Re: [compost_tea] ACT & Garlic

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 21:15:10 EDT

Done a little work on garlic and onion.

Get good aerobic compost tea under the seeds, with VAM spores in the tea.

That seems to stop Sclerotia, which is a huge problem in onion. Again, a
good diversity of organisms in the tea, high bacterial numbers, high fungi, but
also put in an inoculum of lactic -acid producing facultative anaerobes, better
known as EM. Or from Bokashi, for example.

When soil gets a little compacted, you want something that will be more
competitive than the human pathogens or plant pathgens, that are often selected by
reduced oxygen conditions. So I think adding these bacteria as a safety-hedge
is a good idea. You don't want to select for reduced oxygen, but sometimes
it happens

If you see any foliar or stem problems, spray the aboveground part of the
plant with the same good aerobic tea. This works well to shut down Fusarium or
other stem rots.

But be aware that any compost tea with good humic acid content will tend to
leave spots behind on plants like onion. So, if you are going fro shallots to
be used in salad, for example, you may not want to use compost tea on them.


Elaine R. Ingham
Soil Foodweb Inc., Corvallis, Oregon
Soil Foodweb Inc., Port Jefferson, New York
Soil Foodweb Institute, Lismore Australia
Soil Foodweb Institue Cambridge, New Zealand
Soil Foodweb Inc., Hilversum, The Netherlands
Laboratorios de Soil Foodweb, Culiacan, Mexico
Soil Foodweb Inc., Jerome, Idaho




Received on Thu Sep 16 2004 - 21:53:44 EDT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Tue Feb 07 2012 - 14:15:29 EST