YOLO compost out performs commercial compost in Chris’ veggie garden

Chris Wilcock recently moved and he has been hard at work establishing a new vegetable garden. When Lisa bumped into him this past weekend, he remarked on how much better the bed with YOLO compost is doing than the bed into which he dug regular store-purchased compost. Chris kindly sent us some photos and comments on his garden.

This is his story:

“We recently moved into a new home with a garden big enough to establish a little veggie patch. I dug out some lawn and dug in compost and then planted out some tomato, spinach and herb seedlings that I had planted in seed trays.

I prepared two patches. The soil is the same in both and I water both in the early morning as we are allowed to water from 18h00 until 06h00. The soil is quite fertile with a good resident worm population. I added no fertiliser but did add compost to both patches. The one patch got my first batch of YOLO compost while the other got commercially available organic compost as I did not have enough YOLO for both patches this time around.

The seeds are from Living Seeds.

The veggies in the patch with the bought compost are doing quite well and growing nicely. The parsley plants were seedlings and already quite big when planted out.

Bed 1 (commercial compost): tomato, spinach and parsley seedlings. Compost dug in and used as mulch.

The veggies in the patch with the YOLO compost are growing as if they are being paid to grow! I planted out the tomato and spinach from the same batch of seed trays. I also planted some gem squash and zucchini seeds directly as well as some rocket and Basil. Many butternuts also grew from the compost! I know it can be argued that the squash and zucchini plants make the YOLO patch look more impressive but look at the size of the spinach and tomato plants compared to the other one.

The YOLO patch also needs less water due to the better water retention of the YOLO compost. Another bonus!

Bed 2 (YOLO Compost)
Bed 2 (YOLO Compost): tomatoes
Bed 2 (YOLO Compost): spinach

I need to do some weeding and thinning out this weekend…

Bed 2 (YOLO Compost): These herbs were struggling so they also got the YOLO treatment!

Luckily the next YOLO shell is nearly ready for use.  I have to persuade my wife, Sanet, that I need to dig out some more lawn to make way for the butternuts!

Chris

(Thank you Chris)

Scroll to Top