In article , X-No-Archive: yes
wrote:

On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 19:52:03 GMT, escape
wrote:

if you really want the full benefit of the product you make, you
should follow her instructions, closely.


We are beginning to get data showing the fraud for what she is!

Vendor Ingaham posing as a scientific researcher set the standard for
vendor-disseminated information & that is never going to change. Ingaham
seems legitimately to have been mentally ill with some paranoid conspiracy
theories on why her data couldn't be duplicated in any actual field study,
so after several years of being a Big Cheese in a crooked industry, she
finally became such an embarrassment she was at long last cast to the
wolves as an abberation. She is not an aberration, & her "findings" are
still the only ones the industry promulgates.

The data to date supports compost teas as a tepid fertilizer & nothing
more; its ability to enhance microorganisms is equal to the ability of
regular watering to do so. Furthermore, though the vendors want you to
believe aerating the tea is best & "safer" because non-aerated tea might
be toxic, the few studies that indicate an unpredictable (so impractical)
ability to deter disease as a foliar spray applies only to non-aerated
teas. And it turns out aerated teas are MORE apt to contain harmful
pathogens, rather than less apt as vendors of pricy equipment pretend,
often on the basis of fraudulant sales-oriented "research" by the likes of
Ingaham.

Vendors want you to believe teas need aeration so that duped marks will
pay $500 to $1,000 for special equipment to do for a high price what could
be done for free & with no such equipment. By & large the whole fad for
garden teas is hokum & what little good teas do is exceeded by any number
of better metheds, such as organic compost topcoatings & sensible
irrigation. And while the tepid fertilizer value of compost teas washes
out of the soil with the first rain or the first regular watering,
maintaining the soil with compost or leafmold topcoatings or other methods
is a longlasting method.

If you have a compost barrel that saves the drippings, it does no harm to
use that as the basis of a cost-free tea. But anyone spending money on
equipment & tea mixes with the expectation that it is anything but the
weakest possible fertilizer, they're duped marks & nothing more

In sum:

1) As a tepid fertilizer, okay, even though of less value than virtually
any other method of soil restoration or improvement.

2) For disease control: it's an illusion. To quote University of
Washington horitulturist Dr. Chalker-Scott: "In the peer-reviewed
literature field-tested compost tea reported no difference in disease
control between compost tea & water."

3) Never believe anything promulgated by vendors. There is no such thing
as an honest garden tea vendor since the honest thing would be not to take
people's money for useless equipment. It is ONLY profitable because
bolstered with lies.

For assessment of the Lies of vendors vs the Realities, see:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.gardens/msg/3e740acc9cd1e1d2?dmode=source

For definitively wasteful & potentially harmful nature of teas, see:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.gardens/msg/4d3a210350839b0d?dmode=source

How the fraud is perpetuated through half-truths & lies & workshops at
nurseries all on the worst level of hucksterism:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.gardens/msg/409e0c1292fe4656?dmode=source

My old report on Ingaham's "tradition needs no science" looniness &
paranoia, written a few months before the embarrassed industry jettisoned
her as their chief divinity:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.gardens/msg/955f80727de46b92?dmode=source

Ingaham's easily lampooned loony-tunes letter that publicly revealed her
magical anti-science thinking & her paranoid state of mind:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.gardens/msg/ff945350d678f297?dmode=source

Any website invested in selling you stuff is not going to provide you
with the actual data of compost teas harming ground water, leaching too
quickly out of soils to be of any benefit, being in every regard inferior
to a topcoating of mulching compost, NOT improving the microorganism
content of soils, NOT repairing anaerobic soils, and for the most part
not even hindering pathogenic organisms (no more than would a good
soaking with pure water in any case).

Not everything labeled "organic" is a good thing. *The pro-Chemical lobby
just hates it when "ecofundies" refuse to believe cancerous toxic
chemicals are good for us & go all insane in defense of their
PetroChemical fetish. Will greenies get just as fetishistic & up in arms
when their favorite organic fad is found out to be 99.9% flimflam? Watch
the Compost Tea thread(s) to find out!

-paghat the ratgirl
--
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"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden
people maintaining a free civil government." -Thomas Jefferson