Re: [compost_tea] Re: MICROBIOLOGY TESTING of COMPOST TEAS

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2004 15:44:05 -0500
You are exactly right, Butch.  When doing windrows, or worm bins, the recipe can easily be adjusted for the kind of materials that are coming in the door. 

You have to have the people watching the incoming stream, however, who are knowledgeable about how the mix has to vary based on the materials coming in during the different times of year. 

You use temperature in the first 3 to 4 days to tell you how the mix might need to be adjusted so that every pile comes out pathogen-free, with the critters you want. 

Only if you are doing anaerobic digestion must you be excruciatingly exacting about the starting mix being the same every time.  So there is a difference there. 

It frightens me that we have all these anaerobic digestion facilities going in, as municipal authorities get convinced that these facilities are easier and fool-proof.  They are anything BUT foolproof.  The starting materials have to be exactly the same, through the whole year, because the few species of methanogens, hydrogen-gas and alcohol producers, etc that generate the energy wanted from those facilities are very picky about the conditions in which they will perform.  Change their diet, and  they aren't going to do their job. 

The sludge left over after anaerobic digestion is a horrible thing as well.  What do you do with that?  Toxic waste?

So, people can get mis-lead about the whole composting process.  They have to realize that there must be a hundred different ways to compost.  Or is that a hudred thousand different ways?  You have to know what it is you want as an end product, and then compost to achieve that end-product.  I can find the microbe to help you do anything you want, except perhaps, deal with synthetic herbicides.....

There are really easy ways to compost in the back-yard that always work, always take care of the human-pathogens, but are not allowed in the organic regs.  We have developed the information to successfully compost in any kind of climate you want to talk about.  It's part of the reason SFI is world-wide.

Dn't read the below until Sunday, since I'm advertising in here a bit.....

We offer courses at SFI on how to compost, both back-yard, as well as commercial.  I'm putting together the data about how to determine what's going on in the pile.  I keep adding more data, so the book keeps getting bigger and bigger.  I know I have to cut the data input off, and just get it published, but, darn, it's hard when the next set of data will show what happens when......

So, hopefully, the book will be out soon.  I should make a deal with Jeff Lowenfels - I don't have to get my book out until he gets his book out...... grin!

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 Sun Dec 26 2004 - 17:41:12 EST

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