[compost_tea] protozoa, hay and adding hay to tea

From: chris reid <reidchris_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Sun, 07 Dec 2003 11:09:29 -0500

It occurs to me that it would be helpful to tell the whole story of my
attempt to increase the protozoa numbers in my tea by adding hay soaked in
water and gave you some test result numbers.

I'll write it up when I have time, so people can see where I made mistakes
or probably contributed to the problem. My goal in keeping the hay water
separate is to let me deal with less unknowns, and get the tea making right
before adding the protozoa into the tea mix.

Till then, I don't think it's a good idea for anyone to draw any conclusions
about their tea making technique from what happened to me. I am saying that
*I* don't choose to add hay to my tea, but people should be aware that I
also am not set on one particular tea recipe yet and that I may also have
added too much bacterial food to the tea. There were too many unknown
factors going on here.

Bacteria grow by doubling every x period of time. I've been reading
Sylvia's soil microbiology text and last night did the math for myself: 1
bacterium doubling at the rate of once per hour in 24 hours becomes over 16
million bacterium. So, oxygen and food are the limiting factors.

My suspicion is that adding bacterial food when I was most likely
significantly adding to the bacterial count in the tea was probably not a
good starting point...more on this later.

Does anyone know whether conventional hay fields are sprayed for weeds
disease or anything? This did not occur to me at the time I purchased the
hay bale, I was just so happy to find a hay bale in the suburbs, but someone
has suggested that I get organic hay. In the suburbs. Right. This will be
fun, but I think I can find it.

Chris Reid



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Received on Sun Dec 07 2003 - 11:30:42 EST

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