[compost_tea] Re: Re: compost tea defined

From: Kirk Leonard <kirk_at_oregonatural.com>
Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 17:56:03 -0700

Long before anybody thought about aerating compost tea, there were compost
teas, so I am with Paulette. They've been around since there were buckets
and compost and a desire to grow plants. Anaerobic or not, there have been
no deaths or disease directly associated with any compost tea I ever heard
of, though there probably were some before we thought about that
possibility.

Between a tea made with compost, aerated with nutrients for 12-24 hours and
thirty gallons of water and manure left to sit for thirty days, there are
many possible teas and big differences but they're all compost teas -- if
they're made from compost or vermicompost. I'd draw a line at raw or
un-cared for manure.

For years I've been making and using what I now call a "nutrient" tea - a
heaping tablespoon of vermicompost per quart of degassed water, stirred up a
few gallons at a time, for a half hour or so. Plants absolutely thrive on a
couple applications a year, indoors and out. I aerate it by hand with a big
fat wooden kitchen fork and it surely contains all the good organisms as
well as soluble nutrients in the vermicompost, so like aerated tea, it has
microbial value, too, and more nutrient value. I hadn't imagined aerated
tea until I heard about it in 1999, many years after my grandmother taught
me about compost tea.

Prize-winning roses, other plants, and lots of good food have been grown
using steeped compost teas of indeterminate age, probably anaerobic, for
centuries. Anaerobic teas likely have natural value, too. They do occur
naturally in rain puddles, it seems to me, and should be characterized,
also. Might anaerobic teas support weed or pest work, not to mention other
flowers, or foods?

"Brewing" compost tea is not the only way to make compost tea, or the best
named. I also agree with Paulette that the way through these confusions is
to expand the definition of compost tea. Aerated, nutrient-fed tea is what
we focus on here. Steeped or stirred teas are other forms, as are flow form
teas, with or without nutrients. Teas can be soil drenches or foliar sprays,
nutrient-oriented or microbe-oriented, aerobic or anaerobic, fungal or
bacterial, clearly. A parsing of the definition of compost tea seems
important. Maybe aerobic-anaerobic-nutrient by fungal-bacterial are basic
distinctions.

And of course there needs to be a special category for manure teas. One for
the NOP and another set for the rest of us.:-) Raw, wet manure (for USNOP)
needs to be looked at closely. "Aged" manures, sun-air-dried in plops or
heaps, and certainly composted manures are different and likely more
beneficial. "Processed manure materials" per the NOP could be dangerous,
though. Hmm?

The Marina/Highlands news on CT is good, Doc, but it ain't really legal yet,
it seems. Thank goodness there's still room in NOP rules for compost tea.
Personally, I would thank the certifier, not USNOP. On compost tea, they
seem not to know their biological proverbials from a hole in the ground.

kirk_at_oregonatural.com





















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Received on Thu May 08 2003 - 21:39:24 EDT

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