Ah, I might have misunderstood! I thought we
were going to get SFI to do the testing for us..meaning all the conditions would
be the same. That is really the only way to make it work...There are simply too
many variables....ranging from the kind of soap people use on their hands to
exactly where they make their tea. For this "test" to work, it really has to be
in one room, at one time, with the same compost and the same water and the same
nutrients.........
As I have said before, this will be fun, but, THE
REAL TEST IS WHAT YOUR OWN TEA IS LIKE...and how it impacts your particular soil
foodweb situation. The idea of finding a world champion machine seems silly if
we know that almost all machines out there, with the sad exception of the Soil
Soup machine are capable of making teas that meet both the fungal and the
bacterial ranges SFI has developed. That is what counts. Not whose makes the
best tea with the exact nutrients we are going to pick. In fact, this
sounds like taking plate counts on a larger scale!
So, again, it will be fun but I don't think it will
prove a darn thing.
Having said that, if you want to make
better tea, do so with your own machine--fungal tea is what seems to
be the problem. Here are my suggestions:
1. Buy the Compost tea manual from SFI (WWW.SOILFOODWEB.COM .
2. Start with activated compost. There seems
to little question that starting the fungi growing using a handful
of oatmeal flakes of one sort of another increases the fungi available to
be extracted into the tea. Activation in a container with a loose lid for three
to five days at 80 in the dark is ideal. If your compost fungi don't activate
(no white, Santa beard strands), since it is Sunday --then buy Alaska Humus (WWW.ALASKAHUMUS.COM).
3. Make sure your machine is spotless. It doesn't
take much slime to do in a good tea. How many days would you go without brushing
your teeth? One day? Two? Three? The same build-up in those hoses and
cranny's occurs after one, two and three brews.
4. If you have an air machine, throw in
a handful of bark (orchid bark?) or large sticks to help break up compost
while you brew.
5. Use only Kelp and Humic Acids as your
ingredients to start. Have the tea tested by SFI. These ingredients usually put
tea into the ranges suggested.
6. If the test has low fungal numbers,
next add some rock phosphate. At the same time, use your 15 minutes with
SFI to explore whether you are making your tea properly. People complain about
SFI's price, but you can get an awful lot of information for that price, so the
complaining isn't really fair. Use your time.
7.If this test has low fungal numbers, contact the
brewer manufacturer. Almost all of them will work with you to get your teas up
to snuff.
8. Consider buying a nutrient mix from those of us
that sell 'em.
Some thoughts.
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