I was talking about the experiment that my friend carried out to decompose the grain waste using the magical bacterial solution provided by Dr. Krishan Chandra.
In most of his videos, Dr. Chandra shows either decomposing cow dung manure or some crop waste and such other low nutrient material. In most of the cases, the material is in fine form. And without fail, Dr. Chandra proudly shows how the material gets decomposed in a matter of three weeks!
But we were trying a bit different experiment. Our raw material was quite rich, being a mixture of broken grain pieces. These pieces were rich in carbohydrates and protein. But the problem is that they are neither finely ground nor were they soft.
Added to this, as I discussed in a prior episode, there was a surprise entry of BSF larvae. Dr. Chandra never talks about them. Probably because he never experimented with rich waste like ours that the larvae can feed on.
So, we were not sure whether the waste we used, would get decomposed as expected.
We decided to wait for three weeks, hoping for the miracle. As I said earlier, we intentionally avoided turning the pile since we wanted to eliminate the need for additional manual labor. We only ensured that the heap was kept wet all through.
There was no stench, no heat. It appeared as if there was nothing happening at all!
After 10 days, we could see the heap slowly turning blackish. The worms were busy wriggling and turning. Occasionally a female Black soldier fly (BSF) would come and lay more eggs. The larvae army continued with their busy action!
Days passed by. We could see increased activity by the larvae. The entire heap was pulsating with the vigorous activity of the larvae. They were really working hard, feeding and of course defecating 😉
Exactly at the end of three weeks, we could see that the entire heap had turned black. But some grain residue was still hard and undecomposed.
Gradually, we could see some larvae leaving the heap to enter their pupa stage. But what remained were still uncountable! They were still happily enjoying the feast they were provide with. The side effect of their busy action was that there was no need to turn the heap. They did that job.
At this point we decided to take a sample from the heap and test it for NPK content. We knew that the material is still not completely decomposed. But can it be used at this stage?, we wondered.
There was no proper testing facility near my friend’s place to test this compost. Finally, we managed to take the help of a scientist in a nearby soil testing facility, who obliged to test the compost for us.
The scientist took two weeks to give us the results. The results were not quite encouraging. The nutrient values were not as high as we expected. Given that the compost had a strong ammonia smell, I am not convinced that the tests were done in a proper fashion. Or may be the material had not completely decomposed yet?
They say that proof of the pudding is in eating it! So, my friend tried to test our compost in the vegetable garden of a neighboring farmer. We were a bit apprehensive since there was a chance that the compost can create problems since the material may not have completely decomposed.
But this enterprising farmer, happily agreed to try it out on his vegetable plants. He is clever guy. He set apart two rows of vegetable plants, one for testing the effectiveness of compost and the other as a control.
He fed one of the rows with our compost and the other row was fed with cow dung manure. Even the Indian farmers seem to be experts in controlled study 😉
After two weeks, this farmer reported that the plants fed by our compost had much vigorous growth than the others which were not fed. Also, these plants were healthier. He was quite convinced that our compost was really fantastic!
But well, I am a bit skeptical. You can’t conclude based on this one isolated experiment. What also puzzles me is the fact that the test results did not indicate such a high value of NPK in our compost. That being the case, how different was it from simple cow dung manure?
Yes, our compost had bacteria that probably were lacking in the cow dung manure. But these bacteria need their own time to show results.
So, how do we explain this isolated case? Does it prove that compost was really far better than simple cow dung manure? If yes, how do we explain the low test results provided by our scientist?
It was an open question for me. I will conclude the discussion on this entire exercise in the next episode. Please do join me then.
A series of weekly (every Monday 12 PM PST) talks on new ways of Gardening by Dr. King. © Dr. King 2019
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