This is the workhorse of the beneficial bacteria we’ll be discussing here. We use it for everything! Foul odors, clogged drains, cheaper pig/chicken/etc farming, aquaculture, the applications are amazingly diverse. Learn how to make and use this and you will have a powerful tool in your farming arsenal.
How to Make:
TIP: The best milk to use in unpasteurized natural milk. However, any milk will do, even powdered milk. In our experience, the best is unpasteurized natural but just use what is available. We just want to saturate with lactose to promote L. bacilli bacteria.
6. You want to keep this stage anaerobic as much as possible. You can use something like rice bran, barley bran, wheat bran, etc sprinkled on top of the milk. I use a sealed container with a one-way valve. Note: Beware of bubbling during this phase. It can lead to overflows if you filled to near the top. It can go through the one-way valves so keep an eye on it and don’t do this step around nice things.
After about 1 week (temp dependent), you’ll see curds (made of carbohydrate, protein, and fat) on top of the milk. The water below will be yellow colored – this is whey, enriched with lactic acid bacteria from the fermentation of the milk.
NOTE: Microbes like L. bacilli are more active in warmer temperatures. The curds you see are a byproduct of the fermentation process. Fermentation is generally associated with microbial processes under anaerobic(no oxygen) conditions. Now, L. bacilli is a facultative anaerobe, that is it can live and work with or without oxygen, but less competition in anaerobic conditions.
7. The water below(whey+lacto) is the good stuff. You want to extract this. You can either skim the curds off the top, pour through a strainer, or whatever other methods to accomplish that
NOTE: Remember the curds, or byproduct of milk fermentation by L. bacilli, are great food. They are full of beneficial microbes like L. bacilli. Feed the curds to the soil, compost pile, plants, animals, humans – whoever wants them! They are full of good nutrients/microbes. No waste in natural farming.
8. To preserve at room temperature, add an equal part sugar/molasses to the serum. So, if you have 1L of serum, add 1kilo sugar or 1L molasses. Otherwise store in fridge to keep.
Example Recipe:
What to Use it for and How
Before using, first mix 1:20 with water. 1 part serum to 20 parts water. Then follow instructions below:
Odor Reducer:
Add mixture to animal’s water at 2tbsp/L. You can mix it more or less, there are no rules here, just how we typically do it.
Apply to places where there is odor buildup. The harmless bacteria “eat” the odor causing germs and the smell is gone!
Indoors: reduces foul odors, including animals like cats, dogs, mice, other pets. Stinky shoes? Wet clothes from being outside? Gym clothes that haven’t made it to the wash yet? Smoker in the house? Kill these nasty smells!
Outside: use to control odor in pens – pigs, cows, chickens. In barns, around the yard, etc
Household use:
Clear clogged drains: dump mixture into drain to clear clogs. Exact amount depends on the clog, haha. A few tbsp to 1L works well. For semi-clogged drains (like kitchen sink draining progressively slower), use at night and allow at least the night for microbes to work.
Keep septic clear. Tired of having your septic system drained? Add lacto! Depending on size of your system, pour a few tbsp. to a few L into the toilet every few months.
Houseplants: Mix 2-3tbsp per 1L water and use that to water them.
Animal Bedding:
Mix 2tbsp to 1L water. Mix with animal bedding to reduce smell and increase longevity. In natural pig farming we use at least 1 yard deep of bedding so there is plenty of space for microbes to work. Bedding consists of organic substrate like rice hulls, wood chips, sawdust, wood shavings, shredded corn cob, any other high cellulose, high lignin material. Natural pig farming is a future topic on this site. Spray until bedding is slightly damp but not wet. How much you spray really depends on your climate. If you are in a very dry climate you can spray a little more and mix in evenly. Wetter (more humid) climates use a bit less. Mix into the bedding evenly where necessary (in many cases, like with pigs and chickens, they’ll mix it themselves). How much you use is all relative. These guidelines are for pigs and chickens. More extreme smells, just use more! Want to spray less often, use more! As we notice a smell we spray. Thus, as pigs grow bigger, make more poop, we spray more often! Dosage/frequency is relative and will depend on your situation.
Animals – Digestive/Growth Aid:
Mix 2tbsp to 1L water, then add that mixture to animal’s water at 2tbsp/L(so the animal’s water contains little less than a quarter tsp/L of lacto serum). But this is very flexible. The Lacto serum is not harmful, so its just about adding enough to be effective, without wasting it.
Improve digestive efficiency in humans and animals alike:
Improves how you feel after meals, particularly meals rich in meats. It’s awesome. After eating, mix 1-2tbsp lacto with a cup of water and drink that. Makes you feel so much better after! Lessens that afternoon lull, gives you more energy!
Aids digestion in animals. This is critical. You can raise animals on less food, and see the same and greater growth rates. Amazing results in pigs . The principal is that the microorganisms help digest the food coming in – better digestibility means better nutrient absorption. Save on feeds, better feed to growth conversion ratio!
TIP: If you really want to boost growth, mix 2tbsp to 1L water and soak the food in this solution for a few hours to a few days. Food is pre-digested when animals eat it, AWESOME!
Great results in livestock and poultry.
Plants – Growth Aid:
When added to water for plants, nutrient uptake efficiency is increased, which increases growth!
Improves growth of plants when applied as foliar spray and soil drench. Improves their efficiency in uptaking nutrients so naturally, growth is enhanced. With the use of these microorganisms, the nutrients you spray or drench to feed your plants become more bio-available and easily absorbable by the plants. Technically, you can say that plants do not use organic nutrients directly. Microorganisms convert organic nutrients to their inorganic constituents which the plants utilize. Utilizing microbes, you will notice better plant growth and health.
Disease Resistance:
This is a consequence of the increased efficiency of nutrients. More nutrients available at smaller metabolic cost.
Lacto suppresses harmful bacteria in food/water that animals consume, enhances their gut flora so that line of defense is working optimally, etc.
Aid Compost:
Mix 2tbsp/L and spray on compost pile to improve decomposition. This is a huge topic that will be expanded upon in another post.
Aid Organic Fertilizer:
Add 1-2tbsp per gallon water-nutrient solution. Lacto consumes organic nutrients making them bio-available to plant roots.
Plants don’t use organic fertilizer! Microbes break it down to inorganic constituents, and plants take those up. This product makes that process more efficient.
Aquaculture:
Lacto works in aquaculture just fine if you don’t have BIM available. Add lacto at roughly 1L per 700m3 of fish-containing water. Example: you have a pond that averages 20m wide by 30m long by 2m deep. So, 20 x 30 x 2 = 1200m3. In this case you would add roughly 1L of BIM or Lacto
Microbes digest fish wastes, cleaning up water and improving water quality.
Allows fish to grow larger due to digestive efficiency
Allows higher population of fish in the same amount of water! Literally, increases the carrying capacity of your body of water! This is awesome for aquaculture setups.
Lacto Preparation
This week in the Flog:
Making Lactobacillus Serum
Photos to go with the recipe!
I finally ran out of lacto serum! It gives me an opportunity to finally publish pictures to go with this recipe. So let’s look at the process from start to finish with pictures.
I didn’t have rice wash handy for the first step. But I did have cheerios. There you go, great carbohydrate source. Not as ideal as a bran cereal or rice wash, but it will do just fine for the purpose of attracting wild microbes. Here is the ‘rice wash vessel’ with at least half air, and open on top. I left the Cheerios in for about 5 minutes, until they started really shedding into the water. Here they are getting soggy:
Cheerios getting soggy in water, releasing carbohydrates
I strained out the cheerios, and loosely secured some mesh netting over the top so that large critters like cockroaches can’t get in. This is my carbohydrate wash that will sit out for 5-7 days:
The carb wash sits for 6 days to become sour with microbes
Now the vessel sits in a shady area of the garden for 6 days. After 6 days it’s pretty cloudy and you can see ‘threads’ in it – bacterial growths. No separating into layers but that’s ok, it will work fine. I drained off most of this solution since I’ll use the same vessel for the milk, and I need 10 parts milk. So I drained until just about 1/10th the vessel was wash water:
Wash is strained until it only takes up roughly 1/10th volume of vessel. Now to add the 10 parts milk.
Now we add the milk – just regular old UHT processed milk, nothing special. Although natural cow’s milk would be the absolute best. I put the lid of the jar on top but not clamped down. This creates a seal but if gas builds up it can escape if needed:
The milk is added and the jar is capped (not sealed though). The milk sits outside in deep shade for 7 days.
Jar goes back to the shady corner of the garden. Now wait another 7 days. The curd on top starts out pretty thick and gets thinner, while the solution turns very cloudy white. It’s pretty sweet. Here is the jar after 7 days:
Lactobacillus cultur – curds floating on top of whey
Now I used the same mesh, in combo with a funnel, to make a strainer to transfer the solution into a plastic jug. Then just pour out the lacto serum:
Straining off the Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB)
Now we have the lacto serum separated out, it needs sugar to stabilize it for storage. I have about 750ml of serum, so it needs either 750ml of molasses or 750gm of sugar. I had nice brown sugar handy, cost <1$ so I like the price vs molasses here. I weighed out around 750gm of brown sugar to be added. Here they are:
Sugar and Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) ready to be mixed
Conveniently I had a 1.5L bottle handy which I added the serum to initially. After adding the sugar, the solution is almost up to the top. Just perfect:
The final serum, with sugar added. A few shakes and the sugar is dissolved.
After a few shakes, the sugar dissolves and the solution becomes a bit thicker consistency, with few bubbles. It’s as easy as that. Now I have 1.5L of pure stabilized lacto serum.
How Do I Use Lacto?
Store this pure solution I’ve just made above wherever, in my home office for now.
Get 500ml bottle and add 2tbsp of this pure lacto to that bottle and fill to top with clean, un-chlorinated water
Use this 500ml bottle for all the applications I use lacto for around the house/balcony
2tbsp per meal, after we eat, mixed in half glass of water
1tbsp/L (or less) sprayed everywhere indoors – to kill all those humid-country-tropical-smells that somehow crop up
1tbsp/L to spray plants, foliar feed keep their leaf surface healthy (equivalent to us using after meals)
1tbsp/L when watering compost piles, keep them moist when they dry out
1tsp/L in roach water, dog’s water
2tbsp/L for periodic moistening of Bokashi bran and when adding stuff to bokashi bin
2+tbsp/L drain cleaning – inundate at night after we finish using sinks/toilets
2+tbsp/L grease trap cleaning – in Philippines sinks have bins below them that are grease traps that get super smelly. This kills it
1tbsp/L added to water bucket with organic fertilizer, 12-24hrs before watering plants (usually night before)
When the 500ml bottle runs out, I refill it from the pure lacto serum culture I have standing by
Pretty cool huh? I guess now I need to write a post showing all those applications. The smell killing is a pretty cool one. I should get a video. You can kill smells in 10mins flat. You can have something rotting on your balcony, to the point it makes your eyes water to stand out there. Spray it with a strong lacto mix (5tbsp/L or something). Come out to the balcony 15mins later, and you don’t even know there is some rotting thing there next to you. I speak from personal experience. Hah.
In any case, here is the illustrated lacto serum recipe. Please, share your experiences with lacto, what you’ve used it for and how it’s worked for you. Ideas grow by sharing.
How to Make:
- Get container, fill halfway with rice-wash. Rice wash is the water leftover when you rinse fresh rice. For example, go buy rice, whatever kind, bring it home, put it in a pot with warm water, swirl it a bit and then drain the [now milky colored] water. The water is now a rich source of carbohydrates. In this step, you can substitute rice with another carbohydrate source if you don’t have rice, as long as it is complex (don’t use simple carbohydrates like sugar, honey, syrup, molasses, etc). You can use wheat, barley, kinoa, other carbohydrates as the base to make your carbohydrate wash. This wash will attract microbes from the air, among them lacto bacilli.
- Cover loosely and let stand for a couple days to a week When is it done? When you see a light film on top (molds) and it smells a little sour and forms 3 layers. This is indicating the rice wash is infected with various microbes. This happens more quickly in warm temperatures because microbes are more active. Thus it is all relative since we don’t do this in controlled laboratory conditions.
- The layers are distinct. Top layer: floating carbohydrates leftover from fermentation and possibly molds. Middle layer: Lactic Acid and other bacteria (cheese buffs will recognize this as a makeshift “rennet”). We will use this layer. Bottom layer: Starch, byproduct of fermentation.
- Extract the middle layer using a siphon. This layer contains the highest concentration of lactic acid bacteria and lowest concentration of the unneeded byproducts.
- Get a new container, larger than the first. Take the extracted serum from the last step and mix it with 10 parts milk. By saturating with milk (lactose), we dissuade other microbes from proliferating, leaving L. bacilli. E.G. if you have 1cup of the serum, mix it with 10cups milk.
TIP: The best milk to use in unpasteurized natural milk. However, any milk will do, even powdered milk. In our experience, the best is unpasteurized natural but just use what is available. We just want to saturate with lactose to promote L. bacilli bacteria.
6. You want to keep this stage anaerobic as much as possible. You can use something like rice bran, barley bran, wheat bran, etc sprinkled on top of the milk. I use a sealed container with a one-way valve. Note: Beware of bubbling during this phase. It can lead to overflows if you filled to near the top. It can go through the one-way valves so keep an eye on it and don’t do this step around nice things.
After about 1 week (temp dependent), you’ll see curds (made of carbohydrate, protein, and fat) on top of the milk. The water below will be yellow colored – this is whey, enriched with lactic acid bacteria from the fermentation of the milk.
NOTE: Microbes like L. bacilli are more active in warmer temperatures. The curds you see are a byproduct of the fermentation process. Fermentation is generally associated with microbial processes under anaerobic(no oxygen) conditions. Now, L. bacilli is a facultative anaerobe, that is it can live and work with or without oxygen, but less competition in anaerobic conditions.
7. The water below(whey+lacto) is the good stuff. You want to extract this. You can either skim the curds off the top, pour through a strainer, or whatever other methods to accomplish that
NOTE: Remember the curds, or byproduct of milk fermentation by L. bacilli, are great food. They are full of beneficial microbes like L. bacilli. Feed the curds to the soil, compost pile, plants, animals, humans – whoever wants them! They are full of good nutrients/microbes. No waste in natural farming.
8. To preserve at room temperature, add an equal part sugar/molasses to the serum. So, if you have 1L of serum, add 1kilo sugar or 1L molasses. Otherwise store in fridge to keep.
Example Recipe:
- 1 L rice wash
- add 10L Milk
- After rice wash and milk remove curds – around 1L
- Left with 10L pure LAB (lactic acid bacteria)
- add 10kg sugar or 10L molasses
- = 20 L stabilized lactic acid bacteria serum
What to Use it for and How
Before using, first mix 1:20 with water. 1 part serum to 20 parts water. Then follow instructions below:
Odor Reducer:
Add mixture to animal’s water at 2tbsp/L. You can mix it more or less, there are no rules here, just how we typically do it.
Apply to places where there is odor buildup. The harmless bacteria “eat” the odor causing germs and the smell is gone!
Indoors: reduces foul odors, including animals like cats, dogs, mice, other pets. Stinky shoes? Wet clothes from being outside? Gym clothes that haven’t made it to the wash yet? Smoker in the house? Kill these nasty smells!
Outside: use to control odor in pens – pigs, cows, chickens. In barns, around the yard, etc
Household use:
Clear clogged drains: dump mixture into drain to clear clogs. Exact amount depends on the clog, haha. A few tbsp to 1L works well. For semi-clogged drains (like kitchen sink draining progressively slower), use at night and allow at least the night for microbes to work.
Keep septic clear. Tired of having your septic system drained? Add lacto! Depending on size of your system, pour a few tbsp. to a few L into the toilet every few months.
Houseplants: Mix 2-3tbsp per 1L water and use that to water them.
Animal Bedding:
Mix 2tbsp to 1L water. Mix with animal bedding to reduce smell and increase longevity. In natural pig farming we use at least 1 yard deep of bedding so there is plenty of space for microbes to work. Bedding consists of organic substrate like rice hulls, wood chips, sawdust, wood shavings, shredded corn cob, any other high cellulose, high lignin material. Natural pig farming is a future topic on this site. Spray until bedding is slightly damp but not wet. How much you spray really depends on your climate. If you are in a very dry climate you can spray a little more and mix in evenly. Wetter (more humid) climates use a bit less. Mix into the bedding evenly where necessary (in many cases, like with pigs and chickens, they’ll mix it themselves). How much you use is all relative. These guidelines are for pigs and chickens. More extreme smells, just use more! Want to spray less often, use more! As we notice a smell we spray. Thus, as pigs grow bigger, make more poop, we spray more often! Dosage/frequency is relative and will depend on your situation.
Animals – Digestive/Growth Aid:
Mix 2tbsp to 1L water, then add that mixture to animal’s water at 2tbsp/L(so the animal’s water contains little less than a quarter tsp/L of lacto serum). But this is very flexible. The Lacto serum is not harmful, so its just about adding enough to be effective, without wasting it.
Improve digestive efficiency in humans and animals alike:
Improves how you feel after meals, particularly meals rich in meats. It’s awesome. After eating, mix 1-2tbsp lacto with a cup of water and drink that. Makes you feel so much better after! Lessens that afternoon lull, gives you more energy!
Aids digestion in animals. This is critical. You can raise animals on less food, and see the same and greater growth rates. Amazing results in pigs . The principal is that the microorganisms help digest the food coming in – better digestibility means better nutrient absorption. Save on feeds, better feed to growth conversion ratio!
TIP: If you really want to boost growth, mix 2tbsp to 1L water and soak the food in this solution for a few hours to a few days. Food is pre-digested when animals eat it, AWESOME!
Great results in livestock and poultry.
Plants – Growth Aid:
When added to water for plants, nutrient uptake efficiency is increased, which increases growth!
Improves growth of plants when applied as foliar spray and soil drench. Improves their efficiency in uptaking nutrients so naturally, growth is enhanced. With the use of these microorganisms, the nutrients you spray or drench to feed your plants become more bio-available and easily absorbable by the plants. Technically, you can say that plants do not use organic nutrients directly. Microorganisms convert organic nutrients to their inorganic constituents which the plants utilize. Utilizing microbes, you will notice better plant growth and health.
Disease Resistance:
This is a consequence of the increased efficiency of nutrients. More nutrients available at smaller metabolic cost.
Lacto suppresses harmful bacteria in food/water that animals consume, enhances their gut flora so that line of defense is working optimally, etc.
Aid Compost:
Mix 2tbsp/L and spray on compost pile to improve decomposition. This is a huge topic that will be expanded upon in another post.
Aid Organic Fertilizer:
Add 1-2tbsp per gallon water-nutrient solution. Lacto consumes organic nutrients making them bio-available to plant roots.
Plants don’t use organic fertilizer! Microbes break it down to inorganic constituents, and plants take those up. This product makes that process more efficient.
Aquaculture:
Lacto works in aquaculture just fine if you don’t have BIM available. Add lacto at roughly 1L per 700m3 of fish-containing water. Example: you have a pond that averages 20m wide by 30m long by 2m deep. So, 20 x 30 x 2 = 1200m3. In this case you would add roughly 1L of BIM or Lacto
Microbes digest fish wastes, cleaning up water and improving water quality.
Allows fish to grow larger due to digestive efficiency
Allows higher population of fish in the same amount of water! Literally, increases the carrying capacity of your body of water! This is awesome for aquaculture setups.
Lacto Preparation
This week in the Flog:
Making Lactobacillus Serum
Photos to go with the recipe!
I finally ran out of lacto serum! It gives me an opportunity to finally publish pictures to go with this recipe. So let’s look at the process from start to finish with pictures.
I didn’t have rice wash handy for the first step. But I did have cheerios. There you go, great carbohydrate source. Not as ideal as a bran cereal or rice wash, but it will do just fine for the purpose of attracting wild microbes. Here is the ‘rice wash vessel’ with at least half air, and open on top. I left the Cheerios in for about 5 minutes, until they started really shedding into the water. Here they are getting soggy:
Cheerios getting soggy in water, releasing carbohydrates
I strained out the cheerios, and loosely secured some mesh netting over the top so that large critters like cockroaches can’t get in. This is my carbohydrate wash that will sit out for 5-7 days:
The carb wash sits for 6 days to become sour with microbes
Now the vessel sits in a shady area of the garden for 6 days. After 6 days it’s pretty cloudy and you can see ‘threads’ in it – bacterial growths. No separating into layers but that’s ok, it will work fine. I drained off most of this solution since I’ll use the same vessel for the milk, and I need 10 parts milk. So I drained until just about 1/10th the vessel was wash water:
Wash is strained until it only takes up roughly 1/10th volume of vessel. Now to add the 10 parts milk.
Now we add the milk – just regular old UHT processed milk, nothing special. Although natural cow’s milk would be the absolute best. I put the lid of the jar on top but not clamped down. This creates a seal but if gas builds up it can escape if needed:
The milk is added and the jar is capped (not sealed though). The milk sits outside in deep shade for 7 days.
Jar goes back to the shady corner of the garden. Now wait another 7 days. The curd on top starts out pretty thick and gets thinner, while the solution turns very cloudy white. It’s pretty sweet. Here is the jar after 7 days:
Lactobacillus cultur – curds floating on top of whey
Now I used the same mesh, in combo with a funnel, to make a strainer to transfer the solution into a plastic jug. Then just pour out the lacto serum:
Straining off the Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB)
Now we have the lacto serum separated out, it needs sugar to stabilize it for storage. I have about 750ml of serum, so it needs either 750ml of molasses or 750gm of sugar. I had nice brown sugar handy, cost <1$ so I like the price vs molasses here. I weighed out around 750gm of brown sugar to be added. Here they are:
Sugar and Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) ready to be mixed
Conveniently I had a 1.5L bottle handy which I added the serum to initially. After adding the sugar, the solution is almost up to the top. Just perfect:
The final serum, with sugar added. A few shakes and the sugar is dissolved.
After a few shakes, the sugar dissolves and the solution becomes a bit thicker consistency, with few bubbles. It’s as easy as that. Now I have 1.5L of pure stabilized lacto serum.
How Do I Use Lacto?
Store this pure solution I’ve just made above wherever, in my home office for now.
Get 500ml bottle and add 2tbsp of this pure lacto to that bottle and fill to top with clean, un-chlorinated water
Use this 500ml bottle for all the applications I use lacto for around the house/balcony
2tbsp per meal, after we eat, mixed in half glass of water
1tbsp/L (or less) sprayed everywhere indoors – to kill all those humid-country-tropical-smells that somehow crop up
1tbsp/L to spray plants, foliar feed keep their leaf surface healthy (equivalent to us using after meals)
1tbsp/L when watering compost piles, keep them moist when they dry out
1tsp/L in roach water, dog’s water
2tbsp/L for periodic moistening of Bokashi bran and when adding stuff to bokashi bin
2+tbsp/L drain cleaning – inundate at night after we finish using sinks/toilets
2+tbsp/L grease trap cleaning – in Philippines sinks have bins below them that are grease traps that get super smelly. This kills it
1tbsp/L added to water bucket with organic fertilizer, 12-24hrs before watering plants (usually night before)
When the 500ml bottle runs out, I refill it from the pure lacto serum culture I have standing by
Pretty cool huh? I guess now I need to write a post showing all those applications. The smell killing is a pretty cool one. I should get a video. You can kill smells in 10mins flat. You can have something rotting on your balcony, to the point it makes your eyes water to stand out there. Spray it with a strong lacto mix (5tbsp/L or something). Come out to the balcony 15mins later, and you don’t even know there is some rotting thing there next to you. I speak from personal experience. Hah.
In any case, here is the illustrated lacto serum recipe. Please, share your experiences with lacto, what you’ve used it for and how it’s worked for you. Ideas grow by sharing.