Re: [compost_tea] Compost Tea for Potatoes

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Wed, 7 May 2003 20:59:29 EDT

Compost tea is a water extract of compost (this does not include manure
unless that manure has been composted!) which is brewed with foods that
select for beneficial organism growth. In order to have all the kinds of
organisms in the tea that were present in the compost, the tea must stay
aerobic.

If tea goes anaerobic, then you lose the benefiical fungi, the beneficial
protozoa and the beneficial nematodes. If you don't have these organisms,
then you have lost most of the biological benefit of the compost, and it
isn't compost tea anymore.

What would you call anaerobic tea? Putrefying organic matter tea? Anaerobic
bacterial tea?

Can you allow something to go anaerobic, and then bring it back aerobic?
Sure. The beneficial communities never return to the full range of diversity
that you want in your soil, however. And when you go anaerobic, consider
that you could be growing, oh, some really nasty Clostridium species. E.
coli. Salmonella, Shigella, etc. Not good. Anaerobic is not a good idea.

What was your definition of compost tea before you started learning what it
really is?

Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
www.soilfoodweb.com
SFI Oregon, USA
SFI Australia
SFI New York
SFI Europe
SFI New Zealand

"Hope is not a feeling. It is not the belief that things will turn out well,
but the conviction that what we are doing makes sense, no matter how things
turn out." -- Vaclav Havel, former President of the Czech Republic





Received on Wed May 07 2003 - 21:25:26 EDT

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