Turning Your Rice Wash into Fertilizer – EMRW
August 26-2013
Turning Your Rice Wash into Fertilizer – EMRW
Filipinos looove to eat rice. We eat rice 3 times a day, 7 times a week. It is the staple food in the Philippines, and right now, you’ll probably have an idea how much rice wash we produce.
Rice wash is basically water that is used to wash rice before cooking. It has a high nutrient content that came from the rice when washed and all this nutrients will go to waste if we simply throw it away. So how do we make use of this rice wash? Its simple, we make it into a fertilizer by ways of fermentation.
The concept of the EMRW or EM-Rice wash is basically fermenting rice wash with EM and molasses. After fermentation, this is a very effective liquid fertilizer with high concentrations of Nitrogen. Its just like making EMAS but with EMRW, its more like an upgraded version of EMAS. Instead of using plain water, with EMRW, we are using rice wash which already contains nutrients essential for plant growth, so with EMRW, we are producing a microbial inoculant and a fertilizer.
Here is how to do it–
Materials:
1. 1 liter air tight container (preferably soft drink bottles with cap)
2. 30 ml EM-1 concentrate
3. 30 ml molasses
4. 940 ml fresh and uncontaminated Rice wash (1st-3rd rice wash can still be used)
Procedure:
1. Mix the materials in the air tight container
2. Store in a shaded area without direct sunlight. Ferment for 1 week
3. On the third day, gas will start to form inside the bottle so release this gas as it will deform the bottle if left unopened. Seal the cap again after releasing the gas. Continue to do this until the 7th day.
4. EMRW is ready to use when gas formation stops, it gives off a sweet-sour fermented smell and has a light-brown color.
*After the 1 week fermentation, use EMRW within 1 month for best results. After a month, its potency will start to decrease but it can still be used
This can be used to water the plants at the dilution rate of 10 ml of EMRW is to 1 liter of water
So maybe you’ll have to think twice before throwing your rice wash away.