"Compostman" wrote in message ...
"Bill Oliver" wrote in message
see:

www.cfr.washington.edu/research.mulch/

Click on "Horticultural Myths"

Click on "Myth - Aerobically-brewed Compost Tea Suppresses Disease -
August"


An odd thing is that Dr. Chalker-Scott refers to
Roundup as a pesticide instead of an herbicide. This is a common lay-person
mistake, but an academic should know better. Certainly when written as a
professional paper.
Compostman, Washington, DC, Zone 7

Actually John, the odd thing is how religious wackos dislike science
so much they look for "mistakes" that aren't even there -- whether
it's a evolutionist convinced dinosaur bones are the trick of the
devil & scientists have it all wrong, or someone whose religion is a
tawdry profitable vendor-promoted fad that has come to take religious
precedence over scientifically field-tested & proven organic methods.

In fact professional horticulturists (as opposed to vendors &
amateurs) among one another tend to call fungicides, herbicides,
pesticides, & stuff intended to kill small mammals "pesticides," so
too they are so-defined in law governing their legal use & sale. It
confuses me sometimes, too, but having only lately re-read a lot of
the scientific literature on the dangers of RoundUp, seeing it
frequently called "pesticide" by the accredited scientists, I'm
beginning to get used to it. When addressing amateurs who'd be TOO
easily befuddled, the categorizations should certainly not be lumped
together as they would be in legal or research contexts.

Looking for non-existant mistakes is a sorry replacement for
rationality. It won't change the fact that as increasing field studies
are completed & the findings published, the science has to date
remained unable to show that aerated compost teas have any beneficial
effect in retarding or preventing plant pathogens. (Some of the other
claims, such as allopathic properties, are too stupid to even
field-test for.) Yet pathogen control, one of the things it CAN'T do,
is the main thing marketeers promote it for.

Unaerated teas MIGHT have slight benefits according to the science,
within specific contexts that might be exaggerated by vendors, but
that's not even what vendors are selling pricy useless equipment to
brew -- they're selling something that has not been shown to have any
slight value in retarding pathogens, limited context or otherwise, &
they sell it to control pathogens anyway.

It's a so-so source of fertilizer inferior to mulching with compost
(and mulching with compost really does retard pathogens unlike aerated
teas). Aerated teas can have a transient effect on microorganism
populations, the value of which the science finds doubtful or
debatable, & any possible value of which is inconsequential compared
to surface composting & normal watering. Though it might have been
rationally & honestly sold as an organic alternative to other liquid
fertilizers & nothing more, it continues instead to be promoted & sold
for vastly more things than it is useful for, foremost for disease
control over which it has no proven effect whatsoever.

Vendors created these myths because it is profitable to make gullible
organic gardeners & wouldbe-expert back-yard composting geeks spend
even more of their money on something vendors can conjure out of poo.
And after duped marks have overpaid vendors for gallon jugs of
poo-water often enough, those same marks are easily snookered into
"saving money" by spending four or five hundred dollars on aerated tea
home kit -- which if used with the expectation of preventing pathogens
is purely wasted money & effort.

Profits encourage these big lies. With out the magic-bullet element
concocted as a completely false sales pitch, no one in their right
mind would go to all that effort to turn first-rate compost into a
second-rate fertilizer. And since even the wholesalers of the poorly
made electrical gizmos warn the user is apt to be electrocuted by the
damned thing if it is used in the wet conditions it is inevitably used
in, maybe the real purpose of the thing IS ecological -- to clean up
the gene pool of people dumb enough to fall for it.

As you like to call yourself compostman, religiously answering compost
questions as though you're the chief expert, you might consider
bothering to learn the difference between peer reviewed science &
vendor advertising mythology before dishing out advice. I frankly
until now thought you knew better, as I've never seen you recommending
compost teas in your hundreds of posts about composting; no one
knowledgeable in the science would place compost tea foremost, would
certainly warn gardeners not to waste hundreds of dollars on it since
even if they wanted to give it a try it can be done at home without
even slight cost. Now, though, I wonder if you ever really know what
you're going on about. Perhaps it really is time to replace that
Rodale composting book you brag about relying on -- composting science
has come a LONG way since 1959 when that was written.

-paghat the ratgirl