00:20This is a sequel to the video we've posted about growing potatoes in sacks of different
00:27composts, and it's the same sacks. After we tipped out the potato harvest and weighed it and recorded it,
00:34we refilled the sacks with that same compost, watered it well, and now I'm going to plant leeks
00:39because we want to see the long-term effects of these different composts. So we got a measurement
00:45of how they performed in the first half of the year between April and mid-July, and this is now
00:52the same day. It's a couple of hours since we harvested the potatoes. This is still the 18th
00:57of July. It's three o'clock in the afternoon, and I'm going to plant these potatoes, and they've been
01:03grown in pots, in seven centimeter pots like that, having started life in multi-sown modules. We put
01:13three seeds in, or sometimes four, three or four, and aiming to get two or three plants, sometimes
01:20four, and they grow really well. Leeks grow well in a clump. So I'm putting two clumps, average four or
01:27five leeks, in each sack, and I'm just going to pop them in like this. I'm actually using my hand,
01:33it's easier. I just want to get them in fairly deep, and so this sack, this first one here is
01:39mushroom
01:40compost. I'm checking that. Yeah, mushroom, and the mushroom compost grew the biggest looking potato
01:47plant, but it had an average number of potatoes. I think that was because, you can cross-check this
01:55at the end of the video, I think it's because the mushroom compost still has a lot of goodness in
01:59it,
02:00and didn't have time to express that in the time the potato was growing. That was soil,
02:05homemaker soil, which did okay, actually. In the trial, it gave a small but respectable yield,
02:13better than I expected, to be honest. You know, that's where it's so fascinating. You would get a
02:17different result with your soil, and so it's just more than anything here, not to say soil is good or
02:25bad to give a cross-check. No, this one, yeah, this is homemade compost. So this is my own compost.
02:32We've sieved it to four millimeters, and it's, I know it's about a year old.
02:39This is very nice compost, or very nice looking compost, and this one also had very dark green
02:46leaves on the potatoes at the time we harvested, so I think it didn't quite express its result in terms
02:52of
02:52the potato yield. Here I have a four millimeter sieved wood chip, and by contrast, somewhere here,
03:04this one, this was the wood chip, which is not sieved. So we've got two different types of wood chip.
03:11Here is potting compost. This is more than gold potting and container compost, which gave the most
03:17potatoes. I have a feeling it might not give the most leaps, because I think, like all potting compost,
03:25it's programmed to grow fast and then kind of run out of nutrients. It's not a long-term growth compost.
03:33Finally, this is one year old, even more than one year old now. Green waste compost, that's garden waste,
03:40that has been composted at high temperature. It's very black, and jet black, not so much full of life.
03:49When we took these out for the potatoes, the, not many of them had worms in, but the ones with
03:55wood had
03:56quite a few worms. That was very noticeable, and actually, the mushroom compost had some worms as
03:59well. So if you want to find out more about these, what's in these sacks, do have a look at
04:06the potato
04:06video. But you'll also find out more when we do the harvest, because we'll, again, we'll have a close
04:11look at what's in there and the harvested leeks. We may do an interim video in between sometime in
04:18September. My main job now is to water these, keep them watered, and we'll do a final harvest and
04:24cross-check sometime late autumn. I'll see you then. Now it's mid-October. Six months since these leeks
04:32were multi-sown, three months since they were transplanted here on the same day that we harvested
04:39the potatoes. Since then, we've just been watering them quite a lot recently as they get bigger.
04:47No feeding, no nothing. So all the growth you see is from whatever is in these different composts and
04:56one sack of soil. And I've ordered them here in a line more or less according to how strongly they're
05:02growing just to illustrate the differences. And this first sack is the Johnson Sioux, slightly larger
05:08pieces of wood. This one is the potting compost, Moreland Gold, which clearly is not designed to
05:16grow for the longer term. This one is green waste compost, which is now 18 months old or 18 months
05:23since it was delivered here. This is the homemaker's soil. And then that sack is the one with the sieved
05:31wood chip of about three years old wood. One before the end is mushroom compost. And the very final sack
05:39is my homemade compost. And what's going to happen now is Adam is going to harvest these and the way
05:49he'll do it is with a trowel, just cutting down around the roots, lifting out the root ball,
05:56trimming it off, and then cut off the tops. There's quite a lot of yellow on these leaves. And actually,
06:02I have been de-leafing these leeks a bit. You can do this when you're growing them if you want
06:06to
06:08maybe reduce the rust a bit. So I like taking off that. And it keeps them looking nice. You can
06:14see
06:14what's going on a bit more. Anyway, he'll trim them off and then weigh them and lay them out here
06:20in
06:20this same order. And we'll come back and see how it looks. So here we are. Harvest has happened and
06:25we
06:26have the weights. And you can see a certain amount of trimming of the outside leaves. Everything that's
06:30here is edible. And it's pretty much the order the sacks we're in, with one exception in terms of weight
06:37of
06:37harvest. We have the least harvest is 50 grams from the very woody compost. That rises to 165 grams
06:47from the old potting compost. Then we get quite a big jump upwards. This is the green waste of 18
06:54months
06:54age, 370 grams. I'll put all these totals in the description just in case you want to check up.
07:01290 grams, that's from soil. More than I thought. It is good soil here.
07:08310 grams from the sieved wood compost. So all of those are pretty similar, except for this one.
07:17Really not much. And then we get the two bigger ones. 425 grams from the mushroom compost and
07:23495 grams, nearly half a kilo from the homemade compost. And probably that's the nicest leak of all.
07:31You can see they're not particularly long. These are not champion leaks, but there's a lot of food here.
07:37And it's been very easy to grow, just giving some water. These sacks have already grown potatoes, so
07:42they weren't rich. If you'd wanted to increase the leak harvest, you could have added, say, some chicken
07:46manure or a bit of extra compost on top actually would have been. I would have done normally, because the
07:51sacks weren't full, full. And they could have been, and that would have earthed up potatoes. You'd have got a
07:55longer
07:56white shank. What to do with the compost now? Well, we will spread it on the beds.
08:02Going like this is, and not using any feeds or anything, I would say these composts, you could
08:07still grow some more plants in there, but it won't be spectacular harvest. So we'll use this compost on
08:13the beds. And if I was going to grow in sacks again like this, you could use these same sacks
08:17and I would
08:18put a fresh compost in, for example, new homemade compost or whichever type of compost you want to use.
08:23And I hope you've enjoyed having a little look at growing in sacks.
09:17So, thank you.
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