them covered with a couple of inches of soil.  The soil does have a noticeable aroma when tilling for the first time in the spring, but nothing too bad.  Also if composting bigger fish I would recommend wearing shoes in the garden.  I have ran into bigger bones sticking out of of the dirt. 
This method to me requires very little thought or work.  Catch fish, clean fish, dig hole, bury fish, done

[lefty2053]

Many years ago 1970's when I was a drunk I went fishing with the father-in-law and I caught a very nice large Rainbow.  Well I was drunk and passed out when we got back to his house. When I woke up I asked my wife" Where is my fish?" She said my dad cut it up into little pieces and  put it in his garden.

[slipperybob]

I learned that throwing an old wire fence on top of my buried fish compost and a few stones to hold the fence down stops them critters from digging it up.

[rdhammah]

it's what they call fish emulsion. My dad used to do this all the time.