The outcome of a pneumonia

If I could say "I will never again catch pneumonia" and know it to be true I would be glad. What you see above is my bonsai tomatoes - I don't remember when I sowed them but I know that they've been sitting in the nursery for about two months. Or is it three. I did a thorough documentation when I started this batch, and when I looked at the papers I had forgotten to put the date on them. The entire autumn is lost in a fog of tiredness.

Today I've finally started to clear up the things that should have been made in December. Some explants have been sent to the green heavens and I've mixed some more soil for the seedlings which have survived and are in need of containers. The salvia in my herb window had wiltered and was close to follow its siblings into the waste bin. I had already pulled it out of the soil when I realised that the core was alive and healthy. Without missing a second I shoved it back into the container again, cut away dead leaves and twigs and soaked it in a bath for a while. It'll be interesting to see if it survives.

My biggest problem is the thrips. To decimate the population and keep it on a modest level requires hard work. Right now I doubt I'll ever get rid of them completely, the other day I realised I've always had them around my plants. Perhaps I'm doomed to an eternity of thripsinfestation. But keeping the air around the plants moist reduces the damages considerably, so I'm hopefull. Some day I'll even gather the determination to wash every window and plant, and then we'll see if the critters survives (mwahahaha).

I think I've written that bokashi fluid can be used for pest control when you dilute it 1 to 1000. That's what I'm going to try now. This will also feed the plants (they are able to absorb nutrients through their leaves, eventhough they prefer 'eating' through the roots), so I've waited a bit to see how my current fertilising habits are affecting them. I need to change, since my plants are overfed and ill. The plan is to interchange worm water with bokashi water (diluted 1 to 500 since it's for daily use) plus one thrips treatment a week. I want gardens so healthy and lush they look artificial.

Rounding off the series on fertilizers

My small series on natural fertilizers have given me some aha-experiences and have generated good comments. I'd like to add them into a post so I've decided to put them in the 'grand finale'. (If you don't recognise them they turned up on the motherblog Parkettodlaren.)

Liquid gold
As soon as I'd written the post on this subject and sent it off through cyberspace I found a recipe for indoor gold water in Hemträdgården, the member's magazine for one of the biggest garden societies in Sweden. The recipe are as follows

1 part urin
20 parts water

Easy as that - indoor liquid gold is more diluted.

Night soil
My readers agreed with me on the fact that manure always contains infections. Ms.noob (link in swedish) writes
"a small parenthesis, if anyone would try to pick manure right out of the pile, just do it if you are completely sure on the horses' owner and are one hundred percent sure on what they eat. If you're not careful the manure will contain remnants of medicine, hormones produced from gestation, nutritional supports for horses like magnesium and iron, different kinds of parasites transmittable to humans, redworm for exemple, rust from water bowls etc (a lot more common than people think). So please, don't just go to any stable taking for granted that all horse manure is good horse manure, be careful."

Annika T, an old analogue friend of my btw, adds
"As a pharmacist I can only agree in caution with horse manure in regard to the fact that medicines don't break down completely, common worm medicines won't break down at all!! This applies to some of the parasite medecines used on bovines, they stay vigorous for years!!"

Hm, you don't want worm medicine in the soil when you garden outside - the common worm is your best friend (especially on clay soil) and is affected by the medication too. Before you pick up manure, do ask some polite questions to your provider before you accept the pile. Organic farmers in Sweden are not allowed to use worm or parasite medication, and if that holds true outside our borders you may be more lucky if you turn to one of yours. Keep in mind that they use as much self produced fertilizer and manure as possible, so don't be sad if they can't offer you anything.

Why using worm and parasite medication at all. Well, becuase parasites and worms causes some really nasty diseases. This area is one of the few where swedish organic farmers are worse of than conventional ones, eventhough they have many well tested methods to avoid infections.

Bokashifluid
Bokashi Jenny(link in swedish) (the retailer who sold me my bokashi buckets) have been kind enough to send me some facts on making bokashi litter and the microbes that makes the bokashi go around

"I read that you are pondering making your own bokashi litter. It's pretty easy actually and what you need is EM-1 (Effective Microorganisms) manufactured in Holland after Higa's japanese recipe. You can't make the concentrate entirely on your own, you can try but on the other hand it's [the concentrate] not expensive. We haven't put EM-1 on our homepage yet, not because we oppose people doing their own litter, but because most persons I've talked don't feel like it, and we don't want to mess things up for our customers.
If you want to try it I can send you a bottle of EM-1 concentrate and a bottle of molasses, they're on 250ml (~one cup - a big one) each and costs about 100 sek (ie 12 USD) together. Buy pollard locally, preferable organic pollard. It's probably no use buying bigger bottles in the beginning; this is enough for making a year's worth of bokashi litter and the concentrate lasts twelwe months.
Did you have a allotment garden too? Something that works really well is to use EM to improve soil quality. One small bottle of EM-1 lasts really long since you ferment it to produce 20 times as much activated EM (by then it's called EM-A); this is something like bokashi fluid you drain out of your bucket but without food residue. You can make litres (gallons) of it at home (it stays fresh for a month) and it's a wonderful way to add to the microbiological life in the soil. Dilute it in the same way you dilute bokashi fluid. It's fun to compare between two plots, you notice the difference."

In a later email she sent me a link to a good webpage on how you ferment EM-1 into EM-A.
How to make EM-A

Unfortunately I wont be gardening outdoors this year, but as soon as I get the chance I'll try this out - and by then I'll probably made my first homemade bokashi litter. I'm an DIYer to a tee. Google on bokashi or EM-1 if you want to find your lokal provider of boakshis.

As you may know I've already tried the fluid from my own bokashi bucket, much to the joy of my old tomato plants. Kai Vogt Westling on Greenfoot HB(link in swedish) writes

"Just a tip, the fluid is perishable as you write, but it is possible to keep it and store in a bottle in the fridge. You can freeze it too and water it out for the spring farming operations. Dilute it one part bokashi to at least a hundred parts water."

Good to hear. I can't help feeling torn when I pour away surplus fluid. Now I can dilute it alternate worm fluid for bokashi fluid. I'll have the fattest plants in the country...

Wiggly Wigglers, How to Bokashi 1 & 2

The soundquality is somewhat bad, but I like that Heather is brutaly honest when she opens her bokashi bucket, so I can't resist showing you these vids. These are my favourite podradio personalities (download the Wiggly podcast here or from iTunes) showing us how to bokashi.

How to Bokashi, Part 1


How to Bokashi, Part 2

Bokashi fluid

Bokashi fluid is the last one of the easy natural fertilizers I've found. There are more plants and stuff to use, but they are somewhat harder to handle or are more specialised, so I've decided to leave them out for now.

Bokashi is, as you probably know, a way to pickle kitchen left overs. The friendly microbes drissled over the scraps splits the food into its basic compounds and makes it easy to break down in the soil or in a compost. During that process fluid is released (it's contained in the food from the beginning) and must be drained off. My own bokashi buckets have a tap in the bottom for that purpose, which makes things easier.

The fluid is a good fertilizer. Dilute it one part to hundred and you have a humdinger for your potted plants. My tomato plants - which are nearing their one year aniversary so I'm planning to take them down - suddenly grew lust for life and set fruit again when I used it. But it's uneconomical to use outdoors - you get less than a deciliter (less than 1/3 cup) per week and you have to use the fluid within twentyfour hours.

Bokashifluid is a fertilizer I recommend for indoor gardeners for several reasons; it's good for 'hungry' plants, is easy to get if you have invested in bokashi buckets, and it smells very little. In addition to that the pickling feature of the bokashi means you can give meat and protein scraps a better purpose than to be sent to the landfill. If you are growing plants indoor you should definately buy a bokashi.

How to Make Bokashi

I'm buying my bokashi flakes from a swedish retailer, and I'll go on doing this for a while. In the same time I'm pondering making some myself; I mean, there can't be a too complicated process behind. A little searching on YouTube and I found Podchef showing us the basics. Bingo!

I'm going to make some more research on which microbes needed before I start to making some, but anyone who is impatient can take a look at bokashicomposting.com. The recipe gives a culture with fewer kinds of microbes than in a bag of bought cereals, but it may still be worth a try.

Time your recycling

Soon I've had my bokashibins for a week. Did I mention that the buckets were bigger than I thought? I didn't read the measurements and since it was said that it would "fit under the sink" I assumed that it was a small ten litre (~three gallon) bucket.

Well, it does fit under the sink, but it's closer fit than I imagined - the buckets can swallow about twenty litres (~six gallons) and are made with a pedestal to make it easy to drain of the bokashi fluid. When I'd unpacked my bokashi set, that came with two of these giants, I could only think of how cluttered that space was. An once ordered collection of recyclable items had run amok and threatened to bury anyone daring to open the doors. It was time to clear this out.

Come to think of it; the fridge needed some clearing too. Even if I had a full worm feed tin that could go in the bokashi some extra stuff couldn't hurt. Out with the old vegetables, fruitsallad, minced meat sauce and those small sweet bellpeppers that turned out to be peppers. That was enough for a first try, so the worms got to keep their food. Ceremoniously I put everything into the bin, poured some bokashi flakes over them, flattened it out with the special flattener, put on the lid and shoved it in...

I still needed to clear the space under the sink. My hubby and I have made a small chest with wheels and the plan was to fill it with recyclables for transport to the recycling station. That chest was full too. I dressed for the cold outside, put as many bags with trash on top of it, the hubby gave me some string to pull it along and off I went.

It was below minus ten degrees when I walked to the station with my sprightly companion. Eventhough we didn't build the chest from sapient pearwood it had a mind of its own, going where it wanted to, dropping some bags along the way. At the recycling station I did what I should and went back to my house.

On the first floor one of my neighbours where hanging on another neighbour's door for a small chat. They do so quite often and I said 'Hi' while I was waiting for the elevator to arrive. One of them turned around and pointed to the chest.
"WHAT is this?"
"It's our recycling chest - we put wheels on it to make it easier to take out the trash."

The chest was very much admired, and only when I stood in the elevator did I realise two things. A: It clappers. A lot. B: The time was 22.30. When I thought I took a quiet walk to throw out some stuff I probably woke the entire first floor.

Well, the space under the sink is cleared and today I used bokashi fluid as fertilizer for the first time. Everythings seems to work as it should, eventhough I've put the bins in the staircase cupboard. Was the easiest solution to the problem.

Odor

The last time I watered my plants with mild wormfluid sollution I noted how bad it smelled. The soil then seemed to absorb the odor since I can't feel anything reeking around my plants - and I have a good sense of smell.

Vermicompost fluid doesn't pass through the worms all the time. Sometimes it pours directly from the kitchen waste into the tray for liquids, at that's why some of it smell bad. I keep the kitchen waste in an airtight tin on the sink before I put it in the compost. Since I only empty the tin about once in a week the scraps starts to break down. Things that breaks down with little oxygen smells bad.

So, what am I to do about it? Well, for a start I'll empty the tin more often, and in the long run I'll drill some extre holes in the vermicompost containers. You may remember that I found foul smelling food when I divided my compost into two some time ago, and I suspect the containers to be a bit to tight.

And I'll by a bokashi. I know I've been going on about this contrapition for a long time now, but I haven't bought one (too much month at the end of the money). If Santa is nice I'll be able to buy one on the evening the twentyfourth of december. If not I'll have to save up for a few months - and in the meantime be nit-picking about emptying the tin.