Ginger Garlic Extract
This is an awesome product for plants and animals. It boosts the immune system and helps fight insect and fungal pests. Ginger-Garlic is a common and very useful variation so I’m discussing it here, but you can use any combination of plants for whatever effect you are going for.
How to Make:
Ginger and Garlic are quite difficult to ferment, or extract active ingredients from. By adding fermented liquid already like beer or wine, the active ingredients in Ginger and Garlic are more easily fermented. Then we add sugar. Remember, sugar gives the microbes energy to continue fermentation. After letting this sit for a week or so, you arrest fermentation and enhance potency by adding a strong alcohol. Here’s how to make:
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Get an equal amount of Ginger and Garlic, but keep them separate. As a rule of thumb, we try to ferment each material separately as you do not know if there is interaction when mixed. Once materials are fermented they are much more stable and compatible.
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Put in container and fill with beer or wine until it is covered. Leave for 12-24hrs.
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Add 1/3 sugar(crude sugar is best). E.g. if you have 1L worth of ginger-garlic soaking in beer/wine, you would add 1/3kg sugar.
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Ferment this for 7-10 days. Longer the better.
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After that time, add alcohol to arrest the fermentation process. Use at least 40%, or 80 proof.
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Leave this mixture for 10 days. This allows the extraction process to take place, where the beneficial ingredients of the ginger/garlic are extracted with the alcohol.
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After 10 days drain the fluid from this concoction.
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You separated the ingredients in Step 1 and fermented them separately. Now that they are fermented you can mix them to make ginger-garlic extract!
TIP: Potency depends on the part of the plant you use. Generally, seeds have the greatest potency, then fruit, leaf, roots, and stems in that order.
How to Use:
Add 1tbsp per gallon of water.
Plants
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Treat fungal problems of plants (Sulphur from Garlic is good fungicide)
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Use as insecticide (add chili to fermentation to make it hot)
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Ginger is good natural antibiotic/preventative medicine for plants
Animals
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Garlic is good natural antibiotic/preventative medicine for animals
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This has been used with livestock to keep them healthy, and to help them get over being sick. For example keeping chicks/chickens in a crowded pen healthy
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Used for rheumatism in humans (very good anti-inflammatory)
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Used as an antibiotic. For daily usage we drink 1tbsp/day in a glass of water. If we feel weakening, coughs, colds, flu, etc, we’ll take 1tbsp 3 times/day for 3 days. This is not medical advice I’m just saying how we use this extract.
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If you’re interested google the applications of ginger-garlic. There are many indications for ginger-garlic not described here.
This extract has a myriad of uses in both plants and humans. Feel free to modify the recipe, adding plants as you see fit – chili, neem fruit, curry fruit, marigold for potency, etc. We look at the fermented extracts as food, food supplement to plants, animals and humans. They are simple food, more concentrated nutrients. You can ferment anything except poisons. The formulations may vary widely, simply mix and match as you see fit.
Just experiment!