Re: [compost_tea] Re: quantities ?

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 01:38:55 EST

The reason you don't need huge amounts of compost is that we just need to get
an inoculum of the good guys. Then we want to grow the organisms we've
extracted.

There's enough soluble nutrients in the small amount of compost to get a
decent amount of growth without addition of much.

We help things along a bit by adding foods that help the critters we want
more of. So, we don't add white sugar to the brews because that is too
limited a food resource - just sucrose.

We add molasses. We've already had the discussion about the breadth of
different kinds of sugars and some humic material in molasses. Or add fruit
juice. Diversity of foods.

We add fish hydrolysate, soybean meal, humic acids (how many kinds of humic
acids? Thousands. I have to laugh at products that say they have three
humic acids in their material. Right. Would I buy that stuff? Who are you
feeding?)

We add materials that are very complex to feed the organisms we know are
beneficial. We aren't adding foods that help the bad guys.

If you have tons of compost, then put the compost out on your field. You get
the inoculum, the soluble materials and the long-term not-soluble material.

If you don't have enough compost, then you make tea.

If you don't have enough good compost, then you make tea and add those foods
that grow the beneficial, keeping the not-so-good-guys in low numbers. And
turn your not-so-good compost into good compost.

Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
www.soilfoodweb.com



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Received on Tue Jan 14 2003 - 01:52:21 EST

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