Compost Humification Agent

I have been approached by Soil Fixer to undertake some testing of their products and report the results on here my Blog.

To this end they have supplied me with their Compost Humification Agent, a what? I thought.

It turns out it’s a posh term for a compost activator which historically I have resisted, as I spend a lot of time cutting up my compost greens, if it's not grass cuttings and I fill my Dalek army in alternate layers of Greens and Browns, and wet it down, I also add Coffee Grounds and Comfrey not to mention liquid gold (if you know what I mean) and I have not had problems activating the compost and never felt the need for a compost activator before.

However I always up for testing a new product or process.

As I’m at the end of the season and basically my compost is more or less done for this year,  my plan is to empty two Daleks next year and fill both with the same material but using SoilFixer Compost Humification Agent in one Darlek. In this way It can be a real controlled test.

The only problem with this approach is that it’s going to take me a year to get the compost ready for the testing, but I would rather do that and have a fair test than rush it and not give nature, and nature with a little help time to do it's magical thing, produce wonderful compost.

SoilFixer state that “We are confident  your improved “compost” will deliver at least a 20% increase in yield).” So the plan is to put that to a test and below is how I intend to do it

Proposed Potato Test

For the last few years I have been growing my first earlies in flower buckets both circular and square from supermarkets, and in 30 litre buckets that I have bought specifically for growing spuds.

I grow spuds in a mixture of 50% Compost, 40% Coir, 10% soil and add a Potato fertiliser. The mixture is added to my allotment beds as a soil improver at the end of the season, and I have been known to add some back into the compost daleks as browns and to be re energised.

The test soils for comparison will be:-

Just soil (control)
Soil + normal compost
Soil + normal compost + Coir + Fertiliser <<< My Standard Bucket Mix
Soil + improved compost
Soil + improved compost + SoilFixer SF60

Two varieties of first early seed potatoes (yet to be determined) will be grown in each test mixture and at the end of the test, the number weight and condition of the spuds will be compared and the results published on this blog.

I'm going to have to think about some larger scale tests as well. There are a few others involved in the testing Darren Turpin over at Notes From The Allotment is taking a more fast track approach to creating some compost for testing.