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Re: [compost_tea] Compost Tea Grant Program for 2003
Hi Bob -
We would take on THREE people who buy your tea makers, at each standard size that you are selling, because the idea is to have the data from people who are making compost tea using the instructions they get from you about how to make tea.
We'd want to still work with you, as the manufacturer of these machines, on the data that the machine maker needs to supply to clients who buy the machines. Such as the optimal amounts compost, molasses, citric acid, garlic oil, kelp, and fungal food to achieve certain organism ratios in the tea. You need to do the oxygen curves for each of these recipes. Maybe three or four recipes need to be tested. We'd want to work with you on the little microscopes and how you explain to your clients to use them, when we finally get the little microscopes on the market.
As you know, there is a company out there that gives their clients poor information about how to make compost tea. As a result, people using those machines do not make compost tea, they make bacterial tea, which isn't going to get their plants protected adequately. It protects against some diseases, but cannot protect against all, and certainly DOES NOT allow soil structure to be built adequately.
Thus, part of the reason for the tea grant is to provide people with the information they need to make good choices.
So -
Before you start spraying this spring, take a soil sample and do total and active bacteria, total and active fungi, and protozoa. If you want to do mycorrhizal colonization, that can be useful information too, but only if you have perennial plants, or when the annual plants you are growing are more than a month old. If you harvest baby plants, ok, mycorrhizal fungi aren't going to be big factors.
Then, send in samples of your first three tea brews, using a mix of thermal compost and worm compost. Check the SFI website if you need to track good sources of thermal and worm compost.
Depending on the size of the brewer you choose, you need a little molasses, kelp and humic acid or fish hydrolysate (your choice, depending on what you are applying to). We'll probably be doing E. coli checking on the teas sent in as well this spring, just to have a huge database of E. coli growth in teas.
It would be NICE if people have DO probes to check and make sure their teas remain aerobic (send that data in if you have a DO probe, please, we would cherish that data), but it is really up to the tea machine makers to do that kind of testing, and give their clients the right information about how much molasses, kelp and fungal food to add to each size machine.
The three sequential teas should be sent in plastic water bottles, about 4 to 8 ounce size, filled 1/3 to 1/2 full, NO MORE. Overnight mail, please, so the smaller the amount of tea, the less cost.
People on the east coast, send your samples to the SFI New York lab. You will need special submission forms, which we will send you, once we approve you for the tea grant, so you can get these samples done for free, and get our help with any problems, free of charge, if you have any problems.
If we get the little hand-held microscopes on the market by this spring, we'll probably encourage the tea grant people to buy these little guys and add testing that way, again, to get a database of information connecting on-site leaf readings, tea assessment at the lab, and what happens through the summer with respect to improving the plant's health, and soil health.
We would want to be updated on how the plants are responding to the teas. Any problems, and we'd want to work with you on how to deal with the situation.
Then, send in a soil sample next spring, and that will be done without cost, so we can have that data.
Hope this explains more clearly.
Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
www.soilfoodweb.com
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