worm nest! worm nest! (we struck worms in the dark earth)
so over winter, i thought i'd take the chance to do some more superorganic gardening experiments.
last year, i tidied up the garden and began about preparing the compost for the next year (2008). So after emptying the rich produce of the year's workable compost into the raised veg beds (ready for next year) and spraying them with a good dosage of microbes, i turned my attention to the remaining microbe-dosed but uncomposted fraction. I dug a deep trench in what was the potato bed and layered it up with undigested compost, then poor quality soil, then more undigested compost and so on, spraying each layer with microbes. finally, there were two mounds, one the test trench and the other, just soil turned over and some organic matter dug in, generally.
Visitors commented, as winter rolled by, how the microby pile was turning darker and you couldn't see the fractions in the pile as much as the one just left to its own devices. so here's the part, this year, when i finally got round to checking out what had been happening over the winter, in the depths of the earth.
as you can see, this spring the two are looking different slightly - the colour of the pile on the right, the one with all the microbes, is much darker than the organic-only pile on the left.
and here, once dug out, is the quality of the soil from the microbe-sprayed pile:
it's humic, it's sweet, it's crumbly but stodgy - it's lovely :)
and it's now on the veg beds, ready to boost this year's organic yield.
but the worms! oh the worms! we had so many, my mother came round for an icecream tub full for her own compost bin and we still had enough of the wiggly blighters left to keep the potato bed in tip top health.
roll on summer!
AO
last year, i tidied up the garden and began about preparing the compost for the next year (2008). So after emptying the rich produce of the year's workable compost into the raised veg beds (ready for next year) and spraying them with a good dosage of microbes, i turned my attention to the remaining microbe-dosed but uncomposted fraction. I dug a deep trench in what was the potato bed and layered it up with undigested compost, then poor quality soil, then more undigested compost and so on, spraying each layer with microbes. finally, there were two mounds, one the test trench and the other, just soil turned over and some organic matter dug in, generally.
Visitors commented, as winter rolled by, how the microby pile was turning darker and you couldn't see the fractions in the pile as much as the one just left to its own devices. so here's the part, this year, when i finally got round to checking out what had been happening over the winter, in the depths of the earth.
as you can see, this spring the two are looking different slightly - the colour of the pile on the right, the one with all the microbes, is much darker than the organic-only pile on the left.
and here, once dug out, is the quality of the soil from the microbe-sprayed pile:
it's humic, it's sweet, it's crumbly but stodgy - it's lovely :)
and it's now on the veg beds, ready to boost this year's organic yield.
but the worms! oh the worms! we had so many, my mother came round for an icecream tub full for her own compost bin and we still had enough of the wiggly blighters left to keep the potato bed in tip top health.
roll on summer!
AO