Re: [compost_tea] protozoans before and after brewing

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 11:01:28 -0500
Just back from ACRES and points east.  The Long Island Organic Turf show was great!  Wonderful people.  They have some great examples of organic golf courses from Paul Sachs in upstate New York, and Charlie Clarke in New Jersey.  It is being done and done successfully. 

Neil Lewis, at the Neighborhood Network on Long Island keeps track of all this, so contact him for more info.  Chat with Paul Wagner at the SFI lab on Long Island to get e-mail addresses - soilfoodwebny_at_aol.com

Now, on to protozoa in the tea brew - interesting observation from Javier about protozoa being higher in number early, and lower later in the brew.  How many other people find this occurrence?  I'd be interested in knowing.

Two possible occurrences -
  1.  The brew dropped into lower oxygen conditions, and the flagellates and amoebae suffered.  Ciliates would have been helped.  So you need to observe if ciliate numbers were increased while flagellates decreased.  Was this the case?

  2.  A bacterial species started growing that is inhibitory to protozoa.  In this case, all three groups of protozoa may be harmed, and the way to deal with it is to find more and different kinds of soils to add into the compost at the beggining of the composting process, or add more types of compost to the mix of composts you use in the compost tea maker.  The point of this is to add some additional species of bacteria and fungi that will compete with the problem bacterial species which are negatively impacting the protozoa. 

Hope this helps -

--
Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
SFI Corvallis, OR
SFI Port Jefferson, NY
SFI Lismore, NSW, Australia
SFI Cambridge, New Zealand
SFI Culiacan, Mexico
SFI Jerome, Idaho
SFI South Africa
http://www.soilfoodweb.com


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Received on Sat Dec 18 2004 - 12:04:13 EST

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