This will get around to gardening but first the back story.
One of my favorite spots for dip netting (something opened to Alaska residents, where you use a 5’ diameter net at the end of a long pole to catch salmon) is about 4 hours from home. At first I wanted to make it an overnight stay but things got complicated and I refused to let it go, so I spent a morning getting ready, drove 4 hours out, stood in frigid water up to my chest shivering for 3 and a half hours, and then drove 4 hours back. After six hours of sleep I’m in the middle of processing all that salmon. It was an ok day, caught 18. Let’s just say I’m a tad chewed up.
And how it relates to gardening: some people here fish, and some would like to use carcasses on their compost pile but they are afraid that it will stink, or attract vermin, or that your wife will hate you forever. Just boil the whole pile before using it. Every single mineral will be preserved and the bones will separate readily. I’m in the middle of setting up my cauldron of fish tailings.
Bonus hint: Boil, throw in there veggies, rice, and whatever else is handy. It will look horrible like hell’s partridge but your dog will think you are the greatest human being in the planet and eat it all up.
That’s what I do. Our city or state requires no waste for meat, so I boil them and throw in my compost pile. Save me for buying bone meal and blood meal, lol.
i just go in between the rows in the garden, with a mattock and bury them a good ft. deep, i also spread them so they are no more than 4in thick in the rows. we were big into fishing as a kid so there was lots going in there. only time we had issues was if someone cheated and didnt bury them deep enough. great idea for homemade dog food. we have lots of invasive y. perch and lots of trash fish like suckers and fallfish that are easily caught from shore. at least a few times a summer i go fill a good sized cooler and bury some in the rows but most goes into the middle of a pile of compost or woodchips.
If I were lucky enough to live where I could catch salmon, I’d be sure to use it all for food one way or another. I would certainly expect almost no waste from a place where locals have spent generations on the land using it’s resources.
I do the same with all my fish and game remains, carcasses of farm animals that died of unknown causes, trapped and killed vermin, etc etc. They are all recycled as fertilizer for my fruit trees.
This is what is being described here. Every shred of meat that could be scraped from the bones is currently turning into corn salmon chowder. I even eat the livers, they taste like regular liver with no fish element at all. Eggs will become brined salmon roe and bait paste. The boil water from the head, skin, and bones is being canned as fish stock for later use. And all the bones end up as fertilizer on my soil.
Out of 70 pounds or so of whole fish 100% is being put to use, with not an ounce ending in a trashcan.
My stepmother was Native American (plains) with a son stationed in Alaska. He would sent sq*** candy to us. I know that word is derogatory now but didn’t know at the time. That’s what my stepmother called it.