Bad Compost!

At the beginning of the lock-down The Man of the Place was still going in to work.  This drove me insane as 98% of his work is administrative. There was no sensible reason for him to go into an office full of people who had to travel out to visit other people.

Anxiety levels were quite high for me.  I was worried that he was putting himself (and me) at risk of infection.   To placate me, he went to one of the few shops that was still open at the time, a local shop that sells hardware, and gardening things amongst other stuff.  He picked up two bags of compost for me as I was getting near the end of the bag that I had in the greenhouse.

A few days after some strongly worded complaints, he is working from home now.

The new compost that he brought in was a bit rough.  Lots of very woody twigs and bark.  It had not been sifted.  It was practically mulch!  As we are in the middle of a global pandemic I won't complain. I used it.  From time to time I tossed the big wood chunks out of the greenhouse door.

I thought perhaps the poor germination rate I've had this year was due to old seed.  Maybe it wasn't that.

Although there were more failures than normal, some things did germinate.  I was diligent about pricking them out into larger pots as soon as they were big enough.

Some seedlings went into the old compost and some went into the budget compost.

Things were okay until I noticed that some seedlings were not thriving.

Some were not only  not thriving but actually dying!

dying tomato seedling

Today I re-potted a lot of those sickly seedlings.

Look at these two cucumber plants.  Both germinated at the same time.  One lucky seedling went into ordinary compost and the other went into the "budget" compost.

cucumber seedling in the good compost

unlucky seedling in bad compost

These two cucumber plants were from the same packet.  Both were potted into pots at the same time.  The only difference was that one was put in budget compost and the other was put in ordinary compost.

All tomato plants were sown on the same day.

What I am saying that buying budget compost is no savings!  Look at the dramatic difference!

I got another bag of ordinary compost as I was getting to the end of the barky, twiggy compost.    Nice stuff is being used to re-pot the poor plants that are not thriving.   I am now at the end of that bag.  Now it is known that I need at least four big bags of compost to get me through the spring planting season.

I had to re-pot everything that was placed in the bad compost.  So really as I have to remove and replace a lot of that budget compost there was no savings to be made at all!  False economy!

I've got a big 50 litre bag of good compost coming today or tomorrow.  I am so thrilled that one of our local garden centres are making deliveries of garden things for orders over 35 pounds.  My house is just on the very edge of their delivery range so I made my order big.  I am grateful to be able to have enough cash to make a decent order and take advantage of the delivery system.

In the meantime, I have been rotting some comfrey leaves in buckets.  The leaves will stay in those buckets until they have made a purtrifed and stinky mess.  That putrified liquid will be diluted and used as tomato fertiliser.  It stinks to high heaven.  I believe that this is the nature of fertiliser.  It stinks.  I love using things I already have here at the place. Comfrey and a few stinging nettle leaves make excellent fertiliser. It costs NOTHING.