Re: [compost_tea] Systemic bacteria..

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 10:45:17 -0500

Hi Laura -

To document that the bacteria are inside and systemic in the plant means you have to show pictures of the plant tissues with bacteria inside the xylem.

I get people claiming systemic microbial growth, but it is just the microbes being carried all over the surface of the plant by the taxicabs in the real world - microarthropods, nematodes, insects, protozoa. The bacteria or fungus are not inside the plant.

There is some work on fungi that normally live in trees. Typically, this group (just a few species) live in the sap of trees. They do not grow to high densities, but they are present in many trees. Systemic, not harmful, perhaps beneficial, but no one knows.

Does it make tree growing un-scientific that this fungus has not been investigated?

That's what has been suggested about compost tea. Because we haven't figured out every factor, tea-making is un-scientific?

Bizarre definition of science!

If you are doing science, you have to use the scientific method. We are using that approach, and therefore being scientific about compost tea. We are just at an early stage of the scientific method with respect to compost tea.

But think about the fact that we do not yet compeletely understand the human body and how it works. Does that make medicine un-scientific?

So, just because we have only begun to apply scientific principles to our understanding of compost tea does not mean a label of pseudo-science can be applied here.

I started looking at compost tea in 1978, and really only had funding to study it since 1990 or there abouts. Compost tea has been around since the Roman Empire in various guises. People have used and applied tea with variable results all through the histroy of agriculture. That's the problem - the methods of production were so random that the end results was not reproducble.

What is new and different NOW is the use of science to try to understand compost tea. We have carved off a section of the methods used to make compost tea, and started to become consistent.

Actively aerated compost tea gives you the same product, within certain parameters, time after time. You need to make sure the compost has the organisms needed, that the foods you give them feed the good guys, that aeration maintains aerobic conditions, and temperature remains in the range where the organisms will grow. Mixing is important as well.

You have to make sure the way you apply the orgnaisms doesn't kill them too. A little extra food as they are sent out and establish homes on your leaf or root surfaces helps alot too.

Think of your organisms in the tea as tiny little Pilgrims on their way to the New World. Help them out as much as you can, but not too much, or they won't be able to survive in that new world on the leaf surface.

You want them to be tough enough to survive (no luxury items going with them), but they need some basic survival gear in order to make the trip, and survive at the other end.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Aren't you glad we're at this end of the American colonization process?

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 Tue Nov 25 2003 - 11:26:24 EST

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