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RE: [compost_tea] Any Comments or reply to this?
Title: Message
I was
at the Compost Tea presentation at Eco-Farm and wanted to correct the assertion
made in this post.
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.
The
presenter did not say it would be present no matter what, but that it is almost
impossible to garauntee that any compost pile would be E. Coli free give the
risk of re-contamination. That is, even if a compost pile is made perfectly
(right temperature, adequate turning) there is always a risk that E. Coli will
be reintroduced from another source such as coming in contact with equipment
that has been recently been in contact with a new pile. One re-innoculated, the
compost pile is a perfect host.
Again,
she did not say this happened every time but that it could happen and that there
was a real risk of E. Coli in any compost pile and that what we needed was on
site testing.
Peter
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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