How can I make fertilizer?

While visiting Kafue, the Zambia Compound and the Southern Province last week a number of things struck me. Firstly the amount of rubbish and waste. Fish gut/waste just dumped, the amount of animal horn and bone piled up attracting vermin and swarms of flies, the blood from the abatoir just poured in the ditch  (some of you organic gardeners may already see where I am going with this). Secondly the reliance of small scale farmers on purchasing nitrogen fertilizer for their crops and the difficulty of getting the cash to do that. Is there perhaps something that could be done to tackle all this at once?

Blood, fish and bone is a well tried and tested organic ferilizer readily available in the UK. So is bonemeal (made by crushing bones) and fish meal. All very good ways of replacing man made fertilizers. All the raw materials are available here at no cost (it is all thrown away) and there is a ready market. So what about looking at setting up a small scale production site to have a go?

The Bwalo Global Development Trust a charity I have met a couple of times are very interested in this idea as they look to promote the knowledge of communities and see this as a possible win-win situation all round. Just one problem – how do we make it?

I have my brother Rob on the case in the UK and he is doing a great job researching all he can on the way to go about this, how to sterilise the bones before crushing, boiling up the blood  etc. He is in contact with organisations in the UK and in Paris, France about how to do it but we need some help. Does anyone have old gardening books that may have “receipes” for such fertilizer? Not just blood,fish and bone but anything from fish or waste products. Or better still do you know someone down the local allotment site that makes their own fertilizer? Please either e-mail me or add a comment to the blogg with whatever you can find.

I am also looking at composting as that does not seem to be widepread (actually havent seen anything). I really need a good simple guide to composting ideally with pictures using items that can either be made or scavenged. No way could we buy nice plastic compost bins. This can form part of a study circle to teach people how to go about it. May not be the answer to everything but may make a bit of a difference.

Thanks for reading this, hope you can help.