Thread-topic: [compost_tea] Compost Tea for Potatoes
Hello
Elaine,
Funny, I tried
calling and e-mailing Jason Kimm toady. Makes sense that these people
don't want a bunch of people calling all the time, I know I wouldn't.
I thought you were
working directly with Oscar and Solamen when they did the trial? They did
say that they think it would work, just that it didn't in the trial they were
involved with.
We are working with
an EPM ETB-22, a REAL brewer (I think). Unfortunately, we could
not do a fall application of compost tea due to the timing of the funding
from SARE. Definitely will consider for next years
trial.
No, we have
not tested the tea yet. But we are definitely planning on it. I
have been talking to Paul Wagner and we should have our first tea tested next
week. Of course we can not afford to have every tea tested, but we are
planning to test multiple times over the summer.
Can you
recommend a good foliar compost tea recipe
for potatoes???
Thanks
Matthew Ryan Research Technician The Rodale Institute
611 Siegfriedale Road Kutztown, PA
19530 (610) 683-1405
-----Original Message----- From: soilfoodweb@aol.com
[mailto:soilfoodweb@aol.com] Sent: Friday, May 02, 2003 4:42
PM To: compost_tea@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re:
[compost_tea] Compost Tea for Potatoes
The person willing to talk to people about their results is
Jason Kimm, but he is a grower and doesn't have time to answer herds of e-mail
and phone calls. So, it would be best if I could screen questions, and
pass on to people his contact information when appropriate.
We work
with a number of other growers in Idaho, WA and OR who do not want people
calling them directly. The last I heard back from one of the tea center
folks we work with was that someone called him up and ranted and raved about
how CT doesn't work.
Of course, the reason they use compost tea
is because it works. They do appropriate testing to make sure their
compost and compost tea has the proper set of organisms. Ask Oscar
Gutbrod and Solamen Yilma if they tested the tea they brewed. Both of
these people have seen what compost tea, done correctly, in a good
program. I know that Oscar visited Jason's farm.
People
have to pay attention to the proper way to make and use CT. The facts
are that tea has to have the biology required to do the job.
You
must use a REAL compost tea machine, not a "wanna-be". You need to start
in the fall with a soil compost or tea application. If the residues do
not decompose by about half their weight in a month of decent weather, you
need to apply the compost or tea again. Again in the spring, if residues
aren't properly decomposed and gone. Then a seed treat, if you don't
have good sets of biology in the soil. And then start the foliar
program.
You can't put on one application of a CT and expect it
to solve 50 years of abuse!
So, Matt, have you tested the tea you are
putting on the Rodale trial? Do you know you are making compost tea, and
not just some anaerobic bacterial brew?
If people don't test, and don't
know that the tea has the biology required (which is most of the reason why
anyone uses tea, right?), then how can they go around saying that CT doesn't
work?
Elaine Ingham President, Soil Foodweb
Inc. www.soilfoodweb.com SFI Oregon, USA SFI Australia SFI New
York SFI Europe SFI New Zealand
"Hope is not a feeling. It is not the belief that things
will turn out well, but the conviction that what we are doing makes sense, no
matter how things turn out." -- Vaclav Havel, former
President of the Czech Republic
To
unsubscribe from this group, send an email
to: compost_tea-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com