Re: [compost_tea] compost tea and biodynamics

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2003 10:17:52 -0400

Hi Gail -

Allan Balliet is the better person to answer some of your questions, since he is an expert in biodynamics and does biodynamic farming.

But, let me put ny two cents worth in :-)

> Where can I get information on the Malcolm Rae machine.
> Or any other device to create an alternate left spin,
> right spin water vortex.

The Malcolm Rae machine is a small device that is supposed to impart energy into materials from a distance. Hugh Lovell is the person to contact about that device. Radionic machines are available from various sources, but you have to be very careful in the US not to run into legal problems when using them. The medical community has basically outlawed them, and you cannot use them for anything related to cures for human diseases or conditions. For agriculture, the legal situation is more nebulous.

The idea with htese machines is to detect substances using the frequency wavelengths that are unique signals of any particular material or grouping of cells. These frequencies do exist, as the quantum physicists have shown. The ability to detect those signals reliably is the not-well-documented situation here. Each person can get very different readings for any item being measured. So, needs more work, huh?

For stirring BD preps and keeping them aerobic, which I think would serve to make the preps more consistent from batch to batch, you would need a compost tea machine like the ones from KIS or EPM or Alaska Giant, or WormGold, or Norsen.

So BD preps are meant to go anaerobic for a while, however, I believe. Again, data are lacking on this, but in the case of the horsetail preps, I think the effective material in helping against weeds is actually an anerobic product - but is it a product of fermentative anaerobic conditions or putrefactive anaerobic organisms? So, some work to do here.

The flow forms are aerator units. In the data we have, unfortunately only replicated one time so not publishable from a scientific point of view, each time the water went through a single flow form, the increase in oxygen in the water was 0.5 mg/L. If you knew the oxygen demand of your prep, you could then figure out the number of flow forms needed to keep the prep aerobic.

But remember that the preps are just ADDED to your compost or teas, as I understand. The preps are INOCULA that you use to add the right biology to your compost or compost tea as you are making the tea. Please realize that no biodynamic grower would use my terminology to explain what they are doing. They don't think of preps as inocula. That's a microbiologist adding their two cents worth in here. The preps are inocula, but BD practitioners don't think of them that way.

But where I was getting to is, that a BD prep is not sprayed out the way you spray out a compost tea. You add the prep to the compost or the tea. Is that right Allan?

> As regards what biodynamic preps would
> add to compost tea, would a bovis rating
> of any value.
 
What is a bovis rating? I'm sure I'm just being slow here, but it isn't making sense to me what you are asking. Can you clarify please?

Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
SFI Corvallis, OR
SFI Port Jefferson, NY
SFI Lismore, NSW, Australia
SFI Hilversum, The Netherlands
SFI Cambridge, New Zealand
www.soilfoodweb.com

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Received on Wed Sep 17 2003 - 10:57:15 EDT

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