Silos for preserving plant nutrients



Where did all the silo’s go?

Silos used to dot the countryside of America. That was back in the day, when farmers appreciated the value of green manures as a of fodder for livestock. Animals get a tremendous amount of nutrients from green grasses and plant trimmings. This is particularly true when anaerobic bacteria work to decompose and ferment the greens. When plant matter decomposes in the presence of oxygen, as is common in open fields or untended composts, greenhouse gasses form and vital nutrients are lost. Nitrogen gas, hydrogen sulfide and CO2 are the consequence of not using silos to store these valuable by-products of the farm.

Tilapia are like cows.
They are vegetarians, herbivores. Contrary to conventional thinking, fish do not prefer manufactured foods. They like plants and bacteria that decompose those plants. Plus they eat algae. Duckweed is an exceptional plant that tilapia feed on as are the roots of water hyacinth and alligator weed. But to grow even water plants we must start by adding a nutrient loop and preferably with the green matter of crop trimmings. Abundantly available grasses and greens give us the feed stock for livestock and also fish and their diet of aquatic organisms.
So here’s how it works, harvest the grass, and put it into a silo. The barrels below are what we find to be most practical, unless of course you already own a silo. Barrels can be transported and in fact, when loaded with fish and animal fodder, are a commodity to farmers. Then store the green manure, letting it ferment.  When raising fish we take some pounds of the manure and put it into our anaerobic or aerobic digester, or within Fertilizer Tea Bags, direclty into the Bigarden.

Silage fodder for herbivore fish, like tilapia and carp.
After a few weeks of decomposing in the silo we feed the grasses to our tilapia and make fertilizer teas for the Biogarden. Chickens like grass as do other foul and livestock. This is a great way to sustainably raise fish food, plant fertilizers and simultaneously, sequester CO2 and other greenhouse gasses.