# fish fertilizer



## Cornykid (Jul 24, 2011)

Has anyone used fish fertilizer on hay or field crops? I need some help in figuring out how much you would need if it is labeled as 5-0-1 on the NPK.


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## Mike120 (May 4, 2009)

They'll probably tell you that you only need a few pints per acre. In reality, you will need a tanker truck. Save your money, get a soil test, apply the recommended amount of real fertilizer, and you'll be way ahead. Do a search on this site, this topic has been addressed lots of times.


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## vhaby (Dec 30, 2009)

What crop are you wanting to fertilize with this 5-0-1 material?

The previous response was right on. First get your soil tested. If the soil is low in phosphorus, you don't want to use this material bc it has no guaranteeable phosphorus content. If your soil is low in potassium, you don't want to use this material bc it has only one pound of potash (K[sub]2[/sub]O) per 100 pounds of material. If you need to apply 100 lb of nitrogen/acre according to your soil's estimated nitrogen content, you would need to apply 1.0 ton of this material per acre, and likely that would not be enough bc the nitrogen in this material may not be readily available as it looks to be a possible slow release organic source of nitrogen. If you want to fertilize alfalfa and your soil has adequate phosphorus and potassium, you don't want to use this material bc rhizobia on the roots of alfalfa provide the nitrogen to alfalfa from the air. There are several other reasons why you may not want to purchase this material for use on your soils/crops, including the cost as mentioned earlier.

Best to leave this 5-0-1 material to people who want to use it for their gardens and don't know any better how to properly fertilize garden vegetables. They won't be out so much money purchasing this product to use in their small gardens..


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

Cornykid said:


> Has anyone used fish fertilizer on hay or field crops? I need some help in figuring out how much you would need if it is labeled as 5-0-1 on the NPK.


To get 200 lbs of N for Corn it would take.4000 lbs of product.So about 500 gal per acre.
But then you would not have any P at all
And that would give you about 40 units of K which isn't near enough for corn or hay.
So to get 120 units of K it would take 12,000 lbs or 1500 gal per acre.









And how much does this cost per gallon?Or do you get a discount by the tanker load?

To get that much on it may work better to use irrigation then a sprayer,lol.


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## Cornykid (Jul 24, 2011)

Thanks, thats what I was looking for. Sounded to good to be true.


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## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

I am glad to hear that you are taking the advice given to you by these regulars.....many times other posters have basically asked the same question that you asked and when informed what this type of liquid fertilizer will do(very little), the posters either did not like the responses or they wanted to argue a pointless argument. You just saved yourself some money. Lots of good information on this site for free.

Regards, Mike


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## Lazy J (Jul 18, 2008)

I have some Amish landlords, they are gullible and believe many of the fabulous claims by these alternative crop production tools. One of my landlords sprayed a portion of our hayfield with "Fish Fertilzer" expecting it to be the best hay we ever raised, the result was less than impressive. It was a waste of time and money.

Invest your fertilizer funds elsewhere.


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## evan (Jan 22, 2012)

We use several thousand gallons of fish fertilzer on our vegetabale each year, but we use it as a carrier to help with micro adjustments after we do our side dressing with granular fertilizer. We also use a fair amount of it mixed in with the water that goes out with our transplants as a starter fertilizer, but we use it because its mild and wont burn the roots.
Its a good product, but like everything else is only good when used properly


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## J Man (Sep 20, 2015)

We have used it on our veggies and had good results. I was wondering as well how it would work on a hay field. From what I understood it was supposed to be used in addition to the regular fertilizers and not in place of.


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## Hugh (Sep 23, 2013)

A typical recommendation for N application is 100# per acre, could be more or less, but I have seen many soil tests with a number close to this. If the fish fert is 5% N, then you would typically need 500 # per acre. Assuming the stuff is liquid, it most likely weights in the neighborhood of 9-10 # per gallon. Based on these loose #'s you would need to apply 50-60 gallons per acre to get the N you need. Note that N is only ONE of the 13 elements you will need to be concerned about.

I just got a private message from vhaby stating my numbers are wrong. Of course, he is right. To get 100 # of N with the fish fert, you would need to apply 2000 lbs of fish fertilizer. At 10 pounds per gallon, that would be 200 gallons per acre. (based on the need of 100# N per acre) Thanks Vhaby...


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