August 2016 – Richard Mudhar

NDVI investigations of compost-enhanced crops

I made a couple of NDVI images of the beans which had been greatly improved using compost compared to those grown without. The principles of NDVI as based on that

Generally, healthy vegetation will absorb most of the visible light that falls on it, and
reflects a large portion of the near-infrared light. Unhealthy or sparse vegetation reflects
more visible light and less near-infrared light.[ref]Understanding the NDVI PDF[/ref]

Knowing that, it’s possible to see in the NDVI image that the compost-grown beans do seem to be reflecting more IR relative to visble light, I find this easier to qualify from the greyscale image Continue reading “NDVI investigations of compost-enhanced crops”

Remarkable win on beans with compost extract

Last year we made compost and compost extract for use in the polytunnels. The extract was also looked at with the microscope. Most of the compost after making extract was used in polytunnel which has tomatoes in it. These look healthy and were praised by another local gardener, but there’s no control. However, we did have a control on the extract applied to the beans in another polytunnel.

If you look at the picture at the head of this post, on the RHS of the picture is the control. This is what we would have grown normally.

in the middle on the top you can just see a blue ribbon which is where application of the compost extract stopped. On the left are the plants where compost extract was applied to the ground, it ran out at the blue ribbon point. Same plants, same time planted, and the same set of seeds. The difference in vigour, height of growth and yield is remarkable and clearly to be seen. Continue reading “Remarkable win on beans with compost extract”

Ciseco – WirelessThings goes to the wall

Sad day, I used their RF modules for farm telemetry and they were great products at a good price. I have a fair stock of their XRF and RFu micros and bought a few of the latter and a bunch of boards in their closing down sale. But I’m sorry to see them go, and support and data are going to be nonexistent now. London Stock Exchange RNS announcement

They’re still on GitHub as Ciseco, the original company, though I guess how long that will last is questionable

There is basic info on the XRF command set on the wayback machine version of the old Ciseco site

Launchpad on Github