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Re: [compost_tea] Any Comments or reply to this?



I am a "coventional" commercial grape grower in the Niagara Penninsula. 2002 was a normal year for disease pressure, and spray schedules had to be maintained. The ONLY reason I decided to throw caution to the wind and use compost tea was for disease suppression and reducing my pesticide bill. I achieved that. I saved close to 75% of my previous years spray bill. And I used no insecticide. This was on 30 acres.
Bill


RiverValley wrote:
This was posted on the BDnow! list server.
 
I personally find it very interesting, any comments?
 
daniel
 
Blame this one on me, folks, but one of the most astounding upshots
of this week's conference was the chance to meet with experienced
growers who have worked with compost tea and who have found teas to
be much less effective than we have heard people proclaim them to be.
 
Alan York asks people to ask the hard questions. He says a hard
question right now is 'Do you know of a vineyard that has effectively
controlled foliar disease with compost tea for three seasons.'  He's
willing to back this question down to one season. (The unusually dry
summer this past year has eleviated foliar diseases across the board,
tea or no tea.)
 
Vicki Bess, who is a compost tea advocate who spoke at this
conference, felt that the push to diversity and high counts is not a
push towards teas that really work on the soils or even the leaves.
She said, and Will Brinton concurred, that it is the feeds in the
teas that select the final microbial mix and these microbes were not
necessarily the ones that would do as good of works as ones commonly
dominant in dry compost. Will Brinton  stated that there is not need
for pumped up populations of microbials. He feels that this is
unfounded, unscientific hysteria. He went on to say that good compost
tea has all the microbiology a person needs for controlling foliar
disease - WITHOUT BREWING IT other than we do already!! Think about
it folks:
 
Even better: Compost tea and brewer sales people in Pennsylvania have
received letters from the EPA telling them that they cannot sell
their products as disease control products because there is NO
SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE THAT THEY ARE EFFECTIVE.
 
Again - I'm sharing this info for your own evaluation. I've got egg
on my face, of course.
 
-Allan
----- Original Message -----
From: < wpb@sympatico.ca >
To: < compost_tea@yahoogroups.com >
Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2003 10:57 AM
Subject: Re: [compost_tea] Re: Why have regs, and the ICTC

> Elaine,
> Thanks for your response, and all your points were well taken. But
> believe me, it's just the tip of the  iceberg.  I too am eagerly waiting
> for responses to Laura's questions, and I believe that since this was
> the venue chosen to solicit members, this is where the answers should
> be. I feel this was just a retaliatory response to the "big industry"
> association, and might lack the necessary thought and substance to be
> viable. I hope I am proven very, very wrong. I haven't eaten crow for
> quite some time, but I ALWAYS carry some A-1 sauce with me.
>
> Bill Baranick
>
>
>
soilfoodweb@aol.com wrote:
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