Re: [compost_tea] Re: chelating minerals with ACT

From: David Anderson <danderson_at_backpackgeartest.org>
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2004 21:59:08 -0700
Hi Jimmy,

You may not know better than me about CT since we are both learning, but
given your time on the farm, you sure as hell know a lot more than me
about growing things. The only farming I ever get to do is when I go
help friends on their farms.

I'm just a computer geek that got bitten by the organic gardening bug
when I was growing up, due in large part to having a couple of retired
farmers living in my neighborhood. They spent their lives working in
chemical farming and refused to even go near commercial produce anymore.
And it was tough to argue with them, when they had the lushest gardens
around, with by far the best tasting veggies.

Long before SFI, Russ would say "I'm a soil man, you have to feed the
soil." I never heard him talk about feeding the plants, it was always
about feeding the soil. I guess that is what intrigues me the most about
the discussion around ACT, is that it sounds a lot like what I was told
by the best gardener I ever knew all those decades ago.

So If you as a natural farmer/rancher know even a fraction of what those
old guys knew (and you may well know more than them), you are way ahead
of me.

While it certainly doesn't make sense to try and put all the nutrients
that your land needs in the CT to chelate it, what I was trying to
suggest is that it does make sense to add *some* of the minerals in the
form that you are using into your compost. This will encourage the
organisms that will then be ready to do the work for you when you apply
the CT to the soil.

On the other hand, if you are like me and working on garden scale, it
would be quite reasonable to consider the possibility of running a large
percentage the minerals you are adding through your CT. The total lawn
and garden area is only around 1/4 acre. Once I start fiddling (I'm a
compulsive tinkerer) with trying to perfect a CT brewer, I will probably
be making a lot more tea per acre than any sensible farmer would go to
the trouble to apply.



longbranchranch wrote:
> -Hi David  No I don't think I know better than you or any one else.
> Yes the bugs are organic. My post was meant as a simplestic way of
> exspressing my beleifs that it may be more practical to apply
> minersals to the soil when lacking instesd of part of the tea. All of
> the soil test  I have that recomends applying one or more of the
> cat-ions, generaly  are in hundreds of pounds per acre. Do you think
> minerals applid as part of ct would do this? I do think that  applid
> to plants(leavs) might be benificial. Like you I am new to ct. I been
>  involved in natural farming/ranching since the late 30s. And I think
> ct for building the soil food web is the greatest thing since the
> safety pin.
> Jimmy Muse


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Received on Wed Jun 16 2004 - 07:56:31 EDT

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