Re: [compost_tea] sugar locking up N

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 16:53:41 EDT

The bacteria and fungi in the tea take up and hold N, and other nutrients
added to the tea, given that you have good growth of the organisms in the tea.

If you have protozoa and nematodes in the tea, or in the soil to begin, then
they respond and make the nutrients tied-up by the bacteria and fungi
available. It may take about 3 days for protozoa and nematodes you inoculate in the
tea to really get going and cycle nutrients for the plant. The protozoa and
nematodes take about 10 to 14 days to respond and get going, as long as it isn't
mid-winter. Otherwise, they don't
 get going until spring.

We have seen that we actually have about 2 full days for teas and leaves to
get to SFI, as long as you leave a good air-space in the bottle for tea.
enough juggling occurs as the bottle is being carried to keep it pretty well
aerated.

But you have to leave a good head space in the bottle.

You might want to encourage the worm composter to add a few other materials
to the worm bins - like fresh fruits, coffee grounds and the like.

Other wise, Ted Leischner is about to get started with a commercial lab in
Canada, and you can check with him about sources of humic acids in Canada.

If the person in Canada making worm caste should improve the worm caste by
getting great fungal biomass to grow in the worm caste, and then ewxtract humic
aicd from the worm caste. That is more organism-friendly humic acid than
leonardite-extracted humic acid, and grows better fungi.

Tim Livingstone in New Brunswick, CA would also be a good source of
information about humic acids.

Hopefully both read this list and can respond with some info to you.


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






Received on Thu Sep 23 2004 - 17:25:54 EDT

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