tea leaves compost – Crazy About Compost

The Clash of the Composts! vol. 2

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7tppqm8xE0 It's time for Clash of the Composts round 2, and this time I'm growing chives. The 4 soil types are: worm castings, tumbler compost, commercial compost and trench compost/dirt. This time around was pretty much the same...my homemade worm castings and tumbler compost outperformed the commercial compost and the regular dirt by a bit. One cool thing I noticed this time was how the commercial compost was free of weeds...this is due to the thermal kill levels of mass piles of compost, and it showed. Perhaps that is also why it didn't do as well as my stuff. The obvious conclusion here, like last time, is that compost definitely helps your stuff grow...so use it! Hit the Like button and let me know if you've tried comparing compost types…

My Basil is Still Growing…yes!

A few weeks ago, I decided to harvest all of my basil plants from the Clash of the Composts! experiment. They were all looking so good for so long...those big bright and shiny green leaves. At a certain point, they outgrew their pots it seemed, and started to look worse. I moved two out of each of the pots in the experiment to free up space, and put them all together in another container. It definitely improved the growth of the experiment pots, but only for a short time. The ones in the new slender container were looking even better. Anyway, I chopped everything off to make a pesto and didn't expect anything to happen in the pots after that. It's been a few weeks, let's see how they look:…

The Clash of the Composts! (youtube)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avwvJ1NOKcE Here's the results after three weeks of anxiously watching basil grow. In order from awesome to least awesome: Tea leaf compost, tumbler compost, commercial compost, worm castings, no compost. The obvious conclusion is that compost is better than no compost. Not only is it a fertilizer and soil conditioner, but it allows soil to maintain its nutrients and while supporting essential bacteria. Are you surprised by the results? I thought that the worm castings would come out on top. I think I could have waited longer on my worm castings, though...same with my tumbler material. I'm going to try the experiment again in a few weeks with all fresh batches of material, and maybe I'll add some other soil types while I'm at it (know anyone with grub compost?).…