Re: [compost_tea] makin' compost, was Using my own compost, not a good option ? ?

From: Frank L Teuton <fteuton_at_sympatico.ca>
Date: Sat, 10 May 2003 09:50:47 -0400

Properly made vermicompost should indeed be a good option for the home
composter in search of high quality aerobic compost.

But, even vermicompost can be screwed up....tight plastic bins with
inadequate drainage/aeration can have anaerobic pockets in it, for example.

Good systems for high aerobicity include the flow through bins (worm wigwam,
eliminator, etc) or similar versions you make at home (I have a dandy 15" x
18" x 2 feet high box made of 2 x 12 lumber with a grill of parallel weed
wacker cord every two inches on the bottom, which consistently carries more
worms in it and processes more material than any of my other setups).

I also use milk crates lined with light geotextile as worm bins, which are
very space efficient and drain and aerate exceptionally well, so well in
fact that they need extra moisture added at times, as do flow through bins.

As with the flow through system I feed my milkcrate bins using a topfeeding
regime, of small layers of materials at a time. This ensures that the highly
labile carbon of fresh raw compostables always begins its vermicomposting
life in high oxygen conditions. Milkcrates are no more than a foot deep and
wide so forced aeration is not needed.

I don't have a whole lot of monitoring data on these bins. The presence of
living worms and other litter dwelling mesofauna throughout my systems is my
only 'proof of aerobicity'.

I have generally dedicated myself to finding low tech ways of doing things.
I departed from this path when a friend, sold on compost tea by Dr Ingham at
the Vermillenium conference, convinced me to buy with her a Soil Soup
machine (then recommended by Dr Ingham) and start on the tea making road.

I believe it is definitely possible for home scale composters to make good
quality compost and vermicompost. Among the methods for keeping things
aerobic enough, are the use of bulking agent materials (e.g. wood chips),
the creation of venting channels in compost piles at regular intervals, and
waiting for anaerobic conditions to end and for aerobic organisms to take
over.

Anyone home composting with fresh manure should pay particular attention to
time and temperature requirements and/ or a thoroughly vermicomposted end
product.

It has been shown that not any old aeration system is good enough to make
safe teas from not quite good enough manure based composts. And, while we
can say that ornamental use is no problem compared to fresh produce for raw
consumption use, little tots crawling on a freshly sprayed lawn should not
be acquiring any additional pathogen through their normal hand to mouth
activity, especially not the nasty 0157 form of E. coli, I am sure we all
agree.

So I look upon the commercial users to stick with proven technology and high
quality start materials. The desire to 'roll your own' system should be
confined to users who have a complete understanding of the risks and are not
imposing them on paying customers, for sure.

Re Magic Soil, I admire Crockett's singlemindedness, but there are other
ways to do things. I frankly would not recommend any home user planning on
growing raw produce to use anything but proven composts and systems for tea
making, and to stay well within nutrient recommendations and operating
conditions.

Just for the record, none of the dozens of batches of tea I have made with
the Soil Soup machine ever smelled bad. And I have not suffered any
detectable health problems from using teas over the last few years; it
leaves your skin and hair soft when you get sprayed, but other than that, no
problems. I have always included vermicompost in my teamaking, and have had
live worms come out of the Soil Soup sock on many occasions, indicating to
me that at least minimal aerobicity was maintained.

I have less enthusiasm for Aerobically Amplified Compost Tea than formerly.
The reasons include the induced dependencies I see as necessary to maintain
high process and product quality control, including frequent expensive lab
testing, high cost operating and monitoring equipment ( constant readout DO
meters connected to computers, etc), and the 'negative lottery' aspect of
getting it wrong.

I still see the technology as having great promise for commercial scale
users. But on the home front, I am not making compost tea for domestic use
anymore except on the no nutrient added, 24 hours in a tub with 3 or 4
vigorous stirrings basis, using only well finished compost, and that is more
for nutrients and humic materials than for the microbial effect. Honestly I
don't have time to make it and apply it and don't have the need to do so,
using compost itself is adequate for my purposes.

So I think yes, home composter can make good compost but many don't and
fewer do who think they do, and it should be kept in mind when making
recommendations how many people with limited knowledge of composting will
respond to those recommendations.

And, yes, you could make your own brewer, but in doing so you will be doing
the R and D that other people have already done, and taking the risks that
implies.

If your compost contains unremediated pathogens and your brewer system isn't
up to snuff, you could actually grow pathogens and apply them to the
environment. That is an especially bad idea when the 'environment' is raw
salad ingredients, but to a little kid, anything growing on a lawn is a 'raw
salad ingredient', potentially.

Keep that in mind.


My cautionary two cents,

Frank Teuton (another evil law school graduate)


----- Original Message -----
From: "George and Paulette Mouchet" <geomouchet_at_QNET.COM>
To: <compost_tea_at_yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, May 09, 2003 2:12 PM
Subject: [compost_tea] makin' compost, was Using my own compost, not a good
option ? ?


> Thanks, Mike.
>
> From what (I think) I've learned from this list, vermicompost is an
> excellent source of compost for AACT. Everyone says it's a great source
of
> beneficial fungi. I don't remember anyone mentioning potential problems
> with anerobic microbes or bad critters like E. Coli.
>
> Somehow the lack of oxygen issue that makes poor quality regular compost
> doesn't seem to be an issue with vermicompost. If this is true, then the
> solution to using "good" compost is to use only vermicompost in the AACT
> and not regular compost.
>
> Anyone have any thoughts?
>
> And while were at it, WHY would vermicompost not have the problems of
> regular compost?
>
> Paulette
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Bosko [SMTP:mjbosko_at_jmtsystems.com]
> Sent: Friday, May 09, 2003 7:35 AM
> To: compost_tea_at_yahoogroups.com
> Subject: RE: [compost_tea] Using my own compost, not a good option ? ?
>
> Well put Paulette. I too have visited the magicsoil site and had a couple
> back and forth emails with the him. I think its great what he's doing,
and
> for him doing it to sell, he probably has to. But. for the home or small
> ag
> person, its just not feasible. Its good to hear I'm not just blowing
smoke
> about the, and the only one with these, concerns I have shared.
>
> I do want to see tea applications grow. Like you said, its hard to spread
> the news if it involves buying machines and explaining that peoples home
> made compost isn't good enough, or worse that its harmful..
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: George and Paulette Mouchet [mailto:geomouchet_at_QNET.COM]
> Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2003 9:01 PM
> To: 'compost_tea_at_yahoogroups.com'
> Subject: RE: [compost_tea] Using my own compost, not a good option ? ?
>
> It would be helpful if we discussed how to make "good" compost. Most
folks
> don't understand the biology of composting. Take a look at past issues of
> the Compost Corner in Organic Gardening magazine. You'll see that a
common
> and accepted way to compost is to let the pile over the winter (without
> turning) and voila, you have compost the next spring.
>
> Yesterday, Dr. E. pointed us to an interesting Web site
> ( http://www.magicsoil.com/) where they are making AERATED compost on a
> commercial basis using a big machine running around the clock to blow air
> into the compost. Their research shows that unless the oxygen levels in
> the compost are above 15 percent, the compost is anerobic and not very
> good. AND, turning the compost every day isn't enough to get oxygen levels
> anywhere near this.
>
> This is discouraging to me as a home composter. How do we make "good"
> compost without rushing out to buy an air blower and running it 24/7? (I
> can't imagine what my neighbors would think!) The answer from John
> Crockett, a.k.a. Dr. Mike Robe of Mother Nature's Farms, Inc. was:
>
> Grainger has a number of tiny squirrel cage [air] blowers of different
> sizes, that will do it. IF you get a single 10' length of PVC pipe, and a
> cap for the tail end... and drill holes in that part which is going to be
> under your compost (excluding a distance from the edge equal to the height
> of the pile... then your tiny blower has to be fitted to the other end.
We
> get into valves to control flow rate, and I don't see a need for you to do
> that, unless you are going to go for optimizing turn around time....
> as you saw on our website, many of the byproducts of anaerobic
bacteria
> are phyto-toxic. I learned that the hard way, about 8 yrs go.
>
> I don't think this is very practical for the home composter. So that
> leaves us looking for a way to produce "good compost." It's pretty
> discouraging to think that the compost I make is probably loaded with
> anerobic critters, some of which are quite unhealthy.
>
> One of my goals in learning about "actively aerated compost tea" is to
> share what I've learned with the masses of organic gardeners who know
> nothing about it. To do this, I need to find a simple, inexpensive way to
> make and apply AACT. It's going to be a hard sell when you tell folks the
> compost they make is bad and they can't use it, and they must spend $150
on
> a machine and then keep buying "tested compost" and other "tested
> ingredients" in order to make a product that is "good." They'll probably
> keep right on making (and using) that anerobic tea in the bucket that was
> good enough for Grandma...
>
> Okay, I'm rambling...
>
> Paulette
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeff Lowenfels [SMTP:jeff_at_gardener.com]
> Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2003 8:03 PM
> To: compost_tea_at_yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [compost_tea] Using my own compost, not a good option ?
?
>
> Hey Mike,
>
> I think Tom is correct, it can be very frustrating to manage everything at
> once and the idea that you have to buy a certain brewer or compost can be
> frustrating too.You might feel better if you knew that even though I have
> unlimited supply to what some would say is the world's very best compost,
I
> STILL MAKE MY OWN COMPOST AND TRY IT IN TEAS ALL THE TIME! And even though
> I know that The KIS, Evans, Bob and BItti-0's give great results and have
> all of them and use them all, I STILL FOOL AROUND WITH MY OWN HOMEMADES.
>
> Of course you should use your own compost. And if you can make a machine
> that works, go for it, too!
>
> However, I do have to say there is something to having known, tested
> equipment and compost. Not only do you know you are not wasting time, but
> you don't have to go to the considerable expense repeating tests and doing
> tests to get your machine/compost/vermicompost etc to the point where it
> works! It isn't cheap. And, it gives you a standard from which to deviate
> as you learn more about teas and do go off on your own.
>
> We don't talk about composting on this site because we are not a
composting
> site. We do talk compost. We don't spend much time because many of us
adopt
> the idea that if you say the word compost you mean one thing: properly
made
> compost.
>
> Finally, we know of several folks in Agriculture that are embracing
compost
> teas. And I would hope by the time the Methyl Bromide ban rolls around,
> many more will be!
>
> I hope all that salmon you and Tom are eating comes from Alaska rivers and
> is not farmed.....
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jeff
>
>
>
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Received on Sat May 10 2003 - 11:39:37 EDT

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