Terracycle Challenge – Day8 – Quick Update

I just wanted to pop by and provide a bit of a Terracycle Challenge update for this week. We’ve (surprisingly) had a decent amount of rain since I started a little over a week ago, so today is actually the first time I’ve even had to water the plants (and since I’m going with a roughly 1-week Terracycle addition schedule, it worked out quite well).

If things stay fairly dry, and as the plants become more demanding, I’m sure I’ll need to water much more frequently (but will still only apply Terracycle once a week).

I’m definitely starting to see some noticeable differences amongst the various treatments. The control started off strong but is no longer looking as robust as some of the others. I can’t say I’m surprised to see all the MG treatments doing well. Worm compost and Terracycle on their own are not doing particularly well. In fact the worm compost treatment is the smallest plant of the bunch! It may not have been quite as ‘ready’ as I had hoped. I will definitely be interested to see how that plant fares over the long haul.

Sorry I haven’t included more photos. I definitely want to devote a section of our flikr gallery to the challenge. Once I get a bunch of photos up I will let you know.

The Terracycle Challenge Jr edition seems to be going well. I’m definitely glad I opted for multiple reps for that one – allready seeing a decent amount of variability amongst the members of each treatment. In general, the bean plants seem to be doing fairly well across the board. Given the fact that it’s a legume (ie. creates it’s own source of nitrogen), I imagine the most noticeable differences will occur later once the demand for other nutrients (such as phosphorus) becomes greater.

Something just occurred to me – I totally forgot to set up a water control for that experiment! Man, I’m such a dunce! Oh well, what can ya do?

Anyway, hopefully I’ll have time for a more interesting update next week (plus photos), not to mention some other EcoSherpa posts. Sorry for the drought in that department!

Technorati Tags: terracycle, worm poop, fertilizer, worm team, compost tea, worm compost, vermicompost, worm castings

Written by Bentley on July 20th, 2007 with no comments.
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