Hi Merla,
I am not an 'experienced BD person', more of a fellow traveller I suppose.
In your place I would consult with my local certification body and follow
their lead in terms of compost tea.
Compost tea for use on fresh produce and fruit for raw consumption should be
made with great care using ingredients of known character, and free from any
risk of contamination....and it may be also be banned at any moment, that is
how fragile its situation is....
Compost tea for other crops may or may not be useful and you have to be the
judge of that for yourself. Compost tea would be permitted for any use where
raw manure would be accepted, and it is a heck of a lot easier to apply than
raw manure in lots of places....
Some landscaping companies out there use it to stabilize slopes being
replanted, and like that...it may be useful to establish plantings of
roadside species you want, to occupy space that might otherwise be invaded
by unwanted plants, aka weeds...and these are not environments where the
food safety issues that drive the compost tea controversy are at play.
Re the flip flop Allan has done from his previous 'soil scientist du jour'
to his new ones, I think there is no real basis for a rush to judgment.
Sometimes it seems to me that Allan is 'turned on' by the latest person he
has heard speaking....which is not a bad thing in itself...but here, the
jury is still out, and only time and practical tests will tell if aerated
compost tea, or stirred occasionally compost teas, or other forms of
microbial phyllosphere/rhizosphere interventions are worth using all the
time, some of the time, or not at all for most situations.
Allan is certainly right about this, that there are industrial motives at
work here. The compost tea makers, including some who do, and some who
don't, support Dr Ingham, and the soil testing professionals, including
Ingham, Will Brinton and Vicki Bess, are all industries with a stake in this
dispute.
Nonetheless, the dispute about the practical efficacy of different sorts of
compost teas, including aerobic nutrient added ones, is not an industrial
dispute, but a scientific one, and will ultimately be resolved by running
tests on crops under controlled conditions, meaning here one kind of tea in
the same field with the same crop, here another kind, here no teas, and here
perhaps other controls for the same problem.
In my view the need for Dissolved Oxygen meters and concerns about pathogen
regrowth, plus ideally a fair amount of testing, means that roll your own
aerobic-nutrient added CT for fresh produce is outside the realm of really
small growers. Costs in time and expenses would indicate that. But by buying
a proven system and OMRI listed ingredients for it you might be able to
still make certification and not spend a fortune.
Larger growers should still keep an open mind about them, I think. The
argument that molasses is 'simple sugar' (molasses is in fact what is left
over after the extraction of simple sugar) and will lead to a 'distortion'
of compost microorganism diversity is about as persuasive as the argument
that composted manure is unnatural and should not be applied in large
amounts on fields and gardens.
After all, one should not exceed the amount of manure that would naturally
be applied in a 'wild' pasture, eh? ;-)
But, farmers and gardeners the world around have found that yes indeed
composted manure makes a fine amendment for growing vegetables and other
crops, and so here we all are.
In other words, I no more accept Allan's reported version of Bess and
Brinton's position (assuming it is correct) than I accept Dr Ingham's a
priori criticism of mustard seed meal as a seed treatment for corn over on
SANET as correct. Finally you have to dive in and find out, and the job of
collecting microbial data on any kind of a large scale necessary for
comparative purposes is daunting, not to mention expensive.
I will say this, though. Unlike Elaine Ingham who at least has the courage
to defend her views in public forums such as SANET and the Compost Tea list,
I have never seen Brinton or Bess do so, nor present a coherent argument or
data in support of their critique where anyone could see it and evaluate it.
I notice Allan also does not have the guts to flat out say in a forum that
Elaine monitors, that he now believes Brinton and not her ('egg on my face'
and like that). That's his choice and theirs, but it doesn't really help us
understand the details of all this much.
What would be useful is if we could hear specific cases where teas succeeded
and failed, followed up by microbial analysis of these successes and
failures. The problem there is that to interpret microbial analyses you need
a microbial shaman of some sort---competing shamans include Elaine Ingham,
Will Brinton and Vicki Bess...
So I guess it may be all about industry after all...
I will disclose that I bartered some of my worms to Laura Sabourin in
exchange for a meal and lodging for a night for myself and my son, so my
worm mogul industry connections are revealed, and I also had a friend in the
states send some worms to Allan...but he never tells me how they are doing,
which may explain my special pique with him...;-)
Basically Merla, my advice is to go slowly, make sure what you are doing is
safe and well founded, and look for the reasons underlying different
opinions being offered to you. If at all possible look for data that has
been published somewhere when seeking to choose between conflicting
opinions. And, when in doubt, try it out, and see what works best for you.
'The way of the old masters, was to find their own way'.
Frank Teuton
----- Original Message -----
From: "Merla Barberie" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "BD Now" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 4:46 PM
Subject: CT=BDcompost,preps+Alaska humus, forest humus & kelp
> Experienced BD folks,
>
> This is my year for my own BC & 500 AND for 24 hr aerobic compost tea.
> Exactly in what proportion do you combine them? Do you stir the 500 and
> then put in in the CT for 24 hrs? Do you put it on separately in the
> ritual way? Allan's post questioned whether CT is needed if you're
> using BC. I'm confused. The latest posts make me wonder for an instant
> whether buying a Bitty-O-Later would be a good idea or not.
>
> Also a post from Ms. Berkley, possibly on the regulation committee on
> the NOSB standards in the Compost Tea list/serve files states that CT is
> considered raw manure. I thought that was not being enforced this
> year. Am I asking this on the wrong list/serve or can someone answer?
> I don't want to have my OG certification denied.
>
> So much potential--so much confusion!
>
> Merla
>
>
