Re: [compost_tea] Re: back pack sprayers to use for compost teas?

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 22:31:41 -0500

John asked for a comment on hydrogen peroxide. I've been known to use 15% H2O2 with really badly bio-filmed tanks, so you do what you have to in order to get the tank clean.

H2O2 reacts rapidly in environmental conditions, so is typically less likely to stick around and cause problems. Most aerobic organisms make catalase, which is an enzyme that breaks down H2O2 into water and oxygen.

Chlorine bleach is another alternative cleaner, but then you have to deal with the chlorine water. Oxy-Clean is another cleaner, which if I recall correctly, is OMRI approved? So using cleaners to remove bio-films is quite possible. The cleaners need to be degradable by aerobic microbes.

I've also been upside down in a few brewers in order to scrub bio-film out of places that were hard to reach. It is important to buy brewers and sprayers that don't leave little surprises.

For instance, the brewer that uses disc-diffusers - please check the bottom of the discs. They accumulate bio-film with each brew. You HAVE to clean them. The manufacturer does not inform his clients about this problem when he talks about how "easy" it is to clean this machine. It is NOT 20 minutes to clean this machine.

You have to take the pipes off that hold the discs, turn the discs over, blast the under-sides clean, and re-attach. Twenty minutes to clean? I don't think so.

But not hours to clean. It is relative. I've used brewers that take hours to clean, even when using bleach, H2O2, or other cleaners. Pipes with 90 degree turns in them are not recommended. Brewer-makers that say that the haven't seen any effect of the 90 degree turn need to show you that on the fifth, sixth, or tenth brew, the tea organisms are still just as good as on the first tea brew.

I don't argue with people about their machine designs anymore. I tell them what is what, and if they choose to ignore me, it just means that their clients will go elsewhere when their machine cannot get good numbers of organisms in the tea.

My experience with bio-films comes from the Microbe-Brewer whose design was changed from the inventor's plan by Growing Solutions. That tea maker was then sold without being adequately tested for the effect of those changes. The manufacturer said that the pipes couldn't have that much effect. I think we showed how wrong that belief was.

It isn't the first tea, or third or fourth tea that you start to see an impact of bio-film developing in a pipe. It's the fifth, the tenth, the twelfth..... Once bio-film builds up, you will not be able to make a good tea. When will the bio-film get going?

If you clean with a good cleaner, then you MAY get the bio-film dealt with and the pipe cleaned out. IF the bio-film gets really bad, you may have to take the pipe apart and scrub.

But when you once could make good tea, but now can't, suspect a bio-film developing and getting worse and worse as time goes by. A 90 degree turn may not give trouble until the tea brewer has been in use for awhile. But it will, sooner or later, result in poor tea. Adequate MAY avoid the problem. We need more data on that.


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 Dec 16 2003 - 23:02:29 EST

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