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Re: [compost_tea] What do the nasties breathe?



Dear  DR Elaine  Irene said she was new in TEA,  asked me for some information about brewers and brewing tea.  I described a bit that I knew and suggested Irene ask you.  IRENE - The message below is why I suggested that you ask Elaine !  Thank You Elaine.  Your explanations always fill voids in my understanding that I didn't know were there. 

I will be sending some samples for  test from our new one early next week  Bob

 soilfoodweb@aol.com wrote:

Bob asked "what do the nasties breathe?" 

Most of them ones we can't have in tea are autotrophs, which in non-science words, means they "breathe" carbon dioxide (CO2), or nitrate (NO3), nitrite (NO2), sulfate (SO4), and other materials containing oxygen tied up in chemical forms.  If you notice, all those chemical formulas contain oxygen, but not in gaseous form.  They use "solid oxygen", if you will.  (All my scientific colleagues just cringed when they read that, but I think it makes the situation more understandable to people who haven't spent years studying the subject, OK?)

The problem isn't so much what the nasties breathe, as what they produce. 

So, to consider this, we need to go back to understanding plants.  Plant growth is the whole reason we are fussing about all this, right?s througrect burn or kill of plant tissue as a slow decline in soil health, as you lose the organisms that combat Pythium (wilts), Phytopthora (blights, mildews), Rhizoctonia (root rots), etc. 

So, if you have fermentative bacteria in the tea brew, lack of oxygen may not result in directly toxic materials, but the organisms you add are not the beneficials from a plant's point of view.  You did alot of work making and spraying tea, got a little benefit from competition for foods on leaf surfaces, but went backwards in the soil.

And that's where we're trying to head - to soil health, so you don't have to keep putting out the teas even.  As time goes by, with GOOD TEAS, you should be able to stop spraying weekly, or even monthly, because you will have gotten the soil back into a condition of health.

Can't happen with anaerobic teas.  That's why you have to have aerobic tea. 

Hope this helps -

Elaine
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
www.soilfoodweb.
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