Accepting the reality that our eggplant and capsicum seedlings are still many weeks away, we made space in the tunnel for lettuce and spinach. The beetroot that we cleared out was planted in February and was definitely edible so I’ve turned it into pickles, relish and pesto (in a process that was much quicker than earlier attempts now that I have some idea of what to do). The silverbeet had largely bolted weeks ago (some were up to my shoulder!) but, like the beetroot, it was playing a role by feeding the soil so we had just left it in the ground.  Now there are a lot of lettuce seedlings – and a few tomatoes thanks to friends, which also helps us feel a bit more on track.

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The other serious challenge to our (target) harvest schedule has been that some seedlings started getting sick. Healthy peas and radish turned yellow after they were transplanted. Gardening friends suggested that they might be short on nitrogen if the compost was too fresh, which made sense. But some of the seedlings in trays were also looking sick, turning shades of yellow or in some cases reddish. We’ve planted out everything that looked sad in the hope that the benefit of different soil offsets any transplant shock. And so now we watch and wait with fingers and toes crossed.

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But we still have to diagnose our problem. It seems that it could be related to the fact that the last truckload (or even two) of compost was alkaline: several pH tests seem to be around 8 or 9 whereas compost should be neutral. How this happened and what to do are much less clear. So far our options seem to be to wait (which is frustrating!) or to add sulfur (which we don’t want to do). After some more googling we at least have a plan: (i) buy small amounts of ingredients for a seed propagation mix while we wait for the compost to settle down and (ii) buy molasses and buckets and, with plants that we have here, brew a range of compost “teas” that will accelerate the compost in breaking down or feed nitrogen to the plants that are already in the garden with new(ish) compost. While I hope that we eventually learn a lot from this experience, it’s a lot more fun when plants are just leaping out of the soil! Maybe next week they will.