Jason:
Soils have lots of anaerobes, especially lower down in the profile. When
soils get very wet, they also tend towards anaerobic. You can buy lots of
anaerobic products. These are products of fermentation which is the
equivalent of composting except anaerobic. You can Google EM and its
derivatives.
However this is an ACT site so we look more at aerobic microbes. Bear in
mind too that most of your dangerous microbes are anaerobes - salmonella ..
the list goes on and on. These are dangerous for people who eat many of
these garden product. You may recall the lettuce scare of a few weeks ago.
Dabbling in the anaerobes carries a certain amount of danger for the casual
gardener in my opinion. Of course there are many microbes which are neither
true anaerobes or aerobes - such as facultative anaerobes.
You should Google to get some more understanding of these.
SS
From: compost_tea_at_yahoogroups.com [mailto:compost_tea_at_yahoogroups.com] On
Behalf Of jgerha
Sent: 01 December 2011 20:28
To: compost_tea_at_yahoogroups.com
Subject: [compost_tea] Re: Compost Tea Brewing Q
Hello All,
Thanks for the many responses. Tim, I found your site full of info and read
through it all. You have done amazing amounts of research, thank you for
freely sharing!
I ended up writing directly to Dr. Ingham and got an answer a few minutes
ago. First off, the article is nearly 15 years old, which helps me to know
that tons of research has been done since then (there was no date on the
article itself). Elaine answered that she doesn't recommend adding sugar
based "food" to tea because most small brewers don't have the capacity to
aerate it well enough to allow it to develop past aerobic fungi, protozoa,
etc. She also said, most of her research since the fine gardening article
has shown that we already have high enough bacterial populations in most
soils and compost (unless intensive biocide application has occurred) and
what we are lacking is the fungi, protozoa, nematodes, and microarthropods.
Therefore, most garden systems need to be inoculated with these microbes,
not necessarily bacteria. This makes sense to me.
I am still at a loss for one aspect of this, and I realize I didn't explain
it well enough in the first post. I am interested in the longer term of
nutrient allocation and availability and have come across information about
anaerobic microbes being a necessary part of nutrient storage in soils via
the ethylene cycle, where anaerobes actually hold nutrients back from plant
availability which has been theorized is a beneficial function of soils to
maintain fertility over the long-term. Most soils will have pockets of both
anaerobic conditions and aerobic conditions. When thinking in terms of
till-based gardening we are encouraging aerobic conditions via the
continuous addition of oxygen inducing tillage, but as we know long-term
this depletes soils over time. I am interested in whether it is actually
beneficial to maintain a healthy population of anaerobes in the soil and
thus in our compost teas.
Long, not entirely informed, question short, has there been a lot of
research done on looking at anaerobes from a beneficial standpoint? I wonder
if the research has been skewed more towards aerobic microbes since that is
how we treat soils generally through various forms of agriculture (i.e.
tillage). When it comes to compost tea, I then wonder, what is so bad about
having a few extra anaerobes? Is there a healthy balance? Or in a tea
brewing situation perhaps it goes too far toward anaerobes once headed in
that direction.
This is getting complex, but I would be interested to know others thoughts.
Jason
--- In compost_tea_at_yahoogroups.com <mailto:compost_tea%40yahoogroups.com> ,
"wormlady" <whitemountainworms_at_...> wrote:
>
>
> I'd be interested in the answer to that myself.
>
>
> --- In compost_tea_at_yahoogroups.com <mailto:compost_tea%40yahoogroups.com>
, Jason Gerhardt <jasongerhardt_at_> wrote:
> >
> > Hi All,
> > I am new to this group, and joined mostly to stay up to date on the
latest
> > research into compost tea brewing. I have one question that perhaps
> > someone can answer. Does anyone know if Elaine Ingham endorses the way
she
> > suggested brewing compost tea in the this article in Fine Gardening
> > magazine at this site:
> > http://www.finegardening.com/how-to/articles/brewing-compost-tea.aspx
> >
> > There is no date on the article so I am unsure if it is disproven by
recent
> > research. I simply want the best, least expensive way to brew consistent
> > small batch compost tea. I saw the above article, saw that Elaine wrote
> > it, therefore trusted it, and already went ahead and bought all the
> > materials before doing further research. I don't really want to buy
oxygen
> > meters and spend hundreds on testing batches taken from multiple points
in
> > the brewing process. I suppose I might if I have to, but I am hoping
there
> > is a straightforward 5-gal bucket method that doesn't require too much
> > research work. My hope is that the risk for harm is higher in larger
scale
> > brewing, and minimized at the small-scale.
> >
> > Any thoughts, anyone?
> >
> > Jason
> >
>
Received on Fri Dec 02 2011 - 05:57:04 EST