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

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 11:02:32 -0500

At SFI this fall, we did a phone survey of the clients we have worked with over the last few years.

About 25% said that they test with SFI once a year, because they have achieved the reduction in pesticide and fertilizer applications that they were told were possible. They make good compost, and/or good tea, and use them the way SFI recommends. Some of them are the people we worked with to develop the program. It is possible to get completely off of the toxics using the right biology.

But you have to be willing to make certain the right biology is present and functioning properly for the plant you are trying to grow. If you never check, then when nature throws you a loop, it's guess and by gosh to know what to do to rescue the biology correctly and get your plant back into a condition of health quickly.

Another 50% of our clients are having partial success, and they realize they need to improve their biology in some fashion. So they are testing a bit more frequently than once a year.

The remaining 25% had various reasons they were testing more, or less. Some are having trouble obtaining good tea results, and as a result, their plant results are less than what they should be able to obtain. We work fairly closely with some of these folks. The tea machine maker they bought their machine from tries to work with them, and I think most of them have moved forward in the tea production arena.

Some are re-thinking the whole paradigm shift. It takes effort to change, and some people just like the easy road. It's their choice to continue to be part of the problem, and not the solution. Given the shocking condition of water in this country and around the world, all of the "easy-roaders" will be back in a few years to learn from those of us who are at the cutting edge now, figuring out the solution to contaminated soil and thus water.

There will always be people who try something, don't follow the directions, and give up when they can't get it to work. Tea requires attention to the machine, to the compost used, and to the added foods for the microbes. Tea requires attention to the sprayer and application methods. That's why this list is so useful. A community of people working out what is needed. I don't know everything, especially the mechanical, engineering end of things.

Most of the documentation that tea machines can extract and grow the beneficial aerobic organisms should be carried out by the company making the tea machine. Tea-riffic, WormGold, KIS, EPM, BnBrewers (did I forget anyone?) all make tea makers that have been documented to routinely extract and grow the desired organisms. Follow the directions for the machine you decide on, make good tea. Clean the tea maker properly, and keep making great tea. These companies are responsible, and have the data to show it.

Don't use machines made by those who cannot document that their machines extract or grow the desired organisms. If someone says SFI doesn't know what they are doing, you should probably suspect that they are from a company that cannot get decent biology in their tea or compost.

So, Hi-yield, what company you with?

Any grower should be wise enough to ask for the numbers showing decent biology before they purchase anything. That's where growers have clout - before they buy. No evidence that the product does what the machine maker says it can? Don't buy the product.

No evidence that the compost is actually compost? Keep searching. Your nose is quite helpful in obtaining data whether the compost is decent or not, but the final proof has to be in whether the bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes are in the compost. The company you buy the compost from should be expected to have data documenting the biology.

So, failure is rare when there's just a bit of checking out the situation.

But if you are like Hi-Yield, making statements without checking out the truth, failure is the likely outcome.

So, have we all reached the same conclusion about Hi-Yield? They refuse to identify themselves by name, location, etc. They clearly have no clue about what Soil Foodweb does. They are negative without knowing what they are talking about.

Good people do not behave like that.

At Soil Foodweb, we do not culture organisms. We use particular activity stains, or total biomass stains, and ID and count organisms using microscopes. What we do is called direct enumeration.

Any time you want to visit an SFI lab and see what we do, you are welcome to stop by. It takes about 20 minutes to prepare your sample, and get it to the microscope so you can look at your organisms in your own sample. We'll give you a quick tour of the lab while the sample is being weighed out, stained, and put on the microscope slide.

Most of the organisms in soil, or compost or compost tea cannot be cultured in the lab. But anytime you want, you can look at them using a microscope.

Think about how you determine if a person is a person. You don't have to grow them, or culture them, you look at them. Do they have the basic human shape? Then they are human. (How good a human they are is another story....) That's what SFI does with total bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes and mycorrhizal fungi biomass measurements - we make sure they have the correct morphology, then measure their length and width.

We use an activity stain to determine active biomass. We know the normal activity and total biomass needed to grow different kinds of plants at different seasons in different soils. On the SFI report, we tell you what our database of well over 100,000 samples from around the world shows to be the minimum desired range for each organism group in order to grow your plants without pesticides, or high amounts of inorganic fertilizers. Those numbers change with season, with soil type, with crop, etc.

If you want to take years to get your soil to a condition of health, and maybe never actaully get there, that's your choice.

If you want to get to a healthy condition rapidly, reduce costs (pesticides no longer needed, no more fungicides, insecticides, nematicides, etc), reduce watering needs, reduce compaction in your soil, then you need to know what's in your soil, and what needs to be "fixed", brought up to the right levels so your plants aren't stressed.

Everything SFI does is relative to improving plant growth. We have done that testing. So for someone to say there's no relation between the SFI assays and what's going on with plant yield is a total mis-representation.

I don't do well with people who twist the truth, Hi-yield. Perhaps you don't mean to be a twister of the truth, maybe you are just ignorant. But being ignorant doesn't justify your behavior. Check your facts before making statements that are not true.

Fact: if you do a whole Soil Foodweb test, the cost is about $250. That includes total bacteria, active bacteria, total fungi, active fungi, flagellates, amoebae, ciliates, nematodes identified to genus and feeding group, and mycorrhizal colonization of the roots, and assessment of disease on the roots.

You can't get that level of knowledge from plate counts (which cost more than whole foodweb assessments). You can't begin to get the knowledge from a soil chemistry test that will help you get the soil into a condition that toxic chemicals are no longer needed. Soil chemistry tests try to tell you that you need MORE toxic chemicals, usually.

The four basic assays, active bacteria, total bacteria, active fungi, total fungi are about $100 (pre-discount for filling out the paperwork completely). If you want to get started, do just that set of four tests to make sure the base of the foodweb is right first. Then once those are in shape, after you have fixed them to be right to support the plant you want to grow, then work on protozoa, nematodes and mycorrhizal fungi.

If math is done correctly, the cost of a single SFI test is no where near the $600 that Hi-Yield said the tests cost. If you do the whole set of foodweb tests, the cost is still no where near what Hi-Yield claimed.

Statements that someone knows lots of people who have tried tea and have given up is sad. Why would someone say that, without offering any solid information? Hoping to anger people on this list, or trying to dissuade folks from using tea? The fact that Hi-Yield won't reveal who they are, or where they are from suggests a significant lack of honesty, and a hidden agenda.

There will always be nay-sayers. The rest of us get to forge ahead without them. They'll come along when they notice that no one is listening to them.

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 Thu Nov 20 2003 - 12:46:08 EST

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