On Mon, 08 Sep 2003 21:30:55 GMT, animaux
wrote:


These results are not mere opinions. They are heavily researched procedures.
www.soilfoodweb.com will give much of that information.


YES!!!


Most good garden centers sell kelp and soft rock phosphate, but it is not
essential. However, it is optimum.

Essential if you test the tea and compare qualities! :)

On Mon, 8 Sep 2003 15:03:40 -0700, "AnonnyMoose"
wrote:

So, do you have to use all of it within a few days? Does it die if some is
left in the jug for a week or so?


within 12-16 hours or it becomes stinky! if it smells bad it is!!!

On Mon, 8 Sep 2003 20:28:54 -0400, "Fito"
wrote:

Chloramines are persistent and may not be volatized.

What does this mean?

Chloramines are used to treat water in some areas, and tehy are
difficult to remove.

On Mon, 8 Sep 2003 20:28:54 -0400, "Fito"
wrote:

NO NO NO!!! The dissolved oxygen needs to stay of 5mg/L and will not
stay at that level from the surface movement MORE AIR IS NEEDED!!!!

What does this mean? Not sure what you meant here.

One air stone will not keeo enough oxygen in the water and you will
make poor quality tea, and will likely not get good results, just
smelly water.

Dr. Chalker-Scott of the University of Washington Center for Urban
Horticulture has written a splendid article entitled "The Myth of Compost
Tea" which you can find on-line with a google search & download to your
desktop as a PDF file.

A lot of the "professional" advice about compost tea is driven by a
"professional" desire to mis-educate the public into believing something
they could very easily make at home for free cannot be made at home as
perfectly or as easily as paying dearly for a gallon made at a nursery, OR
requiring a lot of expensive equipment & ingredients to pull off
effectively. All one needs is a water tight barrel or large can, a compost
pile from which to obtain healthy sweet-smelling compost, a water hose to
fill the barrel, & if you really want to be fancy, a fifty-cent aquarium
stone, a dollar's worth of air hose, & a cheap aquarium pump.

A typical tea vendor who was both wholesaling & retailing compost tea &
tea-making equipment was giving lessons to local nurseries which he'd
convinced to carry his products. He claimed that to spray fruit treas with
his tea would prevent every known fruit disease & stop insects from eating
foliage or fruit. His was all-purpose organic stuff -- the list of what it
cured or prevented left nothing out. When a hand went up & he was informed
of a Washington University and University of Washington studies that
showed compost tea was worthless for the purposes he'd just outlined,
without batting an eye or skipping a beat the guy insisted it wasn't HIS
tea that W.U. & U.W. tested -- and HIS tea would do everything those
studies indicated isn't so.

One wholesaler admitted many such petty frauds exist. Then, preposterously
pretending to being the only honest company, promotes the idea that in
order to escape fraud, teas should be purchased only from certified
brewers (overlooking the fact that there is no certification process), &
the certified brewer should be asked for a required laboratory analysis of
the brew (which would be a dead brew before any lab analysis could be
obtained, supposing anyone really had the nerve to ask their nursery for
laboratory proof that their brews were alive & well). It would be great if
each vat of the stuff could be checked to see if it even had anything
alive in it. When brewed from water straight from a garden hose & unaged,
the chemicals added by to the county or city water supply will be
sufficient to kill off many of the microorganisms, rendering the tea
vastly less effective than it might otherwise have been. There are several
local nurseries that fresh-brew garden teas for their customers, & not a
one has any way of aging the water beforehand.So the customers lining up
on Compost Tea Day are buying it chlorinated -- & if instant lab tests
were possible, the microorganism count would turn out to be a mite shy of
staggering.

If you take a "course" designed by wholesale vendors for retail vendors to
foist onto the public, you end up believing all sorts of nonsense such as:
1) these teas are good sources of nematodes (they are in the main ly good
for fungal & bacterial microorganisms); that 2) there are ten kinds of tea
for ten uses & ten more for ten different kinds of plants (it is not
impossible to make teas that target certain predators by the addition of
specific nematodes, but nothing from a nursery brewer is so formulated &
they should stop promising anything more than a balance of fungal &
bacterial organisms); that 3) you need fancy equipment so you might want
to save on that investment by bringing in some milk bottles & buy it
dearly from the nursery; that 4) it will even kill fire ants when used
properly; &5) sundry other falsehoods or half-truths.

Many of companies manufacturing overpriced equipment must first dupe
nurseries, showing them how they WILL get filthy rich (though few ever
will) promoting a mixture of bonifide & trumped up ideas about compost
tea, & retailing all sorts of unnecessary products to gullible dweebs who
probably THOUGHT that expensive vat wasn't necessary but were too
befuddled by the dubious claims to follow that thought to the logical
conclusion not to buy any of it. The wholesalers & equipment manufactures
are often the exact same people who previously (sometimes still) promote
vermiculture as an easy road to riches. They hornswoggled morons into
believing they could get rich raising worms -- but the flimflam became too
well-known & notorious so that by now only the dumbest hilljack would any
longer borrow all his elderly mother's savings to buy everything he needs
to be a worm farmer, believing the city dump will be buying billions of
worms from him any day now for their municiple composting needs. And you
too can get rich licking envelops at home. A lot of swindles went
unpunished on the municiple-dumps-need-worms lie, but now the swindlers
have moved on to compost tea as the latest "how to get rich selling free
horseshit" gravy train. Fresh ideas, & fresh marks, were needed, &
obtained. The worm farm deceptions are now compost tea deceptions aimed
first at convincing the nurseries they should spend a good deal of money
setting themselves up to thereafter sell dirt-water that cost them nothing
& made them $5 per little squirt. The promise of obscene profits conjured
out of cowshit & horseshit motivates many struggling nursery owners to let
themselves be fooled before they start fooling us.

What you likely won't be told when you go to the "instructional" course
which is framed to teach you to be a duped customer is that good watering
technique & good organic mix in the soil has a LOT more to do with the
healthful microorganism population than do teas, & that adhering to a
correct watering schedule & topcoating with leafmold &/or composted
manures will do every bit as much as teas at keeping the microorganism
population at maximum levels. The best soils around are loamy forest
floors, & no one added compost teas to that -- you'd be doing your garden
more good by not carting away all the grass clippings & fallen leaves than
by buying tea. Overall the sales pitch posing as instruction wants to make
compost tea sound like the end-all magic potion for all your problems, &
without it your garden is doomed. Second they want to make it sound
essential to spend a lot of money on this magic stuff, either for ghastly
overpriced equipment that'll work no differently that a laundry tub
dragged down from the attic, or to buy it in gallon jugs made from
chlorinated water & "discounted" if you bring in lots of white plastic
milk bottles for them.

A typical half-truth: Compost tea prevents or cures pathogenic fungal
diseases in the garden.
Truth: Pathogenic funguses are less likely to invade gardens with a
healthy balance of microorganisms.
Horticulatural station analyses have shown that using compost teas as
plant sprays for fungal defense has about the same practical value as
spraying with kelp or any number of other things -- for some funguses it
has no effect at all. Yet the tea vendors will want you to believe their
stuff is the only good stuff.

Another fraud involves compost teas used in further admixtures --
including admixtures of prepared compost teas & vinegar, which will NOT
assist the microorganism population & will probably harm it.

Yet another of the false claims for compost tea is that it infuses the
(vegetable) garden with homeopathic & allopathic remedies, because these
hornswoggling crooks do understand there is a direct connection between
the belief in garden rubble as herbal magic health cures, & manure water
as equally supernatural.

This relative new industry will never be policed any better than
aromatherapy & other crackpot ideas that people WANT to be suckered into
believing. There is more value to compost tea than aromatherapy of course,
but as tricked out by vendors, the very real value is mystified & expanded
& riddled with fraudulant claims all designed to part you from your money
-- for stuff you could've made with very little trouble for no cost
whatsoever!

In Canada the Canadian Standards Board's Committee on Organic Agriculture
has put its sights on the compost tea industry as a bundle of petty
frauds, deceptions, & intentional mis-educating methods of creating a
fooled & captive consumer base -- although so far they've mainly required
honest C:N ratio information (which doesn't address the primary deceptions
& half-truths this dubious element of the organics industry relies on) &
defines some temperatures & methodology requirements to at least keep the
industry from selling toxic fecal matter to their gullible customers. In
the US, alas, there is not even this moderate level of watchdogging. You
being misinformed about how to treat your garden organically isn't high on
anyone's consumer protection list, the attitude seemingly being that if
you're dumb enough to believe your own one-gallon milk bottle filled up
for $6 with dirty water is a bargain, then you deserve what you get for
being dumb as a stick.

Because the chemical companies have lied to gardeners for decades causing
gardeners to help infuse the environment with toxins of all varieties,
there's a strong desire to believe in any & all alternatives that come
along. "Organic" on a product or system is so often a scam, it is simply
meaningless. Compost teas assuredly have an important position in
gardening, but there is no strong demarkation between the people who
retailed PCBs yesterday & are now just going with what else can sell
today. At least you're not being convinced to cause great harm with the
particular pack of lies & half-truths surrounding compost tea
salesmanship, but neither are you dealing with strictly honest people, &
you may not be doing half as much good as they convinced you would happen,
& at the very least you're being bilked for stuff that could be made free
at home & be not one whit less effective.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/

God your so ****ing contrary!
Yes there are chalatans, and there are flawed studies like
Chalker-Scott. But there are also incredible successes and the careful
users would NEVER say ACT cures anything..
Instant lab tests are very close to fruition. Don't knock what you
don't know based on your limited experience.

ducking



On Mon, 08 Sep 2003 19:05:59 -0700,
(paghat) wrote:

Dr. Chalker-Scott of the University of Washington Center for Urban
Horticulture has written a splendid article entitled "The Myth of Compost
Tea" which you can find on-line with a google search & download to your
desktop as a PDF file.

A lot of the "professional" advice about compost tea is driven by a
"professional" desire to mis-educate the public into believing something
they could very easily make at home for free cannot be made at home as
perfectly or as easily as paying dearly for a gallon made at a nursery, OR
requiring a lot of expensive equipment & ingredients to pull off
effectively. All one needs is a water tight barrel or large can, a compost
pile from which to obtain healthy sweet-smelling compost, a water hose to
fill the barrel, & if you really want to be fancy, a fifty-cent aquarium
stone, a dollar's worth of air hose, & a cheap aquarium pump.

A typical tea vendor who was both wholesaling & retailing compost tea &
tea-making equipment was giving lessons to local nurseries which he'd
convinced to carry his products. He claimed that to spray fruit treas with
his tea would prevent every known fruit disease & stop insects from eating
foliage or fruit. His was all-purpose organic stuff -- the list of what it
cured or prevented left nothing out. When a hand went up & he was informed
of a Washington University and University of Washington studies that
showed compost tea was worthless for the purposes he'd just outlined,
without batting an eye or skipping a beat the guy insisted it wasn't HIS
tea that W.U. & U.W. tested -- and HIS tea would do everything those
studies indicated isn't so.

One wholesaler admitted many such petty frauds exist. Then, preposterously
pretending to being the only honest company, promotes the idea that in
order to escape fraud, teas should be purchased only from certified
brewers (overlooking the fact that there is no certification process), &
the certified brewer should be asked for a required laboratory analysis of
the brew (which would be a dead brew before any lab analysis could be
obtained, supposing anyone really had the nerve to ask their nursery for
laboratory proof that their brews were alive & well). It would be great if
each vat of the stuff could be checked to see if it even had anything
alive in it. When brewed from water straight from a garden hose & unaged,
the chemicals added by to the county or city water supply will be
sufficient to kill off many of the microorganisms, rendering the tea
vastly less effective than it might otherwise have been. There are several
local nurseries that fresh-brew garden teas for their customers, & not a
one has any way of aging the water beforehand.So the customers lining up
on Compost Tea Day are buying it chlorinated -- & if instant lab tests
were possible, the microorganism count would turn out to be a mite shy of
staggering.

If you take a "course" designed by wholesale vendors for retail vendors to
foist onto the public, you end up believing all sorts of nonsense such as:
1) these teas are good sources of nematodes (they are in the main ly good
for fungal & bacterial microorganisms); that 2) there are ten kinds of tea
for ten uses & ten more for ten different kinds of plants (it is not
impossible to make teas that target certain predators by the addition of
specific nematodes, but nothing from a nursery brewer is so formulated &
they should stop promising anything more than a balance of fungal &
bacterial organisms); that 3) you need fancy equipment so you might want
to save on that investment by bringing in some milk bottles & buy it
dearly from the nursery; that 4) it will even kill fire ants when used
properly; &5) sundry other falsehoods or half-truths.

Many of companies manufacturing overpriced equipment must first dupe
nurseries, showing them how they WILL get filthy rich (though few ever
will) promoting a mixture of bonifide & trumped up ideas about compost
tea, & retailing all sorts of unnecessary products to gullible dweebs who
probably THOUGHT that expensive vat wasn't necessary but were too
befuddled by the dubious claims to follow that thought to the logical
conclusion not to buy any of it. The wholesalers & equipment manufactures
are often the exact same people who previously (sometimes still) promote
vermiculture as an easy road to riches. They hornswoggled morons into
believing they could get rich raising worms -- but the flimflam became too
well-known & notorious so that by now only the dumbest hilljack would any
longer borrow all his elderly mother's savings to buy everything he needs
to be a worm farmer, believing the city dump will be buying billions of
worms from him any day now for their municiple composting needs. And you
too can get rich licking envelops at home. A lot of swindles went
unpunished on the municiple-dumps-need-worms lie, but now the swindlers
have moved on to compost tea as the latest "how to get rich selling free
horseshit" gravy train. Fresh ideas, & fresh marks, were needed, &
obtained. The worm farm deceptions are now compost tea deceptions aimed
first at convincing the nurseries they should spend a good deal of money
setting themselves up to thereafter sell dirt-water that cost them nothing
& made them $5 per little squirt. The promise of obscene profits conjured
out of cowshit & horseshit motivates many struggling nursery owners to let
themselves be fooled before they start fooling us.

What you likely won't be told when you go to the "instructional" course
which is framed to teach you to be a duped customer is that good watering
technique & good organic mix in the soil has a LOT more to do with the
healthful microorganism population than do teas, & that adhering to a
correct watering schedule & topcoating with leafmold &/or composted
manures will do every bit as much as teas at keeping the microorganism
population at maximum levels. The best soils around are loamy forest
floors, & no one added compost teas to that -- you'd be doing your garden
more good by not carting away all the grass clippings & fallen leaves than
by buying tea. Overall the sales pitch posing as instruction wants to make
compost tea sound like the end-all magic potion for all your problems, &
without it your garden is doomed. Second they want to make it sound
essential to spend a lot of money on this magic stuff, either for ghastly
overpriced equipment that'll work no differently that a laundry tub
dragged down from the attic, or to buy it in gallon jugs made from
chlorinated water & "discounted" if you bring in lots of white plastic
milk bottles for them.

A typical half-truth: Compost tea prevents or cures pathogenic fungal
diseases in the garden.
Truth: Pathogenic funguses are less likely to invade gardens with a
healthy balance of microorganisms.
Horticulatural station analyses have shown that using compost teas as
plant sprays for fungal defense has about the same practical value as
spraying with kelp or any number of other things -- for some funguses it
has no effect at all. Yet the tea vendors will want you to believe their
stuff is the only good stuff.

Another fraud involves compost teas used in further admixtures --
including admixtures of prepared compost teas & vinegar, which will NOT
assist the microorganism population & will probably harm it.

Yet another of the false claims for compost tea is that it infuses the
(vegetable) garden with homeopathic & allopathic remedies, because these
hornswoggling crooks do understand there is a direct connection between
the belief in garden rubble as herbal magic health cures, & manure water
as equally supernatural.

This relative new industry will never be policed any better than
aromatherapy & other crackpot ideas that people WANT to be suckered into
believing. There is more value to compost tea than aromatherapy of course,
but as tricked out by vendors, the very real value is mystified & expanded
& riddled with fraudulant claims all designed to part you from your money
-- for stuff you could've made with very little trouble for no cost
whatsoever!

In Canada the Canadian Standards Board's Committee on Organic Agriculture
has put its sights on the compost tea industry as a bundle of petty
frauds, deceptions, & intentional mis-educating methods of creating a
fooled & captive consumer base -- although so far they've mainly required
honest C:N ratio information (which doesn't address the primary deceptions
& half-truths this dubious element of the organics industry relies on) &
defines some temperatures & methodology requirements to at least keep the
industry from selling toxic fecal matter to their gullible customers. In
the US, alas, there is not even this moderate level of watchdogging. You
being misinformed about how to treat your garden organically isn't high on
anyone's consumer protection list, the attitude seemingly being that if
you're dumb enough to believe your own one-gallon milk bottle filled up
for $6 with dirty water is a bargain, then you deserve what you get for
being dumb as a stick.

Because the chemical companies have lied to gardeners for decades causing
gardeners to help infuse the environment with toxins of all varieties,
there's a strong desire to believe in any & all alternatives that come
along. "Organic" on a product or system is so often a scam, it is simply
meaningless. Compost teas assuredly have an important position in
gardening, but there is no strong demarkation between the people who
retailed PCBs yesterday & are now just going with what else can sell
today. At least you're not being convinced to cause great harm with the
particular pack of lies & half-truths surrounding compost tea
salesmanship, but neither are you dealing with strictly honest people, &
you may not be doing half as much good as they convinced you would happen,
& at the very least you're being bilked for stuff that could be made free
at home & be not one whit less effective.

-paghat the ratgirl

In article , newsgroup wrote:

On Mon, 08 Sep 2003 21:30:55 GMT, animaux
wrote:


These results are not mere opinions. They are heavily researched procedures.
www.soilfoodweb.com will give much of that information.


YES!!!

This is a commercial website that promotes ideas either disproven or
unproven as factual. You can find a thousand just like it, all very
positive. For every two thousand sell-you-crap websites praising compost
tea, you'll be able to find one actual piece of peer-reviewed science that
shows the opposite to be true. Any site 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,
injuring plants with excessive amounts of fertilizer, 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 & our gardens & go all insane in defennse of
their PetroChemical fetish. Will greenies get just as 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

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/

I don't buy it, I make my own, and yes, I use it the day it's ready. It takes
about 36 hours to brew and I make it when I know I'll have time to use it when
it's finished.


On Mon, 8 Sep 2003 15:03:40 -0700, "AnonnyMoose"
opined:

Well, it sells, like you say, for about five dollars a gallon. You bring
your own jug and save a few cents. They fill it from the contraption it's
"cooking" in.

So, do you have to use all of it within a few days? Does it die if some is
left in the jug for a week or so?

karen

"animaux" wrote in message
.. .
Not all compost tea is the same. The state of the art tea is made
aerobically.
The aerobic tea made at my favorite garden center:

http://www.naturalgardeneraustin.com/

...sells it for 5 dollars per gallon, 6 if they have to supply the jug.

When diluted it can cover 7500 square feet. What you are doing is adding
beneficial organisms to soil, and leaf surfaces to prevent and in many
cases
cure certain diseases and pest infestations.

If the compost tea they sell has been on the shelf for a while, it is not
aerobic tea. It also probably has some sort of bacterial suppressant so
the
bottle doesn't explode from the organism growth.

That said, what type can you buy?

On Mon, 8 Sep 2003 09:47:25 -0700, "AnonnyMoose"
opined:

I can buy gallon jugs of compost tea at local nurseries. How do I use it?
Do
I dilute it or use it straight (I'd need a ton of it!)? Is application
foliar? How often do I apply?

Thanks.
karen


"Tom Jaszewski" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 8 Sep 2003 04:18:33 -0400, "Fito"
wrote:


THE GARDEN WEB INFO IS JUST PLAIN WRONG AND CONTRARY TO ALL
TESTING!!!!

www.soilfoodweb.com

Why duck? Since when do the rantings of someone who obviously has not read any
of the materials scare you into ducking?

The information is out there. Garden centers do NOT make a lot of money selling
the tea. It could take a few years or at least one year to pay for the brewer.
I believe The Natural Gardener in Austin has a 500 gallon brewer. That can't be
cheap.

I think, as I told Pam, nobody was paying any attention to the baby and the baby
had to stir her stink.


On Mon, 08 Sep 2003 19:26:08 -0700, Tom Jaszewski
opined:

God your so ****ing contrary!
Yes there are chalatans, and there are flawed studies like
Chalker-Scott. But there are also incredible successes and the careful
users would NEVER say ACT cures anything..
Instant lab tests are very close to fruition. Don't knock what you
don't know based on your limited experience.

ducking



On Mon, 08 Sep 2003 19:05:59 -0700,
(paghat) wrote:

Dr. Chalker-Scott of the University of Washington Center for Urban
Horticulture has written a splendid article entitled "The Myth of Compost
Tea" which you can find on-line with a google search & download to your
desktop as a PDF file.

A lot of the "professional" advice about compost tea is driven by a
"professional" desire to mis-educate the public into believing something
they could very easily make at home for free cannot be made at home as
perfectly or as easily as paying dearly for a gallon made at a nursery, OR
requiring a lot of expensive equipment & ingredients to pull off
effectively. All one needs is a water tight barrel or large can, a compost
pile from which to obtain healthy sweet-smelling compost, a water hose to
fill the barrel, & if you really want to be fancy, a fifty-cent aquarium
stone, a dollar's worth of air hose, & a cheap aquarium pump.

A typical tea vendor who was both wholesaling & retailing compost tea &
tea-making equipment was giving lessons to local nurseries which he'd
convinced to carry his products. He claimed that to spray fruit treas with
his tea would prevent every known fruit disease & stop insects from eating
foliage or fruit. His was all-purpose organic stuff -- the list of what it
cured or prevented left nothing out. When a hand went up & he was informed
of a Washington University and University of Washington studies that
showed compost tea was worthless for the purposes he'd just outlined,
without batting an eye or skipping a beat the guy insisted it wasn't HIS
tea that W.U. & U.W. tested -- and HIS tea would do everything those
studies indicated isn't so.

One wholesaler admitted many such petty frauds exist. Then, preposterously
pretending to being the only honest company, promotes the idea that in
order to escape fraud, teas should be purchased only from certified
brewers (overlooking the fact that there is no certification process), &
the certified brewer should be asked for a required laboratory analysis of
the brew (which would be a dead brew before any lab analysis could be
obtained, supposing anyone really had the nerve to ask their nursery for
laboratory proof that their brews were alive & well). It would be great if
each vat of the stuff could be checked to see if it even had anything
alive in it. When brewed from water straight from a garden hose & unaged,
the chemicals added by to the county or city water supply will be
sufficient to kill off many of the microorganisms, rendering the tea
vastly less effective than it might otherwise have been. There are several
local nurseries that fresh-brew garden teas for their customers, & not a
one has any way of aging the water beforehand.So the customers lining up
on Compost Tea Day are buying it chlorinated -- & if instant lab tests
were possible, the microorganism count would turn out to be a mite shy of
staggering.

If you take a "course" designed by wholesale vendors for retail vendors to
foist onto the public, you end up believing all sorts of nonsense such as:
1) these teas are good sources of nematodes (they are in the main ly good
for fungal & bacterial microorganisms); that 2) there are ten kinds of tea
for ten uses & ten more for ten different kinds of plants (it is not
impossible to make teas that target certain predators by the addition of
specific nematodes, but nothing from a nursery brewer is so formulated &
they should stop promising anything more than a balance of fungal &
bacterial organisms); that 3) you need fancy equipment so you might want
to save on that investment by bringing in some milk bottles & buy it
dearly from the nursery; that 4) it will even kill fire ants when used
properly; &5) sundry other falsehoods or half-truths.

Many of companies manufacturing overpriced equipment must first dupe
nurseries, showing them how they WILL get filthy rich (though few ever
will) promoting a mixture of bonifide & trumped up ideas about compost
tea, & retailing all sorts of unnecessary products to gullible dweebs who
probably THOUGHT that expensive vat wasn't necessary but were too
befuddled by the dubious claims to follow that thought to the logical
conclusion not to buy any of it. The wholesalers & equipment manufactures
are often the exact same people who previously (sometimes still) promote
vermiculture as an easy road to riches. They hornswoggled morons into
believing they could get rich raising worms -- but the flimflam became too
well-known & notorious so that by now only the dumbest hilljack would any
longer borrow all his elderly mother's savings to buy everything he needs
to be a worm farmer, believing the city dump will be buying billions of
worms from him any day now for their municiple composting needs. And you
too can get rich licking envelops at home. A lot of swindles went
unpunished on the municiple-dumps-need-worms lie, but now the swindlers
have moved on to compost tea as the latest "how to get rich selling free
horseshit" gravy train. Fresh ideas, & fresh marks, were needed, &
obtained. The worm farm deceptions are now compost tea deceptions aimed
first at convincing the nurseries they should spend a good deal of money
setting themselves up to thereafter sell dirt-water that cost them nothing
& made them $5 per little squirt. The promise of obscene profits conjured
out of cowshit & horseshit motivates many struggling nursery owners to let
themselves be fooled before they start fooling us.

What you likely won't be told when you go to the "instructional" course
which is framed to teach you to be a duped customer is that good watering
technique & good organic mix in the soil has a LOT more to do with the
healthful microorganism population than do teas, & that adhering to a
correct watering schedule & topcoating with leafmold &/or composted
manures will do every bit as much as teas at keeping the microorganism
population at maximum levels. The best soils around are loamy forest
floors, & no one added compost teas to that -- you'd be doing your garden
more good by not carting away all the grass clippings & fallen leaves than
by buying tea. Overall the sales pitch posing as instruction wants to make
compost tea sound like the end-all magic potion for all your problems, &
without it your garden is doomed. Second they want to make it sound
essential to spend a lot of money on this magic stuff, either for ghastly
overpriced equipment that'll work no differently that a laundry tub
dragged down from the attic, or to buy it in gallon jugs made from
chlorinated water & "discounted" if you bring in lots of white plastic
milk bottles for them.

A typical half-truth: Compost tea prevents or cures pathogenic fungal
diseases in the garden.
Truth: Pathogenic funguses are less likely to invade gardens with a
healthy balance of microorganisms.
Horticulatural station analyses have shown that using compost teas as
plant sprays for fungal defense has about the same practical value as
spraying with kelp or any number of other things -- for some funguses it
has no effect at all. Yet the tea vendors will want you to believe their
stuff is the only good stuff.

Another fraud involves compost teas used in further admixtures --
including admixtures of prepared compost teas & vinegar, which will NOT
assist the microorganism population & will probably harm it.

Yet another of the false claims for compost tea is that it infuses the
(vegetable) garden with homeopathic & allopathic remedies, because these
hornswoggling crooks do understand there is a direct connection between
the belief in garden rubble as herbal magic health cures, & manure water
as equally supernatural.

This relative new industry will never be policed any better than
aromatherapy & other crackpot ideas that people WANT to be suckered into
believing. There is more value to compost tea than aromatherapy of course,
but as tricked out by vendors, the very real value is mystified & expanded
& riddled with fraudulant claims all designed to part you from your money
-- for stuff you could've made with very little trouble for no cost
whatsoever!

In Canada the Canadian Standards Board's Committee on Organic Agriculture
has put its sights on the compost tea industry as a bundle of petty
frauds, deceptions, & intentional mis-educating methods of creating a
fooled & captive consumer base -- although so far they've mainly required
honest C:N ratio information (which doesn't address the primary deceptions
& half-truths this dubious element of the organics industry relies on) &
defines some temperatures & methodology requirements to at least keep the
industry from selling toxic fecal matter to their gullible customers. In
the US, alas, there is not even this moderate level of watchdogging. You
being misinformed about how to treat your garden organically isn't high on
anyone's consumer protection list, the attitude seemingly being that if
you're dumb enough to believe your own one-gallon milk bottle filled up
for $6 with dirty water is a bargain, then you deserve what you get for
being dumb as a stick.

Because the chemical companies have lied to gardeners for decades causing
gardeners to help infuse the environment with toxins of all varieties,
there's a strong desire to believe in any & all alternatives that come
along. "Organic" on a product or system is so often a scam, it is simply
meaningless. Compost teas assuredly have an important position in
gardening, but there is no strong demarkation between the people who
retailed PCBs yesterday & are now just going with what else can sell
today. At least you're not being convinced to cause great harm with the
particular pack of lies & half-truths surrounding compost tea
salesmanship, but neither are you dealing with strictly honest people, &
you may not be doing half as much good as they convinced you would happen,
& at the very least you're being bilked for stuff that could be made free
at home & be not one whit less effective.

-paghat the ratgirl

What are you using for compost and what additioves in your recipe?
Perhaps you are making dark colored water and not ACT?

I use stored bought mushroom composts and some very sweet dark liquid
called molasses, mix with aged water, and pump air for two days before
using it. I got the formula from a Dr.something web site that were
repeatedly mentioned in many other web sites for DIY compost-tea.

I don't know what "ACT" you are really referring to.

Frankly, I have a feeling that whatever benefit that the compost tea
can give me doesn't justify the amount of work (and electricity and
noise) that I put in making it. I have a feeling that I am better off
top dressing my plants and lawn with composts (if I can find a vendor
that can sell compost in bulk for top-dressing my lawn). The reason is
that I can see the benefit of using compost with my own eyes; but I
cannot see any benefit of using compost tea.

In one corner of my vegetable garden, I have dumped a large quantity
of finished compost in last fall. Now, the vegetable in that corner
grow taller, bearing larger fruits than the rest of the vegetable
garden even though that corner of the vegetable garden receive the
least sun exposure. On the other hand, I cannot see any difference
from area in my lawn where I have poured compost tea for one month as
comparing to an adjacent area that only receives plain water.

I am not saying that compost tea has no benefit (afterall I only have
applied it for one month). I am saying that whatever benefit is very
small as comparing to the effort that I have put into preparing the
compost tea. I really should have been spending the little time that I
have left during a day to take care of my flowers, removing weeds, and
to enjoy watching my garden.

I am not against other people from making compost tea as long as they
"feel" good in doing this. I just don't have the time in doing this
especially when I cannot visually see any difference after using it.

Jay Chan

In two posts ,
screamed & scribbled:

I've come to the conclusion when this newsgroup is relatively quiet, someone
will post something verbose and ignorant to get the hackles up with people who
know the information, and who actually are professionals in the horticulture
industry. [snip contentless tirade] not the way it's being described in
the hugely snipped troll. I guess it got too quiet in here.

I think, as I told Pam, nobody was paying any attention to the baby and
the baby
had to stir her stink.


Tch tch. When someone has not a leg to stand on & has read nothing
whatsoever beyond some advertising claims, all they can do is resort to
"you're a stinky baby!" or pretend that professional retailing is
horticulture, or respond to specific & valid information with citation of
source as "ignorant!" "troll!" Attempting that feeby to counter the ACTUAL
field studies & research of ACTUAL horticultural professors who are
careful to sort out what is myth from what is valid in amateur organic
horticultural practices with nothing more rational than "ignorant stinky
baby!" reflects badly on no one but yourself. Having reality on my side I
don't have to resort to the contentless childishness of just calling you a
trolly stinky ignorant infant.

So for now you're angrily committed to not sorting out what little is
beneficial from the larger sales pitch the science does not support.
Perhaps when you get over having your illusions shattered you'll actually
read the research & see that it is quite different from the promo
literature.

It IS interesting to see, though, that the anti-organic people who just
LOVE chemicals are not always wrong about greenies not caring what is
true. Fortunately most of the greenies I hang with do know the difference
between evidence & a sales pitch & likely had their doubts about this
latest fad. It IS a tragedy that the science doesn't support more than one
out of ten of the wild claims for compost tea, but there it is, & you can
put your head in the sand & call your betters names till the cows come
home, but in this case (to put it at the intellectual level you're capable
of) I'm right, you're wrong, neener.

-paggers

"In the peer-reviewed literature...field-tested compost tea reported no
difference in disease control between compost tea & water." [Linda
Chalker-Scott, PhD, University of Washington horticulturalist]





On Mon, 08 Sep 2003 19:05:59 -0700,
(paghat) wrote:

Dr. Chalker-Scott of the University of Washington Center for Urban
Horticulture has written a splendid article entitled "The Myth of Compost
Tea" which you can find on-line with a google search & download to your
desktop as a PDF file.

A lot of the "professional" advice about compost tea is driven by a
"professional" desire to mis-educate the public into believing something
they could very easily make at home for free cannot be made at home as
perfectly or as easily as paying dearly for a gallon made at a nursery, OR
requiring a lot of expensive equipment & ingredients to pull off
effectively. All one needs is a water tight barrel or large can, a compost
pile from which to obtain healthy sweet-smelling compost, a water hose to
fill the barrel, & if you really want to be fancy, a fifty-cent aquarium
stone, a dollar's worth of air hose, & a cheap aquarium pump.

A typical tea vendor who was both wholesaling & retailing compost tea &
tea-making equipment was giving lessons to local nurseries which he'd
convinced to carry his products. He claimed that to spray fruit treas with
his tea would prevent every known fruit disease & stop insects from eating
foliage or fruit. His was all-purpose organic stuff -- the list of what it
cured or prevented left nothing out. When a hand went up & he was informed
of a Washington University and University of Washington studies that
showed compost tea was worthless for the purposes he'd just outlined,
without batting an eye or skipping a beat the guy insisted it wasn't HIS
tea that W.U. & U.W. tested -- and HIS tea would do everything those
studies indicated isn't so.

One wholesaler admitted many such petty frauds exist. Then, preposterously
pretending to being the only honest company, promotes the idea that in
order to escape fraud, teas should be purchased only from certified
brewers (overlooking the fact that there is no certification process), &
the certified brewer should be asked for a required laboratory analysis of
the brew (which would be a dead brew before any lab analysis could be
obtained, supposing anyone really had the nerve to ask their nursery for
laboratory proof that their brews were alive & well). It would be great if
each vat of the stuff could be checked to see if it even had anything
alive in it. When brewed from water straight from a garden hose & unaged,
the chemicals added by to the county or city water supply will be
sufficient to kill off many of the microorganisms, rendering the tea
vastly less effective than it might otherwise have been. There are several
local nurseries that fresh-brew garden teas for their customers, & not a
one has any way of aging the water beforehand.So the customers lining up
on Compost Tea Day are buying it chlorinated -- & if instant lab tests
were possible, the microorganism count would turn out to be a mite shy of
staggering.

If you take a "course" designed by wholesale vendors for retail vendors to
foist onto the public, you end up believing all sorts of nonsense such as:
1) these teas are good sources of nematodes (they are in the main ly good
for fungal & bacterial microorganisms); that 2) there are ten kinds of tea
for ten uses & ten more for ten different kinds of plants (it is not
impossible to make teas that target certain predators by the addition of
specific nematodes, but nothing from a nursery brewer is so formulated &
they should stop promising anything more than a balance of fungal &
bacterial organisms); that 3) you need fancy equipment so you might want
to save on that investment by bringing in some milk bottles & buy it
dearly from the nursery; that 4) it will even kill fire ants when used
properly; &5) sundry other falsehoods or half-truths.

Many of companies manufacturing overpriced equipment must first dupe
nurseries, showing them how they WILL get filthy rich (though few ever
will) promoting a mixture of bonifide & trumped up ideas about compost
tea, & retailing all sorts of unnecessary products to gullible dweebs who
probably THOUGHT that expensive vat wasn't necessary but were too
befuddled by the dubious claims to follow that thought to the logical
conclusion not to buy any of it. The wholesalers & equipment manufactures
are often the exact same people who previously (sometimes still) promote
vermiculture as an easy road to riches. They hornswoggled morons into
believing they could get rich raising worms -- but the flimflam became too
well-known & notorious so that by now only the dumbest hilljack would any
longer borrow all his elderly mother's savings to buy everything he needs
to be a worm farmer, believing the city dump will be buying billions of
worms from him any day now for their municiple composting needs. And you
too can get rich licking envelops at home. A lot of swindles went
unpunished on the municiple-dumps-need-worms lie, but now the swindlers
have moved on to compost tea as the latest "how to get rich selling free
horseshit" gravy train. Fresh ideas, & fresh marks, were needed, &
obtained. The worm farm deceptions are now compost tea deceptions aimed
first at convincing the nurseries they should spend a good deal of money
setting themselves up to thereafter sell dirt-water that cost them nothing
& made them $5 per little squirt. The promise of obscene profits conjured
out of cowshit & horseshit motivates many struggling nursery owners to let
themselves be fooled before they start fooling us.

What you likely won't be told when you go to the "instructional" course
which is framed to teach you to be a duped customer is that good watering
technique & good organic mix in the soil has a LOT more to do with the
healthful microorganism population than do teas, & that adhering to a
correct watering schedule & topcoating with leafmold &/or composted
manures will do every bit as much as teas at keeping the microorganism
population at maximum levels. The best soils around are loamy forest
floors, & no one added compost teas to that -- you'd be doing your garden
more good by not carting away all the grass clippings & fallen leaves than
by buying tea. Overall the sales pitch posing as instruction wants to make
compost tea sound like the end-all magic potion for all your problems, &
without it your garden is doomed. Second they want to make it sound
essential to spend a lot of money on this magic stuff, either for ghastly
overpriced equipment that'll work no differently that a laundry tub
dragged down from the attic, or to buy it in gallon jugs made from
chlorinated water & "discounted" if you bring in lots of white plastic
milk bottles for them.

A typical half-truth: Compost tea prevents or cures pathogenic fungal
diseases in the garden.
Truth: Pathogenic funguses are less likely to invade gardens with a
healthy balance of microorganisms.
Horticulatural station analyses have shown that using compost teas as
plant sprays for fungal defense has about the same practical value as
spraying with kelp or any number of other things -- for some funguses it
has no effect at all. Yet the tea vendors will want you to believe their
stuff is the only good stuff.

Another fraud involves compost teas used in further admixtures --
including admixtures of prepared compost teas & vinegar, which will NOT
assist the microorganism population & will probably harm it.

Yet another of the false claims for compost tea is that it infuses the
(vegetable) garden with homeopathic & allopathic remedies, because these
hornswoggling crooks do understand there is a direct connection between
the belief in garden rubble as herbal magic health cures, & manure water
as equally supernatural.

This relative new industry will never be policed any better than
aromatherapy & other crackpot ideas that people WANT to be suckered into
believing. There is more value to compost tea than aromatherapy of course,
but as tricked out by vendors, the very real value is mystified & expanded
& riddled with fraudulant claims all designed to part you from your money
-- for stuff you could've made with very little trouble for no cost
whatsoever!

In Canada the Canadian Standards Board's Committee on Organic Agriculture
has put its sights on the compost tea industry as a bundle of petty
frauds, deceptions, & intentional mis-educating methods of creating a
fooled & captive consumer base -- although so far they've mainly required
honest C:N ratio information (which doesn't address the primary deceptions
& half-truths this dubious element of the organics industry relies on) &
defines some temperatures & methodology requirements to at least keep the
industry from selling toxic fecal matter to their gullible customers. In
the US, alas, there is not even this moderate level of watchdogging. You
being misinformed about how to treat your garden organically isn't high on
anyone's consumer protection list, the attitude seemingly being that if
you're dumb enough to believe your own one-gallon milk bottle filled up
for $6 with dirty water is a bargain, then you deserve what you get for
being dumb as a stick.

Because the chemical companies have lied to gardeners for decades causing
gardeners to help infuse the environment with toxins of all varieties,
there's a strong desire to believe in any & all alternatives that come
along. "Organic" on a product or system is so often a scam, it is simply
meaningless. Compost teas assuredly have an important position in
gardening, but there is no strong demarkation between the people who
retailed PCBs yesterday & are now just going with what else can sell
today. At least you're not being convinced to cause great harm with the
particular pack of lies & half-truths surrounding compost tea
salesmanship, but neither are you dealing with strictly honest people, &
you may not be doing half as much good as they convinced you would happen,
& at the very least you're being bilked for stuff that could be made free
at home & be not one whit less effective.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/

In article ,
paghat wrote:
Dr. Chalker-Scott of the University of Washington Center for Urban
Horticulture has written a splendid article entitled "The Myth of Compost
Tea" which you can find on-line with a google search & download to your
desktop as a PDF file.



She has modified her metanalysis in "The Myth of Compost Tea
Revisited," in Aug 2003.

see:

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

Click on "Horticultural Myths"

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

under "2003"


billo

In article , (Bill Oliver) wrote:

In article ,
paghat wrote:
Dr. Chalker-Scott of the University of Washington Center for Urban
Horticulture has written a splendid article entitled "The Myth of Compost
Tea" which you can find on-line with a google search & download to your
desktop as a PDF file.



She has modified her metanalysis in "The Myth of Compost Tea
Revisited," in Aug 2003.

Or at least analyzed further peer-reviewed data, which I also cribbed in
the other thread's list of false claims & potential harm surrounding
compost tea. The data is mixed for NON-aerated compost tea's impact on
pathogens, but when restricted to peer-reviewed studies, the picture is
clearer: Occasional benefit is observed in suppressing pathogens with
NON-aerated teas, but outcomes are not uniform or predictable so that much
of it amounts to "irrepordicible science," while for others the observable
benefit is equal to the benefit of watering. AERATED compost teas show
none of the insinuated values for non-aerated. And surface mulching
compost DOES have many of the pathogen-suppressing benefits unproven or
unpredictable even for the non-aerated teas.

Further, the risk to watersheds has been shown in six additional
peer-reviewed articles to be very possible. That alone would be good
cause to stick to the superior method of topcoating with compost mulch,
which does not negatively impact the environment as compost teas could.

The concepts of organic gardenings should have provable & duplicatable
results to be regarded as more than empty-headed fads. By and large
organic principles result in healthier gardens BY FAR compared to people
reliant on pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, artificial fertilizers, &
all manner of toxins. But not everything labeled "organic" is harmless or
effective, & compost teas can be problems for watersheds, besides failing
to function in the garden's favor in the umpteen false or unproven areas
vendors claim for it beyond merely fertilizing.

see:

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

Click on "Horticultural Myths"

Click on "Myth - Aerobically-brewed Compost Tea Suppresses Disease - August"
under "2003"

Yup, to quote: Under "The Myth": "The popular press and the internet have
exploded with kudos for aerated compost tea as a disease control agent.
There are well over 4000 dot-com hits on the Google search engine,
compared with only 1900 two years ago. Numerous magazine and newspaper
articles have featured compost teas as environmentally-friendly
alternatives to chemical pesticides, claiming reduced run-off into aquatic
systems among other benefits."

After a balanced analyes of the possible exceptions, the unduplicable
science, the "best" outcomes being always from non-peer-reviewed sources,
& the peer-reviewed science findng benefit in retarding pathogens equal to
normal watering, & data non-aerated teas with specific qualities POSSIBLY
suppressing specific pathogens, this was the "Bottom Line" of the
accumulative science:

COMPOST MULCH HAS BEEN DOCUMENTED TO SUPRESS DISEASE (that much is certain
-- so stick with that kids!)

NON-AERATED TEAS MAY BE USEFUL IN SUPPRESSING SOME PATHOGENS ON SOME
PLANTS (evidence is mixed but some specific values are probable though
outcomes may always remain unpredictable as to efficacy, a hit & miss
method of disease control)

AERATED COMPOST TEAS HAVE NO SCIENTIFICALLY DOCUMENTED EFFECT AS PATHOGEN
SUPPRESSORS (and that, alas, is the aerobically brewed stuff promoted by
vendors selling the teas or selling aerobic brewing equipment .

So, surface mulching compost DEFINITELY GOOD, non-aerated teas POSSIBLY
SOMETIMES GOOD, aerated compost teas "brewed" by nurseries or with pricy
brewing eqipment NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER OF EFFICACY.

So while some specific, limited, but good values may yet be proven for
compost teas that are NOT aerated in restricting some pathogens on some
plants, the thing that is unquestionable is that topcoating with compost
is the proven superior method for doing the same thing. The MYTH remains:
"Aerobically brewed compost teas suppresses plant pathogens." No science
supports that myth. There is no evidence as yet that this is even
occasionally true. Yet vendors sell it for this purpose & arrange lectures
& instructions orchestrated to sell "brews" or home brewing equipment for
this purpose.

The additional problem of numerous outrageous false claims for compost
teas from functioning as insecticidese to repairing anarobic soils to
adding homeopoathic and alopathic value to veggies for human health to
being a good source of helpful nematodes all stand as the extravagant
flimflams perpetrated by the greedy on the naive.

An additional bottom line is you can't repair damage poorly maintained
soils with this alleged quick fix, whereas if ongoing soil management
techniques are correctly followed, then no reason to even wish for the
quick fix.

That aerobically brewed soil soups can be one more of many valid liquid
fertilizer is unquestionably true. It is not the best, nor the safest
option, & does not do more than fertilize. But it is an option for at
least that, & very likely a better option than liquid fertilizers cooked
up artificially by chemists -- though that too would have to be proven.
Its when the vendors get out there in left field with claiims for values
beyond fertilizing that they lie or exaggerate & miss-educate, promoting
false or unproven values hoping that for once crime pays & we'll give them
our money for stuff not likely to be needed, & if wanted anyway, easily
made at home for free without special brewing equipment (indeed, since
aeration decreases its value, the aeration vats are more than an
unecessary expense, they produce a tea of decreased value!)

-paggers


billo

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/

On 9 Sep 2003 08:48:50 -0700, (Jay Chan) wrote:

I am not against other people from making compost tea as long as they
"feel" good in doing this. I just don't have the time in doing this
especially when I cannot visually see any difference after using it.

Jay Chan



Good for you Jay, I agree if you see no results from making a poor
product it makes sense to quit...

On Tue, 09 Sep 2003 10:47:45 -0700,
(paghat) wrote:

An additional bottom line is you can't repair damage poorly maintained
soils with this alleged quick fix, whereas if ongoing soil management
techniques are correctly followed, then no reason to even wish for the
quick fix.

You're missing the boat on this one. Somehow you want to hold the
intire compost tea industry responsible for irresponsible claims. CT
is a PART of a soil development and management system. It's a valuable
part of a sustainable and/or organic paradigm.

Shit girl quit being so fing angry. Now that Pam and Vic are poking at
you you'll undoubtedly ramble on endlessly about how ****ed up CT and
it's proponents are. So be it. I could care less if my 5 years of
successes have no value to you or Chalker. (there's more than a little
behind the scenes politics there!).

CT remains a tool to regenerate and develop soils. It remains a tool
in taking dead soils and reintrodcuing biological competition. You are
concerned about glyphosate damaging soils and at the same time
unwilling to listen. That brilliant steel trap is now closed.