Sunday, 18 March 2012

First Seeds in the Garden


The lighter spots are vermiculite in the seed holes to maintain a nice moisture level.
It's still technically winter.

Friday, 16 March 2012

Getting Tested

The testing kit finally came in. It covers all the basics ten times for $25. (much cheaper than a lab)

I've been waiting for this kit to come in for 2 weeks now. (They had the $200 electronic testers but I'm not running a hydroponic grow-op here). Using this type of test is easy. You just mix dirt with water and the powder out of the matching little pill, give it a minute and check the colour. I used dirt that had not been mixed with compost to see what our baseline looks like. Our Potassium(K) is "sufficient" and our pH is about 7 (it's hard to tell with the greens so maybe 6.5 or 7.5 but either way we're good).

Unfortunately the Phosphate and Nitrogen were "deficient" and "depleted" respectively. The compost should correct this and I'll run another test with the mixed up soil/compost in the beds this weekend just to verify there's no more tweaking needed..

Thursday, 15 March 2012

Miner Disturbance

Some critters decided to dig up whatever I planted. Well sucks to be them, nothing's planted yet. **insert evil laugh**