compost day

Harvesting and moving around the compost. Surely have back pain after but the rewards are really nice to see.

Bigger sift

 Harvest compost time again... I try to do it monthly. The oldest of the 3 bins, lets call it bin1...

Under the sack that is decomposing too...

Harvested only from bin1. Used a bigger holed basket to sift through the compost. I think it will get more out to the garden. 

The stuff that didnt go through the sift goes back into the now-empty bin1. And then bin2...

This goes into bin1 next. Finally the newest of the 3, bin3...

That goes on top of bin1. I managed to fit almost all 3 into bin1 except for a little which went into bin2
 

fishy business

 Added fish innards to the garden today. Dug holes maybe 8-10 inches deep, chucked in the fish,

then some paper,

followed by coco coir,

and a layer of weeds from that area.

And then covered it back up. Accidentally took a selfie too :)

Good compost harvest

The bins are set a bit deeper into the ground. This new setup has been working well to keep out rats, squirrels, etc. 

Used an old plastic basket with big holes to sift thru the compost. The contents from the compost go into the basket a little at a time, and I give it a good shake. This is the "gold" that falls thru.

And this is the "future gold" that left behind in the basket.

This gets chucked back into the compost bin. I overhaul all 3 bins this way. The oldest bin (blue one) gives the most compost. The younger 2 wire net bins have a mixture of semi-decayed matter and fresh food scraps and plant cuttings. The semi decayed stuff goes on top of the big bits that didnt make it thru the basket sift. The newest stuff right on top.

This was the sight of the bottom of the wire net compost bins, after removing the contents...

...tons of earthworms. A beautiful and rewarding sight for any gardener. 

plastic in compost

 It's easy to spot the plastic in compost because of its shiny, bright colours. Even the claer plastics contrast more against the dark browns of the compost. I picked out quite a lot this time, the most I've had in one compost harvest. It due to getting scap veggie from the market. They dump lots of other rubbish in. 

This is about 80% of the crap I fished out. 

Too many split bananas

Too many split bananas. I was hoping it would ripen from top to bottom but it's all happening at the same time. Time to harvest it all. As we removed each comb, starting the top-most, we found more and more damaged fruit hiding below. 

Most went into the compost, some went into a fertiliser tea.

The tree was smaller than the earlier ones and we didn't expect to get as many fruits this time. True we had less fruit but they were definitely fatter. Sweetness... I think the first tree was the best, but this one was still sweet. 

The harvest today. Total haul about 7 combs, no make that 8 coz we cut one a couple of days back thats not in this pic.

Fish pond water must be slowly paying off

The fish pond water is the main source of nutrients for the plants. The brinjal has been fruiting more and slightly bigger too. 

Ignore the bitter gourd. That fellow is big coz my expert neighbour takes care of it. 

Compost bins

 The past 2 days been going thru the compost bins, separating the usable gold from the matter that hasnt broken down yet. Because these are diy bins, it's quite time consuming and hard work for a little compost. I havent figured out a system yet to reduce the time spent on harvesting the compost. Anyways here are the 5 bins I have after going through it all. The compost has been distributed throughout the garden...

The one with the cover on the right is full, mostly of thicker branches and twigs, and banana tree trunk. Next to it, the 2 stacked tyres is about quarter full. The other 3 are empty. I have left it open just for today coz it has been raining quite a bit and it's all very wet.

Electric aquarium gravel vacuum

Bought this from Aliexpress...

My previous gravel vacuums would siphon the water and sludge out of the tank. This device allows to vacuum for a lot longer coz the output goes back into the tank

Since this is a low tech aquarium, I keep a lot of the sludge to feed the plants within the aquarium. I vacuum about once a week, maybe a bit less. The focus area is very small, about 2-3 sq inches in area. 

All the gunk that gets sucked out goes to watering the vegetable garden or the compost.

Aquarium prunings and gunk all go into the compost

Everything removed from the aquarium can be composted. The topmost stuff in this bin is from my aquarium... 2 types of plants, hair algae, and some sludge. 

Composted the banana tree

Sawed the tree into smaller bits and into the various bins

Worm castings

This is everywhere in the garden. It looks like worm castings

With a little help from our neighbour

The brinjal plants havent produced much at all. And any fruit has been tiny. This one was a result of our neighbour helping and adding her compost tea to the plant.

Double the size of our past efforts.

Colour difference between compost and garden earth

Our garden soil vs compost... the difference is like night and day

The garden topsoil has quite a bit of clay. Its the one on the left. On the right is compost just under 2 months old.

The basics are in place

The last major piece in the puzzle was the watering of the plants. So now it looks like this.

We will just keep adding plant boxes on the right.

Survived a 5 day holiday

We took 5 days off for a trip to Jogja (you must visit at least once in your lifetime).
I had no idea how the plants, fish, daphnia, etc would fair. I am happy to report that they all did really well. Some thoughts in no particular order...
- the fence has to be high enough to keep the dog from sensitive areas. That is going to take some doing.
- the timer for refilling the reservoir is essential. Not enough rain enters the reservoir naturally to maintain the water level.
- the timer for watering the plants doesn't look like a high priority now because of the rain, but it will be needed by January.
The daphnia's water was clear so I guess they ran out of food. I will have to maintain a twice weekly feeding of yeast, and investigate further what conditions will allow for it to become a self-sustaining colony.

Today's Harvest - Aloe

The main  aloe plant outgrew the pot. Cut off the big leaves for my extended family. The main plant was then cut back and added to the compost.

I use the aloe when I have small cuts. It really works. Also our former parish priest Father Peter insisted that his full head of hair was the result of applying aloe vera to his scalp everyday.

There is no shortage of videos on the benefits of aloe vera. This is one of the better ones.

More worms in compost without garlic, ginger, onions and citrus

We used to chuck anything organic into the compost heap. But recently I heard from a couple of gardening experts that we should avoid putting garlic, onion and citrus fruit into the compost. We added ginger to that list just because we usually use ginger and garlic together in our cooking.

So for the past 2 months all garlic, ginger, onion and citrus scrapes went directly into the base of  our potted plants instead of the compost.

Today I moved the compost heaps and I swear it worked.

Ask and you will receive

Passed by a Starbucks this morning and just thought I'd try my luck asking them for their used coffee grounds. They were happy to pass it all over for free... 3kgs of it!!

Put some in the compost but most of it direct around the plants. Our garden never smelt so good.

Water Parameters

Currently, there are 5 sources of water we are using to fertilise the veges...

1. Indoor 300l community aquarium
2. Indoor 140l Betta sorority aquarium
3. Outdoor 60l Guppy pond
4. Outdoor 20l misc fish black rectangle plastic container
5. Outdoor 15l misc fish round ceramic container

The 1st 3 are the main sources. Tested the water parameters today...

The indoor aquariums looked ok.

The nitrates had a slight reading, but that's ok considering it was done just before a water change. 

The outdoor guppy pond is a revelation. The nitrates were close to zero.

I suspect a few reasons for that.

1. rain - lots of natural water changes due to heavy downpours over the last week.
2. auto filling dechlorinated tap water 4 times a day from a reservoir. With these results, now I can either reduce it to 3, or maybe redirect it altogether to water some plants. 
3. algae (manageable levels) and the floating rack of kangkung sucking up the nitrates. If this is the reason then, great!! coz that's aquaponics in action!
4. using the pond water for watering veges outside the pond. I will stop that practice now, and just let the kangkung within the pond exclusively use its nitrates.

The pH was at 8.5, higher than the recommended level for guppies, but the fish are doing really well, touchwood. I will add more indian almond and banana leaves to bring down the levels.