Re: [compost_tea] Plant Teas Experiment

From: Robert Norsen <bnbrew_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 23:37:45 -0800 (PST)

Hi Scott - Terrible luck to have your pump slow down after adding all that nutrient to your ACT. If you or others have that happen rather than letting the brew go anaerobic, rush your vacume cleaner or leaf blower system into action. You can inject enough air with these machines to cope with most any situation. Warning - don;t depend on this for very long. And don't push the outlet more than about 3' deep. If the air doesn't flow freely the blower will overheat. Been there done that. Bob

Scott Alexander <daylily_at_bigpond.com> wrote:
Further to my plant tea experiment - on the 10th day of aerating the 50 gallons of plant tea, the D O rose to 6 ppm and I reckoned it was going to be OK to add to the 200 gallons of CT. BUT on the night of the full moon the wind was blowing so strongly I decided to apply it the following night. On the 11 th day the plant tea D O rose to 7.1 ppm and it had a lovely sweet smell.
I added it to the 200 gallons of CT ( D O of 8 ppm after 3 days od brewing) and then added 2 gallons of molasses and 2 gal of a blend of fish, seaweed and fulvic acid and then pressed the button. Somehow the gremlins got into my big irrigation pump and it decided to operate at about 50% power so I switched it off.
As you can imagine the CT mixture went horribly anaerobic very quickly. I aded more aeration to the tank and it has a D O of 4.5 ppm at the moment.
 
Elaine wrote "The only way to know what's in the plant tea is to look at the microbes. The only way to know what effect it will have on the AACT is to measure the biology in the AACT BEFORE adding the plant tea, and then AFTER the plant tea is added.
Then you would know what happened, and hopefully, you would tell the rest of us!"
 
What I really would like to know is this - what are the quantities of the different minerals which the weeds and herbs have extracted from the soil. But I guess such testing would be very expensive so I would just have to accept that plant teas can be very beneficial ( as described in ATTRA articles). What I think I've dicovered is that plant material will break down really well and release minerals being held in the plant tissue if a little molasses and compost is added to the water and it is aerated for about 10 days.
 
ELAINE - Re the microbes in the plant tea - wouldn't they be predominatly bacterial? I couldn't imagine the plant tea having any affect on the AACT in the short time the two would be mixed together just prior to being applied.

 
Scott
 


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Received on Sat Jan 10 2004 - 11:18:29 EST

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