Seaweed fertilizer

I did a little research to see if nori can be used to make seaweed fertilizer. I didn't find much, so I decided to compare the nutrient content of nori and kelp. Plant macronutrient (Nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and sulfur) aka mineral (for human food) content in foods should be described in the USDA nutrient database. I compared the mineral content of kelp with lavar (I think this is nori). The table below lists the minerals for 100g of kelp/lavar. I included amino acids since I thought this may be the source of nitrogen (though I am not sure of this).

Nutrient	units	KELP	LAVAR
Calcium, Ca	mg	168	70
Iron, Fe	mg	2.85	1.8
Magnesium, Mg	mg	121	2
Phosphorus, P	mg	42	58
Potassium, K	mg	89	356
Sodium, Na	mg	233	48
Zinc, Zn	mg	1.23	1.05
Copper, Cu	mg	0.13	0.264
Manganese, Mn	mg	0.2	0.988
Selenium, Se	mcg	0.7	0.7
Tryptophan	g	0.048	0.043
Threonine	g	0.055	0.232
Isoleucine	g	0.076	0.259
Leucine	g	0.083	0.501
Lysine	g	0.082	0.222
Methionine	g	0.025	0.145
Cystine	g	0.098	0.1
Phenylalanine	g	0.043	0.273
Tyrosine	g	0.026	0.254
Valine	g	0.072	0.402
Arginine	g	0.065	0.285
Histidine	g	0.024	0.14
Alanine	g	0.122	0.651
Aspartic acid	g	0.125	0.567
Glutamic acid	g	0.268	0.547
Glycine	g	0.1	0.363
Proline	g	0.073	0.251
Serine	g	0.098	0.299

In terms of the "macronutrients", kelp and lavar is quite comparable. Lavar is lower in calcium and magnesium, but is richer in potassium. This is as far as I got scientifically and I pretty much made up my recipe for the fertilizer. I took 2 sheets of nori and shredded it before adding to a gallon of water. I also added 3 tablespoon of coffee (for nitrogen) and 3 tablespoon of crushed eggshells (for calcium).

I mixed it up on Friday and left it on the floor, shaking it up every once in a while. I decided to start the experiment on Wednesday since the tomato and basil seedlings I set up for the experiment needed some water. Lemme just say, even if this experiment shows that the seaweed fertilizer is fantastic, I will not be using it. It smells SO bad. I had the seedlings inside, but I had to take them out after using this "fertilizer" nastiness.

So now they live in this little drawer that I found at my friend's apartment complex. I will have to find another way to fertilize my plants. Speaking of free stuff for the garden, I also found this little table. It is amazing the things people throw away!

And today I found this under my zucchini pot...I did a little searching and I believe it is an earwig. Ewwww....

Fertilizer experiment update

Gregor Mendel experimented with peas and became the father of modern genetics. The peas, however, do not want to cooperate with me. Actually, they just grew too fast and I needed to transplant them before I could start the experiment. The one pea plant in the MiracleGro (MG) potting soil was growing the fastest - which shows that the cheap soil is cheap for a reason. It may be my imagination, but I feel like the plant in the MG (with the fertilizer) is lanky compared to the plants in the non-fertilized soil. It is difficult to make any conclusion when I have only 1 plant in the MG.

I made a self-watering container using water bottles, a Chinese takeout container, and a styrofoam cup using the instructions at Bucolic Bushwick as a guide.  The end product is not as elegant as Elaine's but hopefully it will do the job. I transplanted my peas and put together a simple trellis using bamboo and string. So now I have 2 pots of peas!

To update on all my other plants. I've got flowers on my zucchini plants!! (the ones on the ground floor) These are male flowers...I guess the female flowers are being coy. I've read that it is normal for the male flowers to come first. One of the flowers were open in the morning and was very beautiful.  I didn't expect vegetable plants to be visually pleasing so it was a nice surprise.

The tomato and pepper seedlings are recovering from the wind/sun overexposure (I think) and seem happy on my windowsill.

The arugula seedlings are also looking good. I'm really excited about these little guys. Even the little seedlings taste really good.

The dill seedlings are starting to look more like dill. They are super cute.

Hardening off seedlings and bugs in the garden

I am now 99% sure the damage I saw on the zucchini leaf was wind/sun damage. If I think about it, I moved the zucchini plants from indoors to outdoors into the strong winds without any transition period (or hardening them off). The reason why the zucchinis on the ground floor are doing better because they are in the shade and the fence protected them from strong winds. The seedlings were so large compared to the tomatoes and peppers that I didn't really think twice about leaving them outside. They are now doing OK, so I am optimistic that they will continue to thrive. I left the tomato and pepper seedlings (which are more delicate) out for 7-8 hours (albeit them being protected in the plastic box) on a windy day. I didn't realize it then, but I now see some damage on the leaves that look very similar (leaves turning white-ish and looking dry) to the zucchini leaf. I read a very good article here. The author says that the seedlings sometime can recover from these damages if they are babied for a while. So I'll keep a close eye on them and hope they will survive.

You can see the leaf is turning white. The edges of the leaf is a little dry.

  I found my first pest(s) in my garden the other day. Aphids on the jalapeno pepper plant! Before trying out dish soap water spray, I tried mechanical removal (twice) with a Q-tip. The infestation wasn't bad so for now I think this is working. I'll keep a close eye on it. I had no idea that aphids had wings...or maybe the winged ones were not aphids.

If you look close, there are some aphids on the leaves. It was much worse before the Q-tip treatment

While my parents were in town, my mom and I found a hornet hive under the balcony. We knocked it off (since it appeared empty) and so I thought that was the end of it. But a week or so ago I noticed the hornets were back rebuilding their home. I'm not sure if I should remove them. I think I will have to since now I am worried that they will come find me on the balcony and sting me.

In DC this weekend I found a couple of fennel plants growing at a parking lot. I didn't realize there was such thing as wild fennel.

Wild fennel

 My friends and I visited the Meadowlark Botanical Gardens. It was a great place to have a picnic! Here are pictures of some really pretty flowers (I don't know what they are though).

Purple flowers

Pink flower

white flowers

succulents in concrete container

Balcony fortress

The biggest barrier to leaving the plants out on the balcony is the crazy wind that whips my poor veggie plants every which way. You can see the peas literally holding on to dear life as the wind tries to pry them off the trellis. I though I found a solution to my problem at ikea. When I went to the store they had several left, but they only had the striped ones left (I wanted the solid white).  The pink and green striped one will make my balcony look like a circus which could be fun but probably will annoy me after a while. The black/white stripe is out of the question since it reminds me of a funeral (at least funerals in Japan). There is another ikea in DC but they are out of stock so I am out of luck. I will probably have to make one using a sun shield cloth I found at Walmart. I really wanted to avoid having to make it myself! In the meantime here is my make-shift wind barrier fortress!

Temporary solution for a windy balcony

Flower buds! (Early girl 50)

I hope they will survive the weekend. The tomato and pepper seedlings that I grew from seeds are looking pretty good too - although they are not ready to be left outside for too long (I tried and they got sun/wind burned). There was a small mis-step, however. I mislabeled my seedlings so I am not sure which ones are the supersweet and which ones are the homestead tomatoes. I guess it will be a surprise if/when they start bearing fruit.

Mesclun in recycled container

Amazing herbs

I stuck some rosemary & english thyme cuttings in water and left it on the kitchen windowsill. I had forgotten about them for a while. Today, I went to go open the window and I saw this:

Rosemary roots

English thyme roots

They are so resilient! I should find a little pot for them. I love herbs! They just grow & grow and smell amazing!
     The dill that sowed last week are starting to pop out. The seeds smelled like dill but the seedlings do not. I actually forgot that about these too since I left them out on the ground floor next to my backup zucchini plants (which are doing still doing way better than the ones in the bigger pots). It seems that the plants do better when I'm not hovering over them like an overprotective parent!

Attempt at an experiment

I've been using MiracleGro potting mix for my plants. I thought about making my own potting mix, but for me, that is too stressful. I would like to be as "organic" as possible but I definitely have my limits. I decided my goal for this year is not to use pesticides and do my best to deal with diseases organically. I will also try to get organic fertilizers but I started off with MG potting soil which has fertilizer mixed into it (I didn't get the organic type either). When I went to Lowe's to get soil, I initially got garden soil thinking it was the same thing. Fortunately I read that they were different before I opened the bag so I returned the bag and exchanged it with potting mix.
  I was listening to an episode of "grow your grub" podcast where Steve talks about seaweed fertilizer. This reminded me that I have several packages of very old and stale nori seaweed in my pantry (that is not edible). Steve sent me a great link about making fertilizer using kelp. I also have kelp in my pantry but they are still good to eat so I will not use this. I think that nori can be used instead but I want to test if this homemade fertilizer is effective. So I decided to set up an experiment. I had basil, peas (the ones I tried germinate in a paper towel), and tomato seedlings that I could use.

tomato seedlings that are quite cramped and stunted, subjects of the experiment

To set up this experiment correctly, I needed to find potting soil without fertilizer. This prove to be very difficult. I finally found one at Lowe's called Garden Pro Potting soil. I set up 5 conditions per plant (MG=miracle gro; RS=Garden Pro): MG, RS only, RS + liquid MG fertilizer, RS + compost tea, RS + seaweed fertilizer. The compost tea is actually the water that is dripped out of the compost bucket I talked about some time ago. I went all out and set up the 15 cups for this experiment.

Top row: peas, Middle: tomatoes, bottom: basil. The column on the left is MG, the rest of the "regular soil"

The Garden Pro potting soil was really strange. It looked like it had a lot of sand or clay maybe, but the texture was totally different from MG. It looked really dense so I added some perlite. After setting up the cups it occurred to me that this soil will not work for this experiment (ie: not comparable to MG), but at that point it was really too late to look back. I watered each cup...and the RS dissolved to about half the volume and the water that drained out was brown. So at the end, I'm not sure this experiment is gonna work. If the seedlings don't die in the next few days, I'll start the experiment.

After watering, soil dissolves to about half the volume

The coffee colored liquid that is seeped out

Chilling on my windowsill

I'll end with some pictures of mesclun greens that I a) thinned out b) used for salad. They were more mesclun-y than my previous "salad".

Pre-thinning

Post-thinning

The salad was good

I am a plant hypochondriac

I am pretty bad at self-diagnosing myself using the various online resources. It turns out, I'm the same when it comes to plants. Fortunately, with the peas, granny told me the leaves look healthy (thanks!). Now I found some sketchy looking brown spots on my zucchini plants. After searching around on the inter-web, I found some pictures that look similar but no concrete answers. I'm thinking it is either sun/wind burn or something fungal. The leaves feel really dry (though the soil has enough water). I'm seeing some fungal gnats too, so probably I need to decrease the watering. I have 2 zucchini plants in a smaller pot living on the ground floor (under the balcony). The ground floor plants are the seedlings that I was thinking of putting in the compost bucket but couldn't bring myself to do it. Anyway, the ground floor zucchini, despite being in a smaller pot, don't have this problem. The difference between the 2 plants are that they are not in direct sunlight throughout the day and they are not a self-watering pot so the water just drains out the holes on the bottom. (oh, and all my plants - not the seedlings - spent the weekend outside).

Zucchini plant in the larger pot, the edges are brown and drying

The other zucchini plant on the balcony, the dry patches in the center is browning - not powedery

Zucchini plants on the ground both look healthy

Many years ago I watched a show with Jamie Oliver where he was trying to promote healthy eating for children. He was working with a group of grade school kids (I want to say about 5th grade) where he would show them a vegetable and asked if the kids knew what the vegetable was. I distinctly remember that the kids could not identify celery. It is pretty amazing that there are kids out there that don't know what fruits and vegetables look like let alone how they grow. To this end, my knowledge of how vegetables grow and what they look like before they are mature is limited. For example, I didn't really think you can grow lettuce from seeds...I'm not sure how I thought they grew, but I just never thought about lettuce seeds. As a results, I've been fascinating by the mesclun green seedlings (they are starting to grow leaves that look like mescluns). Now I'm curiously observing the growth of the arugula seedlings. At this point they don't look anything like arugula, but if you taste them you can definitely tell they are arugula (a bit more bitter than I'm used to). If you compare the arugula seedlings versus the petunia seedlings (the ones that I collected last year, that I'm absolutely surprised is actually germinating), they pretty much look the same (and are about the same size...tiny).

Arugula seedlings

Some more arugula seedlings

These are petunia. Up close they look different but they are about the same size as the arugula seedlings

Speaking of petunias, I planted some in a container in the front of the house. I did the same last year and I had some serious problems with tobacco worms. They seem to only like my flowers since I was careful to examine the flowers of my neighbors and they had no damage. At least this year I have a bottle of Bt, ready for combat if necessary. It looks like at the moment I'm just having a little slug problems (I know only because I saw one the other night and I picked it off).  

You can see where the slug(s) feasted (white flower is half gone!)