Re: [compost_tea] Recent posts

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 14:35:09 -0500

Hi Margaret -

Look out, another long one! My last day of vacation, so I had the time!

Most small gardeners don't need to consider all the complex issues that large-scale, commercial growers need to be concerned about.

Consultants, as well, have to worry about making sure their advice is the best there is, and when we can drop water use between 30% to 75% in the first crop after improving soil biology, it can be critical to get the biology right.

If you don't get the biology back into the soil, and get it right for the plant you want to grow, you may not get the benefits you desire. I tend to want to get people there ASAP, and in the commercial world, it is critical to get people there ASAP. So, getting things right in the compost and the tea is critical - and we get picky about having things "right".

But that is different for most back-yard gardeners since they would just like to see the seeds germinate, grow, be pretty, and have a good crop. Not quite as "tootsies to the fire" as commercial growers. Back-yard gardeners aren't going to lose their house and yard if they don't make top-yields. commercial growers will, and so we get very into-the-details when we work with folks like Ted, or Dennis, or Ray.

It is still important to get as many of the benefits to your small scale growers as possible, however. Reduce their water use, reduce (and most likely completely eliminate) pesticides and inorganic fertilizer use (and therefore reduce costs as well as toxic material), improve soil structure so roots go deeper, and survive the summer dry period without watering, or requiring a whole bunch of fussing.

Getting soil biology right for your plants lets all that happen. We've done it, so we know it's possible. and "done it" in your part of the world, so we have experience there.

Of course, hand-in-hand with biology, we need to make sure you have the nutrients in the soil (they may have leached out or been gassed off during abusive chemical treatment of the soil, so calcium, manganese, zinc, iron, and other nutrients may actually have to be added, even in a very young soil parent material). If you test one typical garden for nutrients left after the typical chemical approach, you get a good handle on where everyone is with their garden.

Choose an example garden, typical of the area you are in. Do soil chemistry and soil biology samples. Ah, but not just one kind of test -

Step one - do a total N, P, K, and total micronutrient test which is a total combustion followed by analysis. OR, do a USDA, or University, A&L type harsh-extractant test, wihch will give you TOTAL levels of nutrients, most of which are not plant available and won't become plant available for about the next 1000 years. But these results will tell you what is truly GONE from your soil.

Do this once, and it should be good for the next oh, 10 years. It may be that the local extension service already has this kind of data for your soils, or the local soil chemist at a local University. So check that resource first, ok? But interpret the result correctly. Don't imagine that the numbers mean that the nutrients are going to be available to the plants any time soon! This is just an assessment of what is held in the PARENT MATERIAL, and what may have been totally wiped out by conventional practices.

Step two - do an Albrecht kind of soil chemistry test. The lab? Perry Lab in Missouri. This tells you what nutrients will potentially be available over the next couple years. And it tells you if something is missing from what the plants will potentially be able to access. If the biology is right, these nutrients will become available next summer. Almost invariably, calcium will be WAY out-of-whack, becasue it has been leached from your soil over the toxic chemical era we've been through. Iron will be high, but completely unavailable, and without the right fungi to solubilize that iron, you will have moss in your lawn. Potassium is often lacking too, so that has to be fixed.

But the way to fix deficiencies or excesses are NOT by adding more chemicals. There's a reason you lost those nutrients to begin with - they were in your soil in Idaho, I guarantee it. The soils there are VERY young, and should have all the nutrients you need. But we have exited them because of the chemicals and tillage programs recommended over the last 60 years. We didn't know better, so let's not get into blame mode. Let's just move on....

So, with the Albrecht test, you know what nutrients need to be added. But now, how to add them? In hte compost or the compost tea. Easy.

But let's do one more test, of what is available, right now, for your plant.

Step 3 - Reams testing (International Ag Lab in the US, EAL Southern Cross lab in OZ, BLGG in Europe, others? Remind me please...) tells you what is available to the plant in solution right now. If you put your seed in the soil today, are there enough nutrients to get it to germinate? If not, then yes, we need to add those available nutrients right now, and work on the biology at the same time to get the nearly-available nutrients (Albrecht test) into the available (Reams test) pool.

I'm simplifying here, but don't let's make this any more difficult for beginners to understand. We can get into the special cases and the exceptions once those exceptions are encountered, ok?

So, now, you have data on: total nutrient pools, the soon-to-be-available pool, and the actually available pool. You will have recommendations to add all kinds of chemicals from these labs. Please realize, however, that many of them are tied into chemical sales, so they will push you strongly to "solve" your problems by adding in salts.

Yep, all those inorganic additions they are telling you to make are salts. Which kill the biology. Which means you will lose those organisms that hold those nutrients, if you use those salts. And that leads to leaching, and further loss of those nutrients. Which means, you get to buy more next year.

Hum, the American way? If the consumer doesn't know any better, get them to buy more. Most chemical salespeople don't know what they are doing to soil health by adding these salts and toxic materials. Or they don't want to believe what they are doing. In the case of academics saying "there's no data", my conclusion is that they are flat out incapable of reading the recent scientific literature. They have their Ph.D., why should they have to keep up in the literature?

Direct academics saying t here are no data to the Ecological Monograph written in 1985, by Ingham et al (different IOngham, not me as senior author) on the impact of soil biology on plant growth. Or have them look at the SFI website and read some of the books on our reference list, or my list of peer-reviewed papers.

But, moving along, now you understand, from the chemical tests, what is present in your soil, and what you need to add.

Step four - soil food web assessment. What biology is lacking in your soil? You can get a pretty good idea just by observing. The soil foodweb website goes over look-see information you should be paying attention to. I've written them up before for this list-serve, so please look at Chris Reid's document where she has summarized the topics on this list serve.

So, do not add salts to your soil. If you must add LOTS of nutrients, add them to your compost. The FUNCTION of biology is to, in part, increase the holding of those nutrients. So, reduce any recommendation from the soil chemistry labs by a factor of about 10 times less than what they recommended, and that addition goes into the COMPOST. Beginning or end of cycle seems to make no difference, as long as you give the biology at least a week to recover and retain.

Example: Albrecht test says you need 8 tons of lime per ac. Don't do that, you are wasting money, and harming surface and ground water. A ton is about 2000 pounds, so the recommendation is to put 1600 pounds of lime per acre. That's a chunk of change, plus think about trying to actually spread 1600 pounds. That's a chunk of change too.

Instead, do what Arden Anderson and I have been demonstrating works. If the recommendation is 8 tons (1600 pounds) of lime, reduce that amount by 10 times (to 160 pounds). Add 160 pounds of lime per 1000 pounds (half a ton) of compost (or 80 pounds per ton). Let the organisms have a week or more to deal with that addition, and spread that compost out at a minimum of half ton per acre. A ton is better, 5 tons better, etc. It's really addition of carbon to your soil that makes the greatest difference. The calcium is just along for the ride, and you have it in the right proportion to the carbon in compost at this point.

Not only to you get the equivalent of 8 tons of lime, but you enhance your biology. Make sure the compost was made with good fungal foods, so you get the organism that holds the calcium in the soil, and doesn't let it leach.

Add any other "lacking nutrient" to your compost - typically:

- fish hydrolysate (please make sure you check mercury levels in the product - ASK the seller for the DATA before buying!). We have data on Neptune's Harvest, showing that it really enhances fungi. See the SFI website for the data. Organic Gem as well, and has good calcium levels. Add that to your compost instead of the lime, which is a salt and can kill some of the beneficials. Amount to add depends on the nutrients you need to add to the compost. Read the label on the fish to figure that out. Sandy at Neptune's Harvest, Ray Gore for Organic Gem, or Bob Posthuma for GeoFish can give you the recommendations given the amount of nutrient you need. Can't say anything about Dramm, I don't commnicate with their salespeople.

- kelp (cold water kelp has more nutrients in it than warm water kelp. Make sure the SALT level is ok - again, get the nutrient analysis from the company. Make sure salt is less than toxic levels.

Also, as I understand, Acadian kelp has lost their organic accreditation, because of too high acid extraction in their process or something like that. Sorry, I don't always remember everything anymore. But, look around for some other organically accredited kelp. Better for your compost organisms, and your plants. Strong acids denature the nutrients and prevent your plants from being able to obtain the nutrients.

- soft rock. We've been looking at soft rock and rock dusts, and folks! LOOK OUT! Pay attention to the zinc, copper and lead levels in some of that material! Bad news! You MUST get the chemical analysis on these things.

Margaret, here's where your column can be really useful to your readers. If you do the checking, and put the nutrient analyses on your website for the products that are available locally, you can point out what has dangerous levels. You don't want to tell people not to buy something, or you open yourself up to law suits. But you can say "This product does not have adequate levels", or you can say "This product has levels of mercury above EPA or USDA hazard levels". Most people understand they shouldn't be putting something toxic into their soils.

I've been threatened with "legal action" from compost tea machine makers, but they have no basis for their claims, since I don't tell anyone not to buy any particular machine. I just say, here are the data from all the different tea machines. If you don't believe those are the levels those machines get, test your tea. Over and over again, when we ask what happened to the biology in a low-fungi, low protozoa tea, the person confesses that they bought one of the machines that can't produce decent tea. Then we work with them to get them to understand how to make those machines give decent tea. They can be modified to be ok.

Your choice to buy a machine that can't produce a compost tea with the biological levels established as giving full benefit. People always have the option to do whatever they please, but then don't come complain to me when the tea from those machines doesn't give all the benefits you think you should be getting. If the tea lacks the fungal biomass, protozoa and nematode numbers that you need to achieve, you won't get all the benefits.

Oh, and KIS is about to come out with their larger machines, and you should see the fungal extraction they are getting! Of course, making sure the compost has the fungi in it to begin with is very important.

and so we come to .....

- compost usually has all the nutrients your plant needs, plus the biology, if it was made correctly. Aerobic, never stinky, temperature did not get above 155 to 160 F. Again, as a garden columnist, you might pull readers in by doing columns on how the local compost sources do their composting, and what the nutrients and biology therefore are in that "compost". Readers love it when they can go to a local source and find out what is the best.

You can rank composts by chemical and biology components, or by the process they use to compost - least smelly, temperature in a good range. Rank worm compost by the concentration of worms in the bins, time between adding wastes into the bin, and removal of material as finished worm compost.

You have to avoid saying "buy this because it is best" - that's law suit land. But you can rank things on objective things like how much nitrate (bad if it's above a certain level, and that level is established by USDA, although I enjoy that the acceptable nitrate level is going down, and down and down), biomass of beneficial fungi (level established by SFI based on if above this level of biomass, and with foods present, they will establish and grow in the soil), protozoan numbers, etc.

Standards should always go back to the plant response when that material is placed in or near the root system of the plant. That is what we do at SFI. If it doesn't give the benefits we talk about as being possible, then we'll point that out.

Hard to achieve? No, not if you are honest and willing to do the necessary work to get there.

Some people say that SFI standards are impossible and too complex, and that SFI plays favorites. They claim they only get in the club if they achieve the standards. Well, duh! That's the way it should be. Orange juice can only be labeled orange juice if it contains more than 51% orange juice. What an impossible standard! And you can only get into the orange juice club if you pass that standard! Gasp!

If people can't achieve the standards, then they claim that the standards aren't real? What does that in fact tell you about the person doing the critisizing? That perhaps they can't achieve the standards, and anything they can't achieve must be stupid? Sour grapes, anyone?

SFI standards are based on getting plants to grow without disease (so no pesticides needed), on reducing weeds (so herbicides not needed), on reducing inorganic fertilizer use (so no inorganic fertilizer needed), reducing water use by the system (so less watering), on increasing yields (no disease, better water retention and nutrient retention), AND higher yields? Yep.

If the biology isn't right, the benefits won't occur - all of the benefits.

If part of the right biology is achieved, will only part of the benefits occur? Yes. And that's good enough for some people. But not for me.

All of the benefits are possible and can be easily achieved, if things are done right.

Not willing to make decent compost? Or demand that compost bought from someone else is documented to have the biology needed? Where's the documentation?

There's a bridge that a salesperson I know would love to sell you. You can get a really nice deed and everything. Oh, you want to see the bridge first? Dang, asking for data....

Not willing to make sure the tea machine is clean, which means cleaning the BOTTOM of all surfaces that are in the machine each time? Have a tea machine that accumulates grunge on the bottom of the tea machine while brewing? You aren't going to be able to deal with mildew when conditions are right for a mildew outbreak.

Black spot? Any bacterial tea can deal with that. But what if you are still having black spot problems even when you are using tea? It says you really don't understand what tea is all about, and the biology needed to do the job was killed before it could do the job. I've talked about the things you have to consider asnd the easy ways to determine this without testing.

Think about what you are doing, and seek advice from an SFI advisor, all of whom have had training in the things they need to think about when it comes to making great tea.

Lots of potential factors to think about, but most gardeners don't need to go through the whole list.

Think about gardening - there's a huge complexity to think about, but most people don't have to - they have you to help them.

That's why garden columnists exist. Growing plants can be a real mind-boggling experience what with all the details that COULD be playing a part.

Using compost tea can be just the same, but just a little experience, and you can cut the list of things to consider.

So, Margaret, I would love to work with you on doing a write-up for your column, or an on-going column for your small gardeners, that would tell them how to get their biology right, for your area, your climate, your soils, and the condition the soil is in now.

You might want to check the SFI website - we are updating the website, and we have a section I'm working on right now called "How does your garden grow?" It would be great if I could link to your website to get people local to you to read your information pertinent to their gardens.

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 Jan 20 2004 - 17:12:45 EST

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