Update on the vertical garden and compost tea experiment

It now has been almost 2 months that I built the vertical farm ! and things are going along pretty well ! I have some parsley growing, a few green onions, 2 collard green plants and swiss chard. The parsley that got burned by the light bulb that was too close almost made it, but I pulled it out to make space for the seedlings to come. A few weeks back I've planted the core of 2 collard greens and one of a swiss chard, just to see, and last weekend when doing a bit of cleaning I pulled a bit on one of the collard greens and was happy to see a few tiny roots that where growing out of it ! The collards, swiss chard and onions are all "salvage" from the kitchen scraps.

I just seeded a few seeds last week end : Cilantro, Parsley, Roquette, Letuce (black seed simpson), Swiss chard, Summerlong basil, and Spinach. I hope to be able to plant all of that - to see how many plants I can put in there.

I have kept adding 2 mL of NH4OH to make sure that there is enough nitrogen. I have kept increasing the amount of compost I use to make the compost tea, so far I am at 1 cup - which is 240 mL - of worm compost for 2 cups (480 mL) of water. Depending on the volume in the tank I am either using "new" water, or water form the system, and "brew" it for about a day and a half. After that i measure if there is ammonia and nitrate in there. Given the coloration from the compost (of course filtered) its really difficult to tell, but so far, it does not seem that there is large amount of it. Possibly, the different compounds of the compost interfere with the kit's reactions. I may get these strips to see if the results are different form the API kit I have. The system's water has some ammonia (the one i add) but no nitrite or nitrate accumulating. The Ph seem stable around 7 ish : the ammonium hydroxyl I add probably buffers the acidification due to nitrification, as well as the compost tea.
Also exiting things are happening at the school I volunteer, but there will be more about it in a little.