Previously I posted about how to make a bokashi bucket for producing an organic bokashi tea from kitchen waste. I then did a short article about the drought we are experiencing and how we would be doing container planting rather than in the garden bed. I placed some seeds in planting trays and had a watering plan based on using bokashi tea.
Courgette seeds were planted in two trays. The left got watered with plain water, the right got watered with diluted bokashi tea twice a week. Not much difference in the growth, although the water only plant appears to be nitrogen deficient
I also placed cayenne chili pips in three trays… water only and bokashi tea once a week and twice a week. I confess I have never had such a poor response to ANY previous seed plantings.
Below, the results of two trays, the once a week bokashi tray produced nothing.
Water only….how poor is this?
bokashi twice a week…. Still poor but four plants surfaced
What to do with these seedlings though? We already have containers with Courgettes in so I decided to plant in the garden bed with a plan to mitigate the water shortage. First I dug down into the extremely dry, poorly nourished ‘sand’ (cannot call it soil anymore)
I dampened the soil and then spread thick layers of newspaper, which I also dampened and then added some compost from our composter and wet some more.
The dry leaves are just from where I dragged the compost out of the composter. The compost is not quite ready but still smells fantastically earthy. I then covered up the papers and compost and wet the soil. I punched two small holes in the bottom of plastic bottles and buried them roughly 15 cm’s deep. I then proceeded to plant the seedlings unfortunately I needed to omit bone meal as my dog would just dig all the plants up following his nose
The plant with the black circle around it is placed outside the paper/compost bed as a sort of control. I may decide to only water that one with diluted bokashi tea… and once the plants have grown in size I shall place bark as a mulch to further improve the water retention / cooling of the soil.
I will report back her from time to time as to the progress (or not) of the garden bed.
As always thank you for reading!