Korean Natural Farming: LAB

Or should I call it “–Natural Farming?” Because I’m of Korean descent. Get it? Get it?

I had no idea there was such a thing until last year, when I met badass Kristyn Leach of Namu Farm–where she practices Korean Natural Farming (and grows Korean plants and I basically want to follow her around for a week). But back to the subject: I checked the notion of Korean Natural Farming in my head and put it in the dark recesses of my obsessive and twisty brain.

Recently, my friends A and J brought up Korean Natural Farming again. When I brought up the fact that I was trying out cricket poop/frass as a fertilizer, and how it was horribly stinky, J suggested LAB.

LAB?

Yes, he said. Lactic. Acid. Bacteria. Korean Natural Farming. Spray it on. One of the things it does is get rid of smells.

Huh, I thought. I’ll give that a shot. And I read up.

Korean Natural Farming (or KNF for short) is about strengthening every biological component of plant growth without using chemicals or outside fertilizers by using indigenous microorganisms (IMO) like bacteria and fungi. You avoid fertilizers and manure and instead, focus on what’s going on in the soil in your environment and encourage naturally existing processes within the ecosystem.

Its principles tie in well with permaculture and no-till farming, which are two practices I’m embracing these days. Go with what’s there, go with the flow of the land, the basic idea being that you want to cultivate based on the ecosystem and all the little critters within, making sure things are in balance and largely undisturbed (yay sheet mulching/lasagna gardening!).

It sounds hippy-dippy, yes. And I don’t subscribe to every hippy dippy thing out there. But some things work and do make sense–like acupuncture. Other things–like planting during a waxing and waning moon–well, I’m still not sold on that.

Plus KNF has…POTIONS aka amendments aka fermented items. There’s Fish Amino Acid, and Fermented Plant Juice and Oriental Herbal Nutrients…but I started out with Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB for short). Because stinky cricket frass.

So to that end, there are a few formulas in Korean Natural Farming to usher that process along. I call them “potions,” because they sure do look like and act like magic potions. Some of them might even smell like magic potions. There is a corner of our house that smells strongly of very barnyardy cow cheese from the raw cow milk LAB I made last week. Think epoisses or taleggio…

Cho’s book (it is Engrish-rampant due to what seems like rushed translation, but I found it readable, probably because I understand Korean syntax and could piece it together)–Cho’s book begins with an anecdote about how he would watch Korean farmers amend soil with kimchi juice, the result being healthy plants and healthy soil. Kimchi is fermented via lactic fermentation (same with sauerkraut) and the juice is filled with lactobacillus/lactic acid bacteria/LAB.

But apparently, there is a more straightforward, and less spicy way to make LAB: using rice wash and milk.

1. Wash some rice. Use about 2 cups water for 2 cups of rice. Wash it well. Then drain the water off the rice into a mason jar and top it with paper towel and secure with either the ringed part of a mason jar lid or a rubber band. This is a picture with the rice wash on the left. The other jars are the next step…

2. After a couple of days (or up to 5 or 6, depending on temperature and your environment), your rice wash will smell a little sour and fermented. It’s not really offputting, but it’s definitely not just water anymore. I like to set my rice wash water on the shelf above my wedgwood stove. It’s a nice temperature, especially if I don’t use the stove for a few days. Sometimes you might have some scum on top:

Don’t worry about that. It’s part of the whole deal. This is a rich mixture of bacteria.

3. At this point, you want to add milk. Most recipes say to add 1 part rice wash to 10 parts milk. After a few batches, I think it works better at a 1:4 ration (milk being 75%). Then, put the paper towel on top of again, and secure. You might want to keep it in the same place as the rice wash. You may want to experiment and put it in a dark and cold spot. Or a dark and warm spot. Everyone’s environment is different.

I’ve experimented with locations inside my house–and I’ve found the rice wash likes it a little warm, but once the milk is added and going, the concoction likes a cooler and darker place to sit for a few days.

Either way, this is when the lactic acid bacteria start gobbling up the lactose in the milk and grow and dominate over all other bacteria, thereby producing a LAB solution.

You can use any milk you want. I used fresh raw goat milk from a friend for the first few batches. And they produced a lovely goat cheese. I also used pasteurized, homogenized cow milk. That worked, too. And it smelled milder and produced a very very mild almost yogurty-cheese (we’ll get to the cheese part in a bit. Yes, there’s cheese involved). Most recently, I used raw cow milk that I bought from goodeggs.com–that produced some very funky, barnyard-y cheese. Wow. Definitely some life in there. Though it was very funky. VERY funky

I suppose you could make it with breastmilk. I’d be curious about that.

4. Basically, after a few days, the layers separate–you’ll get a cheesy firm layer on top, something clear-ish in the middle, and then something white and goopy on bottom. The clear stuff is the LAB. The white stuff is cheese. Save the LAB in another jar–put the paper towel on top, secure, and put it in the fridge.

So about the cheese: lactic acid bacteria is…acidic. And just as milk will curdle and produce a farmer’s cheese if you add lemon juice to it, LAB does the same.

I swore I would NOT eat that cheese stuff while watching the first batch ferment. I swore I would NOT eat it. NOPE. Won’t eat it. Swore I would NOT eat that stuff–wait, is this cheese? Let me have a taste. Oh wow. Not bad. Oh wow. Pretty good.

Dear reader, I ate it.

It was good. My favorite is the goat lab cheese, which you see above. The raw cow milk was so strong, I had just a taste and promptly gave it to my chickens. They LOVED it. They loved it even more than goat milk lab. And yes, this cheese and lab are good for livestock and their gut.

It is good for your gut, too. My partner had an uneasy stomach one day and I fed him some LAB cheese, and he perked right up. I took a shot of LAB when I had indigestion, and it settled me right down.

Otherwise–the LAB can be diluted (1 part LAB to 100 water) and sprayed onto anything that is stinky. I sprayed the shoe closet with it. Smells went away. It can be sent down a slow drain to fix a slow drain (just don’t use the sink for a bit, you may want to do it before you sleep). It can be sprayed in the chicken coop. As foliar spray on plants. In ponds. I even used LAB to soak gourd seeds before planting them. It is just good bacteria.

I also geeked out and looked at the LAB under a microscope. Those rods you see there? That’s bacteria, likely lactic acid bacteria. Of COURSE I’m going to look at this under a microscope. I’m a science nerd.

Oh look, a closeup:

So. This is some good stuff. And because I’m a science nerd, I’ve been all over it, figuring out different variations.

And all this soil prep and permaculture business is making me notice the little things.

I was alarmed when last month I received a few cubic yards of soil I ordered. The delivered soil looked great–like shaved chocolate, but it was also different from the soil in the yard. It’s understandably sterilized–you can’t sell soil that might contain bad bacteria or diseases. But on the other hand, that means I bought soil with almost no bacteria or microbes. Which is kind of alarming. Not a bug in there. Not a worm. It was…still. It was perfect and lifeless.
So I sprayed the darn thing with LAB.

Sometimes we need things to be a little messy. To be full of life we can’t even see. This is the foundation we build–the soil on which we stand. We have to take care of it, we have to help it have balance, because we derive life from it, too. Life begets life.

And so continues my adventures in amending my soil, and building the foundation for another year in the gardening, another year in my life, with lessons learned and many healthy microbes.