Re: [compost_tea] Re: Molasses as fungal food

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 14:10:43 -0500

People should read Scott, the Daylily person in OZ's e-mails about using 5% molasses in his teas.

BAD news. Is it an aeration thing? Lack of fungi in his compost? Something in his water? What a mess he had!

So, no, going with high concentrations of molasses to get fungi to grow is NOT the way to do this. It's a sticky mess. You think a pint of molasses is a sticky, gluey mess, think about adding enough to 500 gallons......

And remember, you still have to have good fungal biomass in your compost to make the molasses thing work.

So, just work on getting enough fungi growing in your compost FIRST. Once you have that going, then maybe you would think about molasses at high concentration.

But remember a year and a half ago, when the BBC article came out that said you shouldn't add molasses to tea, because it will grow human pathogens? So the compost task force, pushed by Wil Brinton's recommendation that molasses causes E. coli to grow, said no molasses in tea?

SFI data shows that low levels of molasses resulted in no E. coli present at all. High levels of molasses, and the E. coli dropped SIGNIFICANTLY!

Explain those results if the compost task force recommendation by Wil Brinton were valid.

Make sure your compost is human pathogen free. We have a simple, 3 hour turnaround, costs $40 to do, test using molecular probes. Know for certain your compost is human pathogen-free. Make sure your compost tea is too.

But, if your compost is human-pathogen free, and your ingredients are human-pathegon free, then the compost tea will be too.


Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
SFI Corvallis, OR
SFI Port Jefferson, NY
SFI Lismore, NSW, Australia
SFI Hilversum, The Netherlands
SFI Cambridge, New Zealand
www.soilfoodweb.com

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Received on Sat Nov 01 2003 - 14:44:00 EST

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