Re: [compost_tea] Butch, Want to start neophyte thread?

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2005 02:33:21 -0500
In response to your post below, when we brew tea, we pull organisms from the compost into the water, and there's the inoculum part of the tea.

But we also pull any soluble nutrients from the compost, so there can be foods (sugars, proteins, lipids, enzymes, humic acids, etc) pulled from the compost.  How much?  Depends on the compost.  Typically, most compost has pretty decent humic acids, a fair amount of simple sugars, and proteins. 

But typically these foods aren't enough to get a great deal of grow, but enough to keep the organisms active on transfer into the soil for perhaps three days. 

So, you need plants, releasing exudates, to keep feeding the critters.  Ther needs to be organic matter in the soil as well, to help the organism keep doing their jobs. 

If you have little or no organic matter (OM) in the soil, the nyou need to add humics, complex foods, and some sugars to maintain the biology. 

If you have some OM (1 to 3%) in the soil, then you'll get a slow improvement.  If you have more OM (3 to 8% or so), then the organisms are going to keep plugging along pretty well.  

Just don't dump a whole bunch of sugar on all at once - you will get bacteria growig so fast that they will use up oxygen faster than oxygen can diffuse into the soil, and you could go anaerobic.  When you put on too much sugar, but not enough to push into anaerobic conditions, then you MAY tie up N, S, P etc in bacteria. possibly fungal biomass.  This may stress the plants, until the protozoa can respond to the imporved bacterial food resource fro them, and then, you get a burst of inorganic N released. 

Which may be too late for the plants.......

Lots of things to think about, but it is great to see all the thinking going on! 

Hope this helps!

-----------------------------------
Here's a starting point.

When using compost tea as a soil drench I look upon it as an inoculant
or seed stock.  I don't envision it "feeding" the soil.  Rather, I think
soil conditions would have to be adequate for the continuation of
microbe growth.....organic matter, aerobic conditions, nutrients.  For
example, would you see much effect spraying tea on turf were the soil is
a heavy compacted clay low in organic matter?  Would it be a lasting
effect?


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Received on Thu Feb 03 2005 - 14:32:49 EST

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