Re: [compost_tea] Facts and some Myths!

From: Robert Norsen <bnbrew_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 20:51:25 -0800 (PST)


Thnaks Jeff for you discussion. You mention thqt winters are long up there. I am growing lettuce and sojme other crops here in West Seattle a 1000 ft.from the Sound. some years we get no freeze. some crops can stand 20 degrees and we have had a little frost. Yes I use TEA.
What about greenhouses up there? Can they use TEA to advantage? Is anyone there working in that direction? I understand John Evans has a brewer of his own and is on the market? How do they compare? What does he think of mine?
I am interested in how CT can be useful year around. Any ideas? ( without going to Mexico) Bob
 Jeff Lowenfels <jeff_at_gardener.com> wrote:There are giant vegetables and there are vegetables that grow large. These
are two different things.

Most giant vegetables are grown using special seeds of varieties that grow
larger then normal varieties. Growing these larger than the average size
requires tremendous amounts of nutrients and water. Anyone can grow good,
large vegetables as long as they use these seeds and water and feed like
there is no tomorrow.

Many of the large vegetables grown in competition with John Evans every
summer and some of John's, too, are from such seed. Many who compete with
John at the fair "force feed" chemical fertilizers and water and these grow
quite large vegetables. Some folks use organic foods and these do well, too.
However, John Evans uses compost teas at least once a week and no one else
does. I have seen the tests on John's tea and they are pretty bacterial and
I know he uses mulch which provides excellent protozoa so he gets full
benefit of soil foodweb nutrition and he adds a few little secret elements
to his tea to help out as well. His soil is so soft you can stick your arm
into it up to your elbow with no effort at all. The tea is the difference
between his crops and his neighbors. They haven't been able to touch him
using conventional methods and every kooky scheme you can possibly imagine.
It is the tea. (It isn't Sunday so I won't brag about the AlaskaHumus he
uses and he grows in).

As a guy who has followed the big vegetable fights for years, I know that
the soil used and the tea, not the day light, is the difference up here.
Many in Anchorage, for example, use the same seed but cannot get things to
grow nearly as big as they do just 20 minutes away in Palmer where John
Evans lives and grows his giants. That ain't because the light is different.
Both have the long days. Only one area can grow the big guys and even there,
they have to know exactly how to plant because the horizon for the super
soil doesn't exist everywhere now that it has been disturbed so much.

As for normal vegetables and flowers growing bigger than normal, I can only
speak from personal testing and testing by those in my office building. Some
things grow bigger using teas and some grow differently, not necessarily
better. However, this was our first summer testing. Here, carrots grown with
tea this year, again made with you know what, were the biggest any of us had
ever seen. Monsters from just regular chantes variety. Sweat peas were
double size in blind tests, both flowers and stalk and several different
kinds. Petunias and cosmos were elongated, however. This comes from the
tests of a bunch of guys who were so addicted to experimenting with tea that
we made it once a week and applied it in prodigious quantities on little
yards and gardens. Winters are long up here.

As Doc E says; We gotta gather data and keep experimenting.

Cheers,

Jeff L








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Received on Wed Nov 27 2002 - 14:38:58 EST

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