I used SoilSoup in my garden for two years and it definitely improved my
soil and plant growth. During the first season, improvement was
astonishingly rapid. The second year was not the same; an equilibrium
seemed to have been reached and the depth of quality soil is the same as it was
last June. I believe I have reached the point of diminishing returns for a
bacterial tea: without fungus, any further improvement will be slow as
molasses (couldn't resist). So now I have a new machine which has been
well-tested and shown to produce fungi in quantity and keep it active.
Kirk, I see your point.
However, I may just have been lucky. From the start, I approached tea
making with great care, knowing the danger of using too much nutrient
solution. Even before I heard Elaine speak, I had put the felt compost
sock aside in favor of a clean but aged nylon, a relic of my days in the Big
Corporation. Cleaning the bioblender, which always had biofilm in its
numerous nooks and crannies, was a long process and I was never highly confident
in the end results. Some areas are impossible to reach and I just had to
hope that the hydrogen peroxide had encountered all the biofilm and that I
had adequately rinsed it (with the electric motor attached, soaking is not an
option).
A friend did make a batch, certain that she carefully followed
instructions, and it never foamed. She applied it to her garden and plant
death ensued.
To me, the bottom line is that consumers should be able to buy a machine,
follow the recipes and produce material that, at the least, is harmless.
They should be able to do this without modifying the machine. I understand
the limitations of bacterial tea and think it is very unfortunate that SoilSoup
can't yield fungi. It puts users in the position of spending more money to
buy another brewer that IS capable of extracting and nurturing fungi. But
producing stuff that kills plants is much worse. Doesn't the Hippocratic
Oath begin, "First, do no harm." Sure, we aren't medical doctors?
And then people generalize about all CT based on results from SoilSoup
bioblenders and other problematic machines. Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott and
others who can't support compost tea have a point. There's good stuff and
bad stuff, but it is all called compost tea (yes, Elaine, your point about
nomenclature is well taken) and the average gardener thinks it is all the same
thing. As I said before, here in the home of SoilSoup, the terms
"SoilSoup" and compost tea are considered interchangeable by many. The
teeth grind on.
Susan Cruver
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