MAKING FPJ FOR KNF

MAKING FPJ FOR KNF

Korean Natural Farming (KNF) is a systems technology. We learned what Fermented Plant Juice (FPJ) is, then we learned about the Nutritive Cycle and how to use FPJs to follow the patterns of the life cycle of plants. Before we look at making formulas, let’s look closer at making the FPJs.

COLLECTING MATERIAL

We give plants what we want them to do. Therefore, we collect the plant material that is doing the function we want to apply. With vegetative leaf growth, we use fast-growing leaf tips. For developing fruit, we use green fruit. For ripening fruit, we use ripe fruit, and so on.

The only plant material where time of day is critical is for vegetative growth. We want the biology of growth, not photosynthesis, so we pick early, before the sun hits the leaves. We also want to make sure we process them out of any sunlight. They are still alive and will switch to photosynthesis if exposed to direct sunlight, even briefly.

It is important to collect the proper plant part. With vegetative growth, we want to harvest the growing tips, only the fresh, young, and tender parts. We don’t want any old growth, and we don’t want any flowers or flower structures mixed in. We want pure biochemical signals, not confusing instructions.

Plants can have both vegetative growth and flowers. I try to avoid any plants in a mixed state like this. Portulaca is a great plant for vegetative growth, but it tends to be in flower a lot, making this one tricky to get right.

Don’t experiment with reproductive plant material as a beginner. For the Cross-Over phase, use a banana flower bud or use a mixture of green fruit and vegetative FPJ.

Recognizing green fruits for fruit development is easy, but beware of plants that are strongly sour, acidic, or tannic. Avoid things like citrus, tomatoes, and persimmons, although they can be used on themselves.

Ripe fruit is also easy to recognize. Use ripe fruit, but avoid rotten fruit.

MIXING WITH SUGAR

We mix plant material with dry, raw sugar. The dry sugar will pull the fluids out of the cells. Molasses or brown sugar (white refined sugar, sprayed with molasses) will pull moisture out of the air. The addition of water can degrade your product, allowing unwanted microbes, such as mold, to grow. We want to ferment what is in the plant, not water from the air. Water is never used with Wild Aerobic Fermentation.

Leaf Material

If your leaf material is large, you can cut or tear it into smaller pieces. I like to massage it with the sugar, careful not to break the cell walls. This brings the sugar into contact with the leaf fluids and starts the process of osmosis.

Avoid very small or broken pieces of leaves. The more small pieces of organic matter you have in your finished product, the more likely and quickly it will degrade and putrefy. A properly made fermented juice will improve with age over time. Organic sediment leads to putrefaction.

If you massage your leaves with enough sugar, you can add it directly to your fermentation vessel without layering sugar.

Fruit and other Material

Cut fruit material into pieces about the size of the end of your thumb. If they are too big, they will not ferment properly. If they are too small, they will add organic sediment to your product. As long as the sugar is incorporated enough that it is in contact with the plant material and can use osmotic potential to pull the fluids out, it will work.

The goal is to induce osmosis without leaving any sediment in the serum. Starting with clean material means the serum is easier to clean and will store much longer.

Layer the material in the fermentation vessel with small amounts of sugar. Use smaller amounts of sugar on the bottom layers, as gravity will pull the sugar down.

FERMENTATION VESSEL

Originally, clay vessels were used. They are the traditional vessel for fermenting things like kimchi. In the West, clay vessels can be hard to find or expensive. Glass jars work well, but they need extra care to ensure the ferments are kept away from light. Reused, clean jars from food products work well.

Avoid plastic if at all possible. Use it as a last resort, and then only use food-grade plastic.

SUGAR

Amount of Sugar

While you will often see references for using the same weight of sugar for the plant material, this is a guideline for the maximum amount to use, including adding extra to the finished serum to stop fermentation.

In general, you want to use as little sugar as possible and still get the job done. Master Cho recommends in his book, Natural Farming (Cho, H. (2010) Natural Farming. Seoul: CGNF), 1.1kg sugar to 1.2kg fruit material, a little less sugar than plant material. This is especially true of fruit, which already has a high sugar content.

If you use too much sugar, it will not be able to ferment properly. You can always add more, but you cannot take out if you use too much.

Your fermentation vessel should always have one-third airspace for proper aerobic fermentation. If you don’t know how much your material will shrink, add more than one-third and check it the first morning. Remove any excess material at that time. Do not add more material if the level is below one-third; transfer it into a smaller vessel.

If you have too little air, the fermentation cannot breathe, and you will not have an aerobic fermentation. If you have too much air, you will get undesirable mold, and your product will likely be unusable.

Sugar Cap

The sugar cap is a light sprinkle of sugar on the surface of the plant material. It should not be a solid layer that can crust over and seal the contents, preventing air exchange and aerobic fermentation. The purpose of the sugar layer is to prevent molds from settling on the surface.

COVERING

Your ferment should be covered with a breathable material that keeps out bugs and dirt. I do not like to use paper towels. If they get wet at all, they will fail. They are easy for vermin, such as roaches, to eat through. I prefer cloth.

The best cloth to use is untreated cotton fabric, such as osnaburg (the very best) or unbleached muslin. Avoid polyester as these are woven plastic. A cotton tea towel is a good choice. Not only can it cover the opening, but it can also be draped over the jar to keep out light.

FERMENTING

You should see liquid forming at the bottom of the jar within minutes. That indicates the sugar is pulling plant fluids out of the cells for fermentation. You will likely see bubbles forming within a day. Large bubbles indicate a slow fermentation, while a lot of small bubbles indicate a fast fermentation. It should not be so vigorous that it starts to foam.

Fermentation should be done at room temperature. Avoid extremes of hot and cold. Keep the jar out of light. A cupboard can be a good place. Ensure there is adequate air circulation to allow the ferment to breathe. Keep it close so that you can check the progress several times per day (at least in the morning and evening).

There is no set time for fermentation. It takes as long as it takes. Factors include temperature and the condition of the plant material. Generally, the ferment will take longer in cool winter weather (one week), and can happen rather quickly (2-3 days) in the summer. The average time is approximately 3-5 days, but you should check it frequently.

WHEN IT IS DONE

The plant material should be fully fermented, but not overdone. It’s like getting a ripe apple instead of a rotten one.

The best way to know it is finished is to look at the surface. The surface will appear dry, and the top layer will likely change color. If you start to notice some white on the top, it was ready yesterday. As long as it doesn’t have a lot of white or look rotten, it should still be okay.

SMELL AND TASTE

Humans, as living organisms, have instincts that let us know what is good to consume and what will cause sickness or death. Yes, even you have instinct. The best ways to tell the quality of your inputs are appearance, smell, and taste. Your body is a finely tuned instrument for determining quality. You should be smelling and tasting every input you make and every time you use it.

Since everything in KNF is safe and edible, this is not a problem.

If something is not right, it will not look good. If your first impression is “yuck!” then your input is probably as bad as it looks. When judging an input, the first question you ask yourself is, ‘Would I eat it?’ If it looks rotten, it probably is.

If your inputs look alright, the next step is to smell. You will learn that when something is fermented, it will smell fermented, but not rotten. Cheese is an example of this. It will smell sharp, but it will not cause a gagging effect like rotten milk will. Alcoholic beverages are another example. Wine does not smell like grapes, but it does not smell rotten.

If your input smells fine, the next step is to taste it. Put a small drop on your tongue. You are not looking for personal preference here. You may have a plant material that you don’t like. What you are testing for is quality.

If it is rotten, that will be immediately evident. Don’t use it. One drop on the tongue is not enough to cause you any symptoms, but you should have expected that it was rotten by its look and smell. Now you know.

Sometimes it will taste so good that you'll be unwilling to share it with your plants! FPJs can be used medicinally or as a culinary delight in the kitchen for food and beverages.

You will soon learn to identify quality by recognizing smell and taste. You will know which ones are really good and which ones are barely usable. It’s a skill, and like all skills, it can be developed.

Look, smell, and taste should also be used whenever adding an input to a formula. You can determine the quality of your input as it ages with smell and taste.

CLEANING THE SERUM

As mentioned before, you want to have a clean serum, free from organic matter. We keep this in mind when preparing the fermentation, and when we are ready to separate the liquid from the solids once it is finished. There are several ways to do this.

You can pour the liquid through a mesh. Osnaburg cloth is superior for this purpose. It has the perfect size weave to keep any solids out, yet allows liquids to drain freely. Muslin with a medium weave is a close second. Some people use paint strainers, but I am an advocate for preventing as much micro- and nano-plastics as possible. Note that paper towels will not work. But a tea towel can.

Tea towels are great because they can cover the jar, protect it from light, and can be used to filter the liquid out directly from the jar.

Another method that I have used is decanting with a turkey baster. It’s essentially a very large pipette, and as a former lab rat, it’s a fun tool to use.

Kitchen strainers are good for keeping the large bits of organic matter out, but they tend to allow small sediments through, which is undesirable. Never squeeze your material through a cloth or strainer. You can end up with a lot of sediment that way.

If you do end up with sediment at the bottom of your serum, it needs to be removed. You can carefully and slowly pour off the serum until you get to the sediment layer. Stop before any sediment pours out. If you are not careful, you will need to repeat this step until no visible sediment remains.

The human instinct is to get every last drop. This is not possible. Give up that idea entirely. Let the few drops of liquid remaining, no matter your method, be your sacrifice for a perfect serum.

FINISHING THE FERMENT

Once you have separated your fermented serum, it will still be fermenting. It takes about a week for this process to finish. If it does not finish, you will end up with something alcoholic or even vinegar.

This can be caused by using the wrong sugar, which pulls in water from air. Water is the source of life, and with water present, you cannot achieve dormancy, which is what we want. To achieve dormancy, all available water must be removed.

Letting the serum sit for about a week is usually enough for the ferment to finish. If you used too much sugar, the microbes may continue to feed on the sugar. This is why we use as little sugar as possible to get osmosis and fermentation to happen, and why we use the proper form of sugar.

Dry, raw sugar will absorb any water molecules in the liquid and prevent them from being used by the microbes. I once had an input that was 0.25 liters. It continued fermenting, so I kept adding more sugar to stop it.

It had grown to a full 2 liters (8 times the size!) before I realized what was wrong. The sugar I used was labeled as raw sugar, but when I rubbed the grains, the brown molasses coating started to come off. It was actually a brown sugar. I was feeding the microbes and pulling moisture from the air, rather than inducing dormancy as I expected.

If, after one week, the serum is still fermenting, it needs to be stopped before it continues on to become alcohol. One way to stop fermentation is to cold-crash it. Put it into a very cold fridge for a couple of days. When you take it out, if it starts to bubble again after a cold crash, it’s time to add more sugar. Be sure you use a dry sugar.

If you don’t have access to dry raw sugar, then use a white sugar that has no molasses to pull moisture from the air. While raw sugar (e.g., crystallized cane juice) still retains some beneficial nutrients, the input does not need them during dormancy. You can always add a tiny bit of brown sugar when you reactivate the input in a formula, but that is not necessary.

When adding sugar to the serum to stop fermentation and induce dormancy, the idea is to supersaturate the fluid by adding a little more sugar than the liquid can absorb, super-saturation.

You know you have reached this state when you see a small amount of crystallized sugar at the bottom of the jar. Add a little sugar at a time, mix it in, and let it sit for a while. Give it enough time for any sugar crystals to settle. If you do not see crystals at the bottom, add a little more and mix it in.

Do this until you see a few crystals at the bottom. You do not need, nor do you want, a layer of sugar at the bottom. That is wasteful, increases your costs, and is unnecessary.

STORING THE FPJ

Once the FPJ has stabilized, it can be stored. It should not be stored in a mostly empty jar. Most jars that I have seen of FPJs gone bad are a little bit of FPJ in a big jar. Try to stick with the golden one-third airspace.

Traditionally, the jars were packed with straw and covered with cloth or Japanese paper, allowing the serum to breathe while preventing it from being invaded by bugs and other vermin.

Evaporation is fine. Simply add a little less FPJ to the water when mixing a formula for older, stronger FPJs.

In the tropics, however, we have too many bugs to use cloth or paper covers. Paper, particularly, gets eaten through quickly, and moisture will destroy its integrity. Rather, we use a solid lid, but don’t close the lid tightly. This allows any gases to escape if the serum is not fully dormant, and still prevents bugs from getting in. In our climate, it is a necessary compromise.

Jars of FPJ should be stored out of light, in ventilated areas, and protected from extreme cold and heat. Room temperature is best. 

FPJs can be stored for two years or longer if properly prepared and stored. Always smell and taste your FPJ before use to analyze its quality, no matter the age.

LABELS

Your FPJ should be labeled as soon as you make it. Include the following on your labels:

Date

Input Type

Plant Material and Stage of Growth

Any other important details about plant material

Moon Cycle (optional but helpful because it does matter)

Example:

14 Sept 2024

FPJ

Starfruit, barely ripe and sour

Hina (Hawaiian name for the lunar day after new moon)

In this example, I know it is a Fruit Juice, but I also know it was slightly green and sour. This lets me know I should probably not use it in the late stages of ripening and sweetening fruit.

It tells me that it would be best for the late green fruit or early ripe fruit stages of development, or because it is sour, could be left to develop into vinegar.

And, because I recorded the lunar phase, I can keep track over time of which lunar phases are best for different plant materials.

My personal favorite for labels is the removable painter's tape. It can easily be moved from one jar to another without leaving sticky glue behind (which attracts dirt, bugs, and germs).