Elaine,
When you say, "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."
is that without pumping air into the brew? Is
that just putting compost in water and maybe stirring occasionally?
thanks,
daniel
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2003 7:08
PM
Subject: 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.
------------ 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? --------------- 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
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