Re: [compost_tea] Ceraels

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 18:17:31 EDT

I'm not quite sure what the point was that you were trying to make Bill, but
small and large scale folks are using AACT successfully. I'd like to
understand how to
reliably change plant species with compost or tea, but that's going to take a
larger scale study than we've been able to put together.

That applying compost and tea CAN change and shift the species in the field
is clear, but being able to predict WHICH species will disappear and which will
start to grow is not proving that clear. If high nitrate is allowing thistle
to germinate and grow, then dropping nitrate levels should do the trick. But
what gave you high nitrate in the roadside to begin? Air pollution? Then
how do you always get the biology to respond to the air pollution and take up
the excess N whenever a car drives by? Adding nitrate fertilizers always
encourages thistle, but sometimes the thistle does not do that well. What was
different?

Calcium can result in dandelions getting out-competed. But if you don't add
enough calcium you see little effect. What holds on to calcium in the soil?
What holds ADDED calcium?

Where is your soil right now, and what shift in nutrients or biology will
select against the weeds?

To do a good job understanding all this, we need chemistry taken, biology
taken, and we need to know how it shifts through the year. Then we could put
together some hypothesis to test........

It's a big job to do well. We have hints and ideas. Get good biology in the
soil, let it do the normal set of interactions, with us encouraging maximum
biology at every step, and the system seems to get back into a good balance.
Could we make it go faster? Could we understand excalty what the improtant
factors are? Sure. But it takes time. And money.

So, send money............ :-)

Elaine
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 Jul 23 2003 - 22:05:12 EDT

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