Re: [compost_tea] chitin, chitinase, crab shells

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Sat, 18 Oct 2003 13:40:03 -0400

Yes, Jeff is right. Grinding up shells isn't the same as having an extracted pure product. Microbes work on surfaces, and if most of the food resource is still in chunk form, the microbes can't get to it.

It's like putting leonardite in your tea. Doesn't do a thing except destroy your pump, because the microbes can't chew through all the other stuff in leonardite (the pre-coal mineral that contains - relatively speaking - high amounts of humic acids) to get to the humic acids in a 24 hour period.

The microbes can't do much to leonardite in even a few weeks, although maybe in a couple months some benefit of selecting for humic acid that use organisms would occur. So, leonardite into the soil makes sense, but add the organisms that can use this pre-coal material (mostly fungi).

But adding to the tea? Not helping much.....

Same with chitin. Chunks of shell don't help much in a tea. Just not enough time for use to happen. If you ground up the material, then more surface area for the critters to chew on. But still, 24 hours? Not likely a benefit in the tea - but yes, benefit in the soil.

Adding chunky foods to the tea and getting it spread on the soil works - the orgnaisms will use the food in the soil and give long term benefits.

If you want to have effects in the tea, you need to use extracted, higher percentage chitin containing materials. Or humic acid materials (see above discussion).

Having the pure stuff means the chitin-using critters that seem to have highly competitive actions, and chew up insect larvae in the soil, will grow in the tea.

The question ends up, cost-benefit.

So, as we keep educating people to "think like a microbe", you'll all be able to answer these questions on your own.

Must be the weekend, I just got a flash of the MTV platinum song "walk like an egyptian" by Cindy Louper (?- well, name is close) from a few years ago.

"Just think like a microbe....."

Who wants to go for this one? :-)


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 Sat Oct 18 2003 - 14:59:01 EDT

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