Re: [compost_tea] newbie intro and question

From: Bill George <wbgeorge_at_verizon.net>
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 07:09:00 -0700

Thank you Robert. Your passion on the topic is apparent. I appreciate your
time.

Enjoy!

Bill


On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 01:24:18 -0700 (PDT), Robert Norsen <bnbrew_at_yahoo.com>
wrote:

> Bill George After centuries of use with mixed results some good, some
> bad a few scientificly trained, dedicated people carried on careful
> research to find out why compost and tea worked sometimes and failed
> sometimes. Dr Elaine Ingham is one of these trained, dedicated people
> who also has a gift of transmitting that information. With her
> information and from some others of like skill and dedication the
> reasons that some compost was beneficial and some was not and the
> reasons that some TEA was good and some was detrimental - the reasons
> were found. The methods of achieving reliable processes was developled
> by severral manufacturers. They made the process simple, lower costl
> automagic and much more effective., much more reliable. Can it still be
> done with a stick and enough patience? If you can afford that much
> time, of course. .
> You are right that compost and tea has been used without this knowledge
> and often not good or good. Not predictable. In some areas of the world
> where the technoloy has not reached yet they do something the with
> enough fuzzyness it looks a little like what Dr Elaine recommends.
> Sometimes because nature is very adaptable whatever works. Does it work
> as well as the aerated system Dr Elaine has proven? Ask the banana
> plantation owners who were going broke until Elaine showed then how.
> Ask, hell, a hundred ohers who have gone from poverty to economic
> success with her help.
> You asked for help. I suggest you go ahead and do whatever you want to
> do. You were offered the knowedge that science develped. You can use
> it in it's best forms or fuzzy it until with luck you will still get
> good results in your garden.
> Ted P suggests all this science is just BS. If you have enough BS and
> treat it without the science it becomes dam damaging. Ask the folks on
> Vashon Island who drink water with high nitrate content and suffer poor
> health. . Go live along the streams below the pig farms of virginia.
> Think as you inhale that PS or BS, it has been handled with utter
> simplicity and all this modern science if just BS.
> Then if you can see with your eyes streaming tears from the stench look
> at the Gulf of Mexico where 12,000 sq miles is dead because chemicals
> and BS have so washed into the river the high nitrates and silt and low
> O2 resulting kill every live animal and plant in that area. The dead
> fish lay in windrows on the beach. The dead erea gets bigger every
> day. Then if you have the stomach after seeing what is happening to
> our once bountiful shrimp harvest Go up stream , visit some giant
> farms where this comes from. Farms that once had great deep soil,
> productive fields and economically sound income / expense balance.
> With the unkown results of fuzzy compost know how and no Aerated tea
> know how these farmers turned to chemicals. Their farms are washing and
> blowing away, being bancrupted off the farms. Only government keeps then
> paid. Water absorption is down, irrigation is up, farms are not
> sustainable economically nor soil-wise. Now go to the sick bays of
> hopitals and discover that
> the nutritian provided by the chemically grown food is suspect of
> causing many of those sick.
> Does the science that tells us how nature works have value? Will it
> help people of all levels of agriculture know the right way so they can
> approach it as closely as they can?
> And benefit from it? Ignoring the science because we feel mentally
> incapable or lazy is going to happen. Some call what they don't want to
> bother with BS.The LIST was aimed to put out the science so it could be
> used to advantage at all levels and passed on to the world where it is
> being used effectively, welcomed by farmers on every continent who are
> not satisfied with a Monsanto dictatorship. .
> You asked an iportant question Bill George. The science is more complex
> than you or I or Elaine will ever know in it's entirety. Elaine and
> some others have learned enough to know a highly beneficial, reliable
> way to handle compost and compost tea. She has measured probed some of
> the bondaries of use. In the manufacture of brewers several
> manufacturers have measured and tested boundaries of when and how does
> it work and when does it not work. I have seen and measured just a few
> of the infinite possible combinations. A measured performance
> results. You are talking about telling the world simple ways so the
> world can understand and do compost and Compost Tea in those very simple
> ways. A 5 gallon pail not complicated compost you want an answer you can
> use when? next week? You are asking people who have spent fortunes and
> years to know the answers you asked for.. This entire subject we did not
> make complex. It IS complex. Nature is so forgiving and so hard to
> measure and so
> INVISIBLE you can go about this afair thousands of ways and not ever
> know what is happening. UNTIL you measure what is invisible. Until you
> test KNOWN compost and Known TEA against plants under many conditons Be
> thankful that the knowlege has been discovered and that it is beig made
> available at no cost. Farmers can grasp the idea of natural soil
> biology. . How to develope good soil, good compost and good ACT. The
> language can be their language. Don't expect them to farm right if you
> give them bad infomation.
> It is easier learn to farm succesfully than to live with failure.
>
> Bill George <wbgeorge_at_verizon.net> wrote:
> Thank you Ted for the vote of support, and thank you Robert for the
> critique. It's not my intention to mislead or to start dissent here. I do
> appreciate and abide by this forum's mission to forward thoughtful
> discussion on compost and tea making. My specific interest is to increase
> the level of recycleing done by urban gardeners, and to improve the final
> product from their composting efforts. This includes introducing them to
> tea making. Internally I am estatic people of Dr. E's caliber are
> indentifying and quantifying these ancient techniques scientifically
> proving their worth. However, I am equally dismayed that some mysticism
> is
> creeping in. Language has been adopted that shrouds otherwise simple
> processes in inexplicable terms, and establishes absolutes where none
> should exist. Perhaps it's an attempt to satisfy a society hungry for
> precision. I don't know. I've had discussion like these before with
> people
> telling me that tea is such and so. I've been told about the
> possibilities
> of damage to plants by anaerobic bacteria, the coulds, the mights, and
> the
> maybes. None of these are probabilities. Neither are there guarantees
> aerobic bacteria will benefit the garden.
>
> My main concern though is this push towards precision in tea making will
> lead to absolutism in compost making. If compost and water in a bucket is
> not tea, then how long will it be before my compost is declared not
> compost? If specific ingredients in specific amounts cured at specific
> temperatures over specific periods inhabited by specific species of macro
> fauna become the requirement, how will the average person make compost
> much less make tea? What about the third world with their lack of
> resources? I don't want to see compost be relegated to the realm of
> wizards only. I don't want it to follow the accounting path organics have
> adopted to prove thier organicness. And I don't want it to follow the
> near
> religious feeling of biodynamics. Science can apply it's rigorous
> standards for reproducible results during studies. But the application of
> the science needs to relax a bit to gain popular adoption. There are many
> of us who've proven to ourselves that simple things work well. Life
> allows
> for fuzziness.
>
> Enjoy!



--
* Bill George
*
* TIDR Wilsonville OR


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Received on Mon Sep 13 2004 - 12:04:19 EDT

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