[compost_tea] Thermophilic stage of composting

From: David Anderson <danderson_at_backpackgeartest.org>
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 14:26:38 -0700
Hi y'all,

Here I am sitting outside, eating my first batch of salsa from my
homegrown chiles, tomatoes, onions and cilantro. And in my endorphine
induced bliss, I started thinking about the ways to produce the best
compost to use for tea.

I'm sure that some of you have already gone through all of this, so I am
looking forward to your feedback.

Are there any advantages to the thermophilic stage of composting other than:

1. pathogen reduction
2. killing weed seeds
3. faster composting

For example, is there any bioremediation of heavy metals that
thermophilic bacteria are better at? Or does the heat help break down
some agricultural chemicals to safer forms? Does the thermophilic
bacteria provide any special food to help select certain mesophilic
critters? Are any of the thermophilic bacteria still active at normal
soil temperatures?

If there is no additional value to keeping it in the thermophilic state
beyond the required number of day to kill the pathogens and weed seeds,
would it not make sense to then break up the pile into smaller
mesophilic masses that will allow the fungi the maximum amount of time
to grow without being disturbed?

It also seems to me that taking it out of the thermophilic stage as soon
as possible will leave more of the food value for the critters that you
want active when you make your tea.

Or would this all be just a waste of effort, because regular compost is
more than good enough to make great tea?

I realize that this is probably overkill when making compost to dig in
to the garden (or maybe not).

Then for bacterial CT, wouldn't that be the ideal place for using one of
those compost tumblers? Crank that thing daily to keep breaking up the
fungi and keep the bacteria in control.

Dave



Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
ADVERTISEMENT
click here


Yahoo! Groups Links

Received on Tue Jul 27 2004 - 18:47:30 EDT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Tue Feb 07 2012 - 14:15:25 EST