Thinking about potting mix

I spent some time this week making some suggestions for the nursery which the Fresh Market authority are trying to develop, in order to sell plants to the local farmers. One area that needs some development is finding the ingredients to make a consistent potting mix. At present two of the local establishments growing seedlings are using a mix which includes soil, animal manure and sand, which is then sterilized before use. Any locals who want to grow their own seedlings are taught this system but usually stop doing so because of the time consuming nature of the making the mix. Of course sterilizing the mix stuffs the soil micro- organisms. My observations are that inconsistency of mixing is also a problem.
At present there are no ingredients to make soiless growing media in Kokopo. I think that for seedling growing to progress, ingredients need to be found. I suspect that ingredients may exist in Port Moresby, so I'm in the process of finding out if this is the case and at what cost they can be shipped to Kokopo and thus whether a soiless potting mix is feasible here.
On this quest I visited a local farmers training facility run by the Japanese, as they grow their own seedlings and grow all the produce they need to keep the trainees fed. The system they use is basically organic, with no chemical fertilizers, or pesticides used. The potting mix is great and the plants quite healthy but they use chicken manure, which not many farmers have access to. Although the natural pesticide "worked", there were some insect problems but the produce was very good- good enough to feed the trainees but some of it wouldn't be acceptable if it was up for sale.

Students pricking out seedlings.

Beds of veges. The beds are sunken and surrounded by a built up bank so the area can be flooded if necessary. A flood irrigation channel runs from left to right, behind the two guys in the picture. In the background, to the right of the tall grass are beds of rice growing.

Things grow fast in here; 4 weeks in the nursery, then about 6 weeks in the field would be the growing cycle for a cabbage. One thing I noticed was some lettuces growing a bit funny, they reported they hadn't seen this before, although they had stopped growing rice as an irrigated crop because of fertility problems. I suspect the lettuce was experiencing either boron or molybdenum  deficiency, which could be reasonably easily sorted out.

After seeing the lettuce I asked whether they had done any soil tests, or found out what the PH was, the answer was no, and no. I got the impression that this hadn't been considered. Which made me realize that some of the things we take for granted in NZ aren't available easily to farmers in PNG.
There is an Agricultural university, and a National Research Institute (NARI) reasonably close by which would both, potentially have the facilities to do some basic work and help sort out the fertility problems I noticed. But I don't think seeking help had been considered.

 The following is my perspective; Somebody asked us if we were close to the area where there was some trouble; a PNG Air plane was torched last week at Minde airport. That happened in the highlands about 1600 Km away from where we are. I'm not sure how the incident was reported in NZ but the plane was torched as a political statement. The locals in some parts of PNG are feed up with corruption. In this case they had sought a judicial revue of the appointment of the local governor by the current Prime Minister, as there was some questionable stuff going on with the elections that were held last year. A house and a hanger with some light planes in it, owned by the Prime Minster, were torched just after the elections as a warning.
The judicial revue confirmed the appointment of the governor, so the burning of the Dash 8 at Minde airport was a signal to the government. Whether the burning of the airplane is ok depends on your point of view; its lawlessness but how do you stop corruption?
Not long after we arrived here the government suggested they were going to close facebook down for a month. Mainly because some local people had been asking some pointed questions, of the government, using facebook. The decision regarding facebook was soon reversed but indicates government sensitivity to criticism. particularly since PNG is hosting APEC later this year.

I (Christine) attended a sugar diabetes awareness day run by another VSA volunteer. Suzanne does an amazing job here. She works at the hospital in Rabaul and has a weekly radio program which the announcer re-plays again in the evening. Its amazing how people are drawn to her, sometimes recognizing her voice in the street and stop to talk with her about mum, or dad or aunty... They recognise someone who talks sense, cares and has practical help to offer.
The compound we live in has become very busy with new arrivals - Scott the chef this week and next week Christina (?) who will be working on tourism. Sleep is often quite disturbed with people talking, comings and goings, dogs barking and last night lots of rain. Weekends are a time for afternoon naps to catch up on sleep.
I sweep the floor several times a day to keep the ants under control. Any little bit of food dropped and out of the cracks they come! I no longer have any compunction walking on them and they have no compunction biting us if there's no food lying around. Still, I infinitely prefer a battle with ants as opposed to the bed bugs VSA's in other countries are struggling with!
We've had quite a few windy days this week which have been really nice as the wind cools down the temperature from 30/32 to 24/27.