Home Gardening in drought conditions and Bokashi follow up
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!
Very good post. Thank you
and thank you for reading, and the positive feedback. Most appreciated.
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Indoor Gardens are also needed for many areas. Do you have any tips for those?
I have in the past done some quite extensive herb and chilli containers indoors when I was living in a small flat in Gardens, Cape Town. I could summarize what I did at some stage .... if that would help??
Sure as I started a garden tower indoors (from New England), I will take any help I can get as the sunshine wains... thank you @themagus
Perhaps you can share your experience with Steemians as well. Would be an interesting concept and I am sure there will be many knowledgeable people who can provide input!!
Whoa they don't want to know how to kill plants... I am just starting with not much to share, just hoping they survive.
LOL !!! Okay, gottya.....
Good luck with your seedlings! Drought is no fun. It looks like you have a plan, though,. Are you able to reuse the water from your house, like the kitchen sink?
@haphazard-hstead .... we rigged up piping from our wash machine and the bath and showers, definitely NOT kitchen sink as the fat builds up in the sandy soil and you end up with big problems. I took some quick photo's this morning... not great but you will get the idea.
We also removed our top loader wash machine and replaced it with a front loader which has an 'eco' cycle which uses less than half of what the top loader used to use. We also only buy biodegradable soap powder and shower accessories... so this drought is turning out to be an expensive exercise
How we attach to the wash machine outlet (not coupled, just to give the idea)
Roll the pipe out to the front garden beds... alternating between the three
Shower / bathroom / basin pipe outlet with pink pool tubing coupled.....
Long pipe to reach shrub garden beds, lawn a lost cause. Wrapped in shade cloth to protect from the harsh African sun.
Drought is expensive, indeed. You have really adapted to make good use of the water you have. It's interesting to compare the perspective of different places about water reuse. When I lived in Tucson, Arizona, they encouraged the use of kitchen water - but NOT laundry water, unless it was put underground without any chance of human contact. Their concern was human waste. But then they studied what people were actually doing and found that there weren't health issues. So now they encourage the use of water from the kitchen, showers, and laundry - and off the roof and the street.
But then the wastewater treatment plants are finding that the waste water they get is so much more concentrated, that their treatment costs and methods had to be adjusted. And the sewer lines weren't moving the waste down the system, and clogging more often. Because the total flow is so much less.
So drought has a lot of complicated consequences. I hope you are able to keep some of your perennials, especially. Lawns are a nice buffer, because they can go dormant. Here's hoping your drought ends soon.