Long before the advent of aerobically active
compost tea, people were using mainly a fish/seaweed blend to feed their plants.
Now you can purchase any number of 'all-in-one' blends of fish/seaweed that
contain any number of other ingredients (molasses, bone meal, soil activators,
humic acid, etc.).
We did a comparative test a couple of years back to
test potting soils and fertilizers (everybody said theirs was the best!). We
potted up about fifteen 5 gallons pots and planted a Celebrity tomato in each
pot. In about half the pots we tested potting soils alone to see which one did
best. In the other half, we used the same potting soil but added different
fertilizers to test the fertilizers. All the fertilizers were dry fertilizers
that were mixed into the potting soil, except for one. That one pot did not
receive any dry fertilizers, but was foliar sprayed once a week with Sea Spray
by Maestro-Gro, one of the all-in-one blends of liquid fertilizers. That foliar
sprayed tomato grew twice as fast and produced better than any other dry
fertilizer. It was the most healthy of all the tomato plants.
So can a plant uptake simple liquid organic foliar
sprays without the benefit of the microbes making the nutrients available? Sure
they can! Why does a light rain seem to really stoke a tomato plant (not enough
to soak the soil)? My vote....foliar feeding is an excellent way to bump your
plants through the growing season when you don't wish to rake the mulch back to
reamend the soil.
We also use foliar feedings to get our commercial
grown plants back to good health when they come in from the growers. Some
commercial growers really force feed the plants to get them up and growing and
when the arrive at a retail nursery they can go through some shock from not
being given their daily dose of drugs. You could say our organic foliar would be
the methadone for the heroin that they were addicted to!....8~)
With all this said, I still believe that aerobic
compost tea is a better way to go,,,,,,but I still foliar feed with simple
fish/seaweed, too.......success is always found in diversity.
Steve Bridges
Kimas Tejas Nursery
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2003 1:11
PM
Subject: Re: [compost_tea] Re: Holding
time for tea
Hi GW. In my experience, if your tea is active and you add
significant amounts of fish or kelp the tea will become anaerobic
within 15 minutes. Like O2= < 2 . Question - is foliar
feeding of fish and kelp that has not been assimulated by the
microbes really effective as a way to better growth or
production? It seems to me that is like feeding the root system
nutrients without the benefits of microbes. Is there good evidence
that it works? Bob growest2002
<g.w.thomson@shaw.ca> wrote:
Maybe
this is already clear to everyone else, but I'm still uncertain about
adding foliar nutrients to a tea that is going to be immediately
sprayed out.
I would like to combine fish and kelp foliar feeding
with the tea being applied. If I add fish at 1:100 in the tank,
and kelp at 1:200, will the oxygen demand kill off a significant
amount of my tea in the 30-60 minutes it takes me to expel that tea from
my sprayer?
A possible factor is that lately I've gone to
spraying straight tea (other than a small % of water used to dilute the
yucca that is added to the tea in the spray tank). Thus I have a very
"concentrated" bunch of organisms in that spray tank, ready to
consume the fish/kelp when it's added...
It sure would be nice if
we could eliminate the extra trip around to foliar the nutrients
separately from the tea, but not if the tea gets murdered in the
process--Glen
--- In compost_tea@yahoogroups.com, soilfoodweb@a...
wrote: > I have been asked, off the list serve, to comment on how long
you can hold tea. > > IF you make sure that oxygen is
maintained in aerobic ranges, you CAN hold tea for up to 5 days.
> > BUT please recognize that during that time, you very well
may select for an ever-diminishing set of organism
diversity. The reason for the 5 day cut-off is that by that
time, you are deal with a limited set of microbe diversity.
> > If you add any foods into that "being-held" tea, oxygen
will PLUMMET to very low levels. You have bunch of activated,
starving bacteria and fungi in your 2 to 3 day old tea, and they will be
SAVAGE about any added food, using it very rapidly, and with a huge
oxygen demand. Ask Bob of Bob's Brewers about his experience with
this! The oxygen demand can be so extreme that it will result in
loss of the beneficial fungi, protozoa and nematodes from the brew
quite rapidly. Within 4 to 6 hours. > > So, if
circumstances force you to hold tea, do it with caution, add only
minimal amounts of food (no more than a teaspoon or 20 ml, for example)
after 24 hours. It can be done, but with extreme care. >
> If you tank mix nutrients into your tea, you have the same
situation, so remember that you have only a few hours - perhaps
only 4 to 6 hours - to get the tea out before the beneficial fungi
have been consumed. > > Of course, once your
organisms have gone flying through the air in droplets, the aeration
problem has been alleviated. The thin layer of tea on a leaf
surface will be nicely aerobic. Diffusion is quite adequate on the
leaf surface. > > The test to determine whether aeration
was adequate is to PUT THE TEA INTO A SEALED CONTAINER AND LEAVE AT ROOM
TEMPERATURE OVERNIGHT. Open the container and smell at 24
hours. If ok, your tea was likely ok. IF stink can be
detected, do another tea. > > Compost tea is meant to be
made, and applied right away. There is no point in holding it, as
you start to lose diversity after 48 to 72 hours. Hold it only if
you have no choice. With proper maintenance, tea can be held up to
5 days. But then, apply it someplace that you don't care if the
results are a bit funky. I personally let the weed patch have
it. You are helping diversity in the soil, which will ultimately
will select against the weeds. > > OK? > > Elaine
Ingham > President, Soil Foodweb Inc. > SFI Corvallis,
OR > SFI Port Jefferson, NY > SFI Lismore, NSW,
Australia > SFI Hilversum, The Netherlands > SFI Cambridge, New
Zealand > www.soilfoodweb.com
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