Our class compost gets tested

On Saturday 21st of February John met us at Sanctuary Gardens with a shopping bag each of our compost.  He delivered the compost and Sinead and I would do the test planting.

Sinead started straight away setting up four trays - two with Living Earth growing medium that we use at the gardens and two with our newly made class compost.

Our compost was pretty woody so she needed to sieve the compost to top the seeds.

In one of each growing medium she planted kale, (Squire) radish (French Breakfast), beetroot, carrots  and both were watered well.

 These are the trays on the 26th of February, 5 days after planting.

Class compost is the lighter coloured compost; Living Earth growing medium the dark one.

Germination seems to be quicker and more consistent in the Living Earth mix.

11th of March 2015 - 18 days after planting

Sinead's photo shows that the Living Earth tray is doing a lot better than our class compost and she felt it was due to the woody materials in our mix that was making the growing environment too dry.
In discussion with Micky in class she pointed out that the large woody bits would have hampered seed germination as the watering could have sent the seeds under large pieces of wood chip.  Sieving the compost would have certainly made a difference to the outcome.

13th March 2015

This the tray of our class compost seeds dated 13th of March.  You can see that there are quite a few weed seeds in this tray as an indication that the compost wasn't quite hot enough all the way through to kill all the weed seeds.

As Sinead had not sieved the class compost under the seeds, I thought I would do another quick test with some of our class compost against Daltons Compost. In the foreground is Daltons and in the background is our class compost.  Seeds were Beetroot "Detroit Red" and I have to admit the seeds were right at their expiry date and that Beetroot seed is large enough to cope with larger materials compared to carrots.

28 March 2015

However the results were marked when it came to the time to prick out the seedlings.  Class compost had a strike of 12 seedlings while Daltons only had 2. I put the pricked out seedlings into class compost and Living Earth growing medium.

22 April 2015

Planted out 12 beetroot in my plot beside and around lettuces.

We now await the results from the laboratory tests on our class compost.