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Today has been one of those incredibly frustrating days where you're busy all day and absolutely nothing gets done, except giving yourself a headache from trying to keep track of everything. Enough about that; let's talk about fish emulsion!

See, I had never fertilized my garden before. Because organic gardeners believe, at least I have read in many places, that synthetic fertilizers actually burn away the natural nutrients in the soil. So that the more you fertilize, the more you need to fertilize just to sustain normal plant growth. It's like tilling: the theory is that repeated tilling does more harm than good to the soil, and so tilling every spring is worse than wasted effort.

I wasn't inclined to fertilize anyway. Because that sounds like work, and I've already got more work than I can handle just keeping up with the garden. I'm all in favor of a theory that confirms my basic laziness (see freedom lawn) and so I was happy to swear off fertilizing.

So the only fertilizing I've done is to add compost to the garden beds every once in a while, and that's worked out pretty well I think. But lately I've been thinking that maybe my plants would do better if they had a boost. And I went over to my friend David's house and his garden is looking fantastic, much further along than mine, and when I asked him his secret, he said Miracle Gro. And my favorite gardening show host, who is all organic, uses fish emulsion as a fertilizer. So I bought a bottle of fish emulsion. What could be the harm?

Fish emulsion, as it turns out, is nasty stuff. I never really thought about it before, but of course it's exactly what it sounds like: liquified fish. It's a thick brown liquid, about the consistency of heavy cream, and it stinks! It didn't smell so bad in the bottle but mixing it with water seemed to release the scent. Lugging gallon after gallon of it around the garden and pouring it over the plants, hoo boy did it stink. The smell was probably worsened by the sun and heat yesterday too.

You mix a capful of the fish stuff with a gallon of water, then use it to water your plants as normal. I didn't realize my watering can held two gallons, and accidentally mixed it half strength. Which I'm glad about in retrospect. We had a terrible accident a couple of years ago with some improperly mixed insecticidal soap that ate away every plant surface it touched. We started with buggy squash plants and ended with sad little mounds of shriveled mush. After that I'm leery of any concentrate that has to be mixed, and happy to start out with a weak mixture just to be safe.

So anyway, I was out in the yard yesterday, in the sun, pouring this fish water over my plants and trying to hold my nose at the same time. The watering can is too heavy to pour one-handed when full, so this didn't work as well as I could have hoped. Jane on the other hand was in heaven. Following me around grinning (I know dogs don't smile, but when she's happy she sort of looks like she is smiling so I think of her that way) like "What is that wonderful smell? This is the best garden ever!" I kept her away from the area where I mixed the fish water, in case some of the stronger concentrate were left on the ground. There wasn't a toxicity warning on the bottle, but it certainly couldn't be good for her to eat it.

I used the fish emulsion on the blueberries, the vegetable beds, the hydrangeas, the butterfly garden, the asparagus and the roses. Did not use it on the tiny seedlings because I was leery of the effect on tender plants (see insecticidal soap disaster, above). Everything looked fine this morning so I guess it's safe to use it again. You're supposed to apply this stuff every two weeks during the growing season, and also you can put it in a sprayer and spray plant leaves (this is called "foliar feeding"). I don't know if I'm going to manage either of those. For one thing, that sounds suspiciously like work. And for another, the smell is only going to get worse as we head into summer.