Re: [compost_tea] "Effective Microorganisms" was Teruo Higa article on beneficial and effectivemicroorganisms

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 07:06:35 -0500

Hi Lynton -

You wrote:
> I assume we are talking about Bokashi stuff?

Bokashi is one way of making EM, as I understand.
 
> I am giving this a try, mainly as a way to begin processing kitchen waste. Could it be useful to put the bokashi in the worm bin?

Not a good choice for the worm bin itself, better for the pre-worm bin heating step, or added into a thermal compost process.

Worms require aerobic conditions, and if you let the worm bin go anaerobic, or even part anaerobic, the worms often (but not always, decide to leave.

How anaerobic did the bin go? We need to better understand the impact of oxygen concentration, water-logging,and production of acid on worm-decision making processes.

> Or innoculate it (after initial processing) with soil?

Add EM into the pre-worm hot compost part of a thermal cycle, or process your waste doing the facultative anaerobe process of bokashi.

I have noticed that adding EM bacteria, or other facultative anaerobe bacteria like EM (lactic acid bacteria for example), to a thermal compost pile, keeps the temperature of the pile lower. this is good, especially for us folks that work all week and don't have time to check the thermal pile very often.

So, if you were careful about amounts of your finished bokashi you added to the worm bin, so you weren't driving things anaerobic, the inoculum would probably help. I think I've seen a couple recent papers on EM preparations being low in human pathogens.

Here's another one I meant to talk about earlier - some data from Dramm that shows that fish hydrolysate also suppresses E. coli and human pathogens. So, if you have manure-based compost, can you add fish hydrolysate to the compost, or tea, and get suppression of the pathogens? Dramm has data shwoing this happened. Need more studies on this! But I'd bet that similar food web interactions were happening in bokashi as in fish hydrolysate. And it doesn't matter if molasses is used or not.

If you have high sugar (glucose, sucrose, molasses, other sugars), it's going to be a problem, unless you use something to make the conditions in the compost or tea incapable of supporting human pathogen growth.

And dispite some folks disliking the plea for some solid data, really, folks, if you are making compost commercially, you need to test! If youy buy compost from a commercial source, you need to insist on decent data. If you ever have trouble figuring out what some scietnific data mean, just ask us about it. We should be able to help you understand what it means.

If you are doing back-yard gardening compost, a little EM in the pile can work to keep fluctuations in temperature from messing up an otherwise good compost.

The most critical thing though is making sure you don't add too much high nitrogen containing material to the compost pile, but not too little either.

Adding particular bacteria, like lactic acid producers, which are a large component of EM, and adding some other good guys like Bacillus which compete well with pathogens, and Pseudomonas which does well using proteins and decomposing pesticides, will keep things in the range between 131 and 155 F.

> My problem with EM production is that it must be in an anaerobic environment.

It is really interesting to try to figure out the shift from aerobic to anaerobic, back to aerobic, back to anaerobic, back to aerobic, and round and round a few more times, that can occur in bokashi production. You have to make sure you allow the material to get fully finished, so you are back at aerobic before applying. That generally takes longer when the temperature is cooler.

> This leads me to suspect that the organisms won't survive too well in the soil once applied.

The data that have been done to "show" that addition of bacteria to soil doesn't do much did not differentitate between bacteria that can grow on plate media, and bacteria that cannot grow on plate media.

How many bacteria in bokashi actually can grow on the typical plate media used in the lab? Pretty questionable whether it's the right media.

When chloroform fumigation "microbial biomass" measurements are taken, they forget to realistically control the method, by solubilizing the kinds of carbons that chloroform solubilizes, but then adding in the fungal biomass which chloroform does nothing to make available. My experience is that chloroform fumigation is a laughable method for assessing what we need to know about bacteria and fungi, protozoa and nematodes in soil, or in compost. The answers people get using chloroform fumigation are meaning less, and quite inappropriate. But, the method gives a digital readout, so chemists like the method.


If you apply an inoculum to a soil that has been nuked with pesticides and high inorganic fertilizer applications, the EM bacteria that grew while the bokashi was fermenting, do quite well in helping your soil move along and build structure, organic matter, and get nutrient retention started. Ciliates do well in bokashi, of course, but the flagellates and amoebae can be a problem to get established. So a hay infusion to get the flagellates and amoebae.

But once you get things turned around, once soil is being built, nutrient cycling is starting to go well, you need to think aerobic additions. Once the aerobic food web is well-established, then EM may be good as a food to feed the aerobes, as long as you don't push thingks too anaerobic.

> However, perhaps they are useful food for the existing soil life? (provided there is any... ;>). I presume that having done their work, there are many bactieria there, all holding nutirents in a biological form? If this is so, then continued application might be beneficial to growing plants not so much for the living EMs, but for the form of the nutrients?

Hum, that's a thought. Probably won't harm anything, if care about not pushing things anaerobic, and the additions might help. As long as the price isn't too much, why not? So, the grower has to make the decision - cost versus benefit.

Being a lazy grower, I don't like to add things if I don't NEED to add. There just isn't enough time in my life to do everything I want to do......

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
http://www.soilfoodweb.com

 

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Received on Sun Jan 25 2004 - 11:15:04 EST

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