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

On Sun, 10 Jul 2005 17:54:36 GMT, "Travis"
wrote:

Tom Jaszewski wrote:
There is never any point in a discussion with you when you've dug
yourself in.

Consider reading the introductory page of the last "Compost Science
and Utilization.

Where exactly are the peer reviewed articles?


Interesting bunch here...peer review is valid unless we're discussing
Monsanto and round up.....

Join Paggers in remaining clueless...or read...


http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/PDF/...-tea-notes.pdf

Tomski, you've done a good job in finding a paraphrase of Elaine Ingham's
self-published promo literature for her compost tea company. You've as
always done a terrible job of providing even moderately credible data of
scientific origin. As promised, here is the:

REPOST WITH RELEVANT LINKS ON DR. INGHAM, HER FELLOW VENDORS' BEST-LOVED
"EXPERT" ON COMPOST TEA:

Vendor Ingham posing as a scientific researcher set the standard for
vendor-disseminated information. Ingham 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 by many simply cast to the wolves with some of her
fellow vendors asserting that her tendency to falsification is an
abberation & not the industry standard. She is not an aberration, & her
"findings" are still the only ones the industry promulgates whether or not
they attach her name to them.

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
Ingham.

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

Ingham'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 organic 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 or useful thing. Anyone who
uses good organic compost & a regular watering schedule is doing much more
for their garden than can be done with organic tea, & organic tea would
not add anything additional, so it is a wasted inevestment of time & money
& electricity (since vendors allege it has to be aerated), & even the
cheaply made expensively sold plastic brewing equipment these flimflam
artists foist on the public are manufactured at the highest level of
pollution & waste with none of it being necessary.

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. It's unfortunate that greenies get just as
fetishistic & up in arms when their favorite organic fad is found out to
be 99.9% flimflam.

-paggers
--
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