[compost_tea] Different kinds of soil tests - SFI and NPK

From: chriscreid <reidchris_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 21:56:11 -0000

Hi_yield1 said:

 I can have my soil looked at locally for about 35 dollars so that's
> why most folks balk at 250 to 600 dollars. The money would be
better spent at home adding the above mentioned to your garden. I
know I have a very robust healthy food web in place in my garden
because of the hi_yields I get year after year even long before I
tried CT. I just think Brewers and Buyers need to beware of buying
something they might already have!!

REPLY TO Hi_yield1,

I will send you off-line a sample of an SFI soil report, so you can
see the difference between your $35 soil test and what SFI does. I
am not trying to sell you, just trying to explain the difference.
It provides different information, and you can use it in conjunction
with your NPK type soil test to try to get a fuller picture of
what's going on in your soil. In fact, it's helpful to give this
info to SFI when you send in a soil biology assay request, as I
understand it.

So take a look, and if this is the info you are getting for $35,
send me the name of your lab! And send it really quick before they
go out of business. By the way, there is some explanation on the
report, but in a number of cases more info is necessary to
understand what's happening and how to understand and make use of
the report. SFI goes over the report with you and helps you
understand what program to put in place to help balance the food web.

I think you raise a very good point and I happen to agree with you
in several areas. I think that a home composter who understands how
to make good thermal compost or vermicompost probably has no need
for compost tea, and can most economically take care of his or her
garden with compost. Learning how to brew tea and apply it and
understand your soil is time consuming and expensive for a home
gardener. Some home gardeners may be interested in learning, or
curious about soil biology and use tea as a way of exploring the
topic, or willing to spend the money, but compost tea is at not at
the top of my list of something home gardeners need to do.

On the addition of molasses to your tea as an add-on to the recipe,
no matter which recipe you're using, I recommend you not add it.
You are likely to be making your tea even more bacterial. a little
molasses goes a very, very long way. In practice it's primarily a
bacterial food, tho some of the complex sugars could feed fungi, per
Elaine Ingham.

Most tea makers can make bacterial tea no problem -- don't even have
to add much food to compost to get bacterial tea. But there IS such
a thing as too much. Beware. What happens with too much bacteria?
Too much bacteria and you'll overwhelm the fungi, and you need the
fungi to be present in the tea, so it can be added to the soil in
order to have a good food web and to do the kinds of health
promotion/disease opportunity reduction that good tea can do. OR
you can end up with too many organisms, probably bacteria. What
happens with too many organisms? The tea goes anaerobic. If it
goes anaerobic, you end up with no fungi. And there goes an
important component of disease opportunity reduction.

With all you are adding to your soil, how are you doing in terms of
your plants' disease resistance? Do you find you need to use any
kind of controls? How is your NPK soil test turning out in terms of
ppms of nutrient levels? Do you know the name of the soil test you
are using (different soil tests have different methods of estimating
the NPK in your soil).

You didn't say what kind of veggies you are growing, by the way. I
think with some of the Brassicas, the recommendations might be
different than they would be for say pumpkins or squash.

Chris Reid


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Received on Tue Nov 18 2003 - 18:19:11 EST

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