Manure-Chard Challenge – Day 9
I just wanted to post a quick update for the ‘Manure-Chard Challenge‘. Nothing TOO exciting to report on, but certainly some things worth mentioning.
First and foremost, we have chard seedlings popping up in both buckets now. Interestingly enough, the fastest germination seems to be occurring in the manure-only bucket, where the first ones appeared, and where there are now more seedlings up. Not sure if the different between the two systems has been enough to really warrant mulling over the possible causes – I would need to set up a bunch of systems to see if this is even a consistent occurrence.
My main interest is in seeing what happens over the long-haul, especially once we’re left with our final three champion plants in each bucket (as you may or may not recall, I planted three sets of four seeds in each bucket so that one ‘good’ one from each group can be selected to continue on).
Last post, I mentioned that I’d hopefully be taking pictures of the systems every other day, in order to document all the significant changes. Well, during the first few days of observation I realized that this would be basically be like watching paint dry! 
The systems simply aren’t changing all that much on a day to day basis. SO, my aim is now to take pics once or maybe twice per week.
Here on Day 9, I can honestly say that the level of material in the two buckets does seem different (difficult to see in the picture above – the worm system is on the right-hand side, by the way) – with the worm tub not surprisingly having the lower level. The texture of the manure on the surface also seems somewhat different (again, tough to see in the pic), with the worm-worked material having slightly more of a flattened appearance.
Anyway, that’s pretty much it for this earth-shattering update!
Hopefully we’ll start to see some interesting differences (or no differences at all, which will also be interesting) as things develop in coming weeks.
Stay tuned
Written by Bentley on August 27th, 2009 with
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