Re: [compost_tea] Re: Simple CT maker and CT recipe

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Tue, 13 May 2003 13:20:33 EDT

The only way you know for certain that a new ingredient is beneficial or
detrimental to the organisms in the brew is to test it, looking for ACTIVE
organism impacts.

Plate count methods do not normally have the ability to detect these changes.

I have not seen problems with honey negatively impacting beneficial organisms
in the tea. There is impact on neutral bacterial species, and on pathogenic
bacteria, but not on the "good guys". That's the other thing to recognize -
it is a good thing if the "bad" bacteria are harmed. So you cannot reply to
total bacterial counts, or plate count bacterial counts alone. Some
assessment of beneficial organisms is a good idea.

That's why we have started doing the Beneficial Organism Assay.

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 Tue May 13 2003 - 14:06:00 EDT

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