Re: [compost_tea] white sugar

From: soilfoodweb@aol.com
Date: Wed Mar 12 2003 - 13:36:33 EST


Not a great choice, because it is a limited diversity of kinds of sugars.
White sugar is refined aqnd typically nearly only sucrose, which is a chain
of glucose and fructose. You want more foods than that, in order to feed a
wider diversity of bacteria.

The same reasons you don't eat refined white sugar anymore also hold s the
same for soil/tea/compost organisms.

Still, a little bit of sugar will be ok, just don't add much because the
bacteria really take off on it, and can drop your oxygen badly. Some of the
folks making compost tea would also say that simple sugars like that will
encourage bacteria you don't want to grow. So maybe it is better to leave
out the simple sugars all together.

The only sugar I add to anything is molasses, because it contains a wide
diversity of kinds of sugars, and some really recalcitrant kinds of sugar as
well, which helps the fungi grow. We have a paper being presented at
Biocycle this year about how molasses, at the right concentration, suppresses
E. coli grow.

Hope this helps -

Elaine
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
www.soilfoodweb.com
SFI Oregon, USA
SFI Australia
SFI New York
SFI Europe
SFI New Zealand






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