Re: [compost_tea] Mesh size
----- Original Message -----
From: David Anderson
To: compost_tea_at_yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2004 5:29 AM
Subject: [compost_tea] Mesh size
Okay, I admit it, I'm a tinkerer and need to play with making my own tea=
brewer.
I'm not a fan of the idea of just dumping the compost in the main
chamber, then filtering it when it is done brewing. It seems to me that
it would only give the critters one chance to get through the mesh, and
as soon as the mesh starts clogging, it effectively reduces the mesh size=
.
Hi David
Plastic or nylon screen door mesh will do fine for your tea bag a=
nd you can stitch it with your wife's sewing machine, for sprayer filters, =
Elaine took us through this ages ago and from the figures she gave then, an=
ything finer than 40mesh is going to take out a substantial number of the l=
arger critters, stainless steel termite mesh is about right size.
IMHO for putting out tea with decent fungal numbers you h=
ave no choice other than to move away from (or substantially alter) any sor=
t of conventional field sprayer, and get to a system that will easily pass =
lumps of gunk up to grain of sand size - that means BIG nozzles and high wa=
ter rates for coverage OR a mist blower type unit where the tea is introduc=
ed thru a large nozzle into the air stream for distribution.
Of course once we get our soil fertility and health up to=
where it will support high brix in the growing crop then the need for leaf=
coverage will disappear to a large extent.
cheers
Lloyd Charles
Should I be looking for an aperture of 53u (270 mesh) to account for the=
diameter, or 220u (60 mesh) to account for the length?
Go big !! 40 mesh first - certainly no finer than 60
I guess a related question would be, at what mesh size do I have to
start being concerned about sprayer clogging? And which backpack or
smaller sprayers are the best for using with ACT? What features should I=
look for?
make sure that you have a slightly finer filter going into your sprayer t=
ank than any inline or nozzle filters - so - 60 into the tank = 40 on the=
nozzles, 40 into the tank = 20 at the nozzle, etc
Received on Tue Jul 13 2004 - 21:00:11 EDT
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