Re: [compost_tea] Any Comments or reply to this?
Thank you, Matt, for a much more sane reporting on what went on at the
Viticulture meeting.
When I read the post from the BD Now person, I wondered if the people I knew
that had gone to the meeting and had talked to me had gone to the same
meeting as that person was talking about.
The bottom line, in my opnion, is that Vicki Bess overstresses E. coli
danger. At the Eco-Farm meeting, in California, it was reported to me by at
least three people, that the person speaking in the Compost Tea session from
BBC Lab (Bess' lab in Arizona) said that E. coli will be present in compost
no matter what. If you add molasses to compost tea, E. coli will grow to
high number.
Now we all read on SANET a few weeks ago, in a nicely documented study, that
if compost is properly composted, it will have no E. coli. So, clearly, by
making compost correctly, getting it to temperature and keeping it aerobic,
there will be no E. coli surviving.
If you don't have E. coli in the compost, it won't be in the tea. No matter
how much molasses you add, if there is no E. coli in the compost, it won't
grow in the tea.
We have data, and we keep repeating the experiment in different tea brewers
to show which ones make good tea, given the same compost, same recipe, same
water etc. In all the tea makers, no E. coli in the compost, no E. coli in
the tea, no matter how much molasses you add - even up to 5% molasses.
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The point about addition of food resources to tea is a very good one. If you
add too much food, the organisms get too happy, grow really fast, and make
the tea go anaerobic.
Why do you add foods to tea? So you can have a finished product in 24 hours,
or maybe less. Typical American impatience - we have to have our stuff right
now. Wil Brinton is correct, if you brew for longer, and don't put
additional foods in the tea, the tea usually doesn't go anaerobic. Good
deal, huh?
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But there is one point about which no one is right about so far. Compost tea
was "invented" by the Romans. At least as far as we can tell. Cato, in his
book "De Agriculturia" was the first WRITTEN book on agricultural processes.
What does he describe in that book? Basically, the production of compost
tea. So, the inventor of compost tea was some peasant farmer in ancient
Rome. Everything from then has merely refined the process.
Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
www.soilfoodweb.com
.
Received on Fri Jan 31 2003 - 00:20:59 EST
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