The Use of Bokashi Compost as a Soil Fertility Amendment in Increasing Vegetative Growth of Organic Tomato (Lycopersicum Esculentum Mill.)

Bokashi holds the promise of a solution for wastes problem, because of its ability to turnover of organic wastes fastly, requiring less land and equipment. The study about the effect of bokashi compost on vegetative growth of tomato (Lycopersicum esculentum Mill.) was conducted to determine the nutrition content of bokashi compost made from traditional market wastes and to investigate its effect on tomato’s vegetative growth. Some growth parameters such as plant’s height and leaf’s number were measured per week, while stem’s diameter and branch number were measured in third and sixth week after cultivation, root lenght and fresh weight was measured in eight weeks after cultivation. Investigation of the effect of bokashi compost fertilizer on tomato’s vegetative growth using an experimental method by using a Completely Randomized Design with 4 treatments and six repetitions. The treatments were bokashi compost fertilizer with 4 levels of dose, namely control (no fertilizer), 2.5 kg (soil:fertilizer rasio 1:1), 1.67 kg (soil:fertilizer rasio 2:1), and 1.25 kg (soil:fertilizer rasio 3:1). The obtained data was analyzed using one way ANOVA then continued with Duncan posthoc test. The study results indicated that bokashi compost consists of 0.43% Nitrogen, 2.15% Phospate, 2.68% Potassium (K2O) and 43.4% of moisture content. According to the observation towards the bokashi compost effect on tomato’s growth, revealed that the fertilizer has significant effect on plant growth.