In article , newsgroup wrote:

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.

The PRIMARY claim of the WHOLE industry is that aerobic compost teas
prevent pathogens. There is zero evidence this is so. Atop this
irresponsible claim of the ENTIRE industry are selective claims of other
untrue or unproven values divied up between many vendors. The plain fact
is there is no one selling this in all honesty. To do so would turn the
majority of potential marks, er, customers away, & toward mulching with
composts instead -- better efficacy, without the the potential harmful
side effects.

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!).

It is so damned easy to have a successful garden that you "blaming" your
success on the ONE thing that that the science shows has little or nothign
to do with it is just you being ridiculous.

CT remains a tool to regenerate and develop soils.

A choice that is inferior to topcoating with mulch & proper watering. A
choice that is temporary at best. A choice that is unnecessary if soils
are otherwise properly managed, & useless if the soils need repair & are
wetted with teas instead of finally properly managed.

The CONTROLED studies show that normal watering has the same effect as
watering with compost teas. That is NOT to say that outcomes are lousy
with compost teas, only to say the teas had nothing to do with those
outcomes. If your gardening methods are otherwise sound, you're doing
neither harm nor good with it, it's totally beside the point. If you
wasted good money on "aerobic brewing" equipment, & really spent the last
five years using that expensive & stupid equipment, I can see that
emotionally it would be hard to face the peer-reviewed data that indicates
you not only allowed yourself to be duped for the price, but wasted a lot
of time for a lot of years that could've been spent gardening instead.

It remains a tool
in taking dead soils and reintrodcuing biological competition.

But does so less effectively than quality compost & regular watering, & in
no sustained manner without doing what is ACTUALLY necessary, maintaining
the organic material in the soil, & moistening it. Using teas instead of
moist organic material leaves out the most essential part, the organic
material, so does less rather than more for the soil. And if used "in
addition" to the proper method, unecessarily duplicates the better
practice, & in some cases could even result in overfertilizaion & collapse
of microorganism population.

You are
concerned about glyphosate damaging soils and at the same time
unwilling to listen. That brilliant steel trap is now closed.

No, I seriously wanted to believe this isn't a fraud; I've made & used
teas myself; I've read a great deal about them. It slowly became obvious
that EXCLUSIVELY the vendor literature supports it, the science does not,
& the vendor's preference for aerobic teas is the worst of all choices
(non-aerobic having a FEW indications of value in OCCASIONALLY suppressing
some pathogens in some plants, in unpredictable manners -- the aerobic
stuff vendors advocate doesn't even have that little bit of validity!) If
you can see the citations & compare the sources & still you NEED to
believe you haven't wasted your time & money on this stuff, it's you who
are unwilling to embrace the reality that not every fad is effective
merely for being organic.

If you'd said it works as a fertilizer then I'd agree, but you're sticking
to that mistaken idea that it's the best way to up the microorganism count
of the soil. THAT effect doesn't even last a week, & the maximum possible
microorganism count is achievable with organic compost & regular watering,
sustained by slow release actions, not by rapid alleged fixes. Get real.
Don't be a dupe.

-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/

And I've come to the conclusion that people who post extremely long messages
have made the internet their life. The garden is virtual.

--
Compostman
Washington, DC
Zone 7
"paghat" wrote in message
news
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/

"Bill Oliver" wrote in message
...
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

Bill I read the article. 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

On Tue, 09 Sep 2003 09:29:25 -0700, (paghat)
opined:

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!"

I said nobody was paying any attention to the baby and the baby had to stir her
stink.


or pretend that professional retailing is
horticulture, or respond to specific & valid information with citation of
source as "ignorant!" "troll!"

I was a professional grower. I was not merely in retail, I ran an entire 10
acre garden center, head to toe. This is another of your come back type
phrases. And you are an ignorant troll IMO.

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.

Here you go. A nice base for a flame party. Nobody falls for your shit any
more. Many people don't find you quaint or intelligent any more. And you are
ignorant, IMO

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.

Yeah, yeah. You are better than everyone else on the planet. You read the
science. Yeah, yeah. Bla, bla.

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

It's not the latest fad. It's been going on for well over a decade. Go stir
your stink pot. You are like the old lady who sits at the window, watching the
world go by and calling the cops whenever something happens which you don't
agree with.

Here's an idea. Don't make aerobic compost tea. Wow, what a concept. Nobody is
forcing anything down your throat. Don't like the station, change the channel.

"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]

Okay, so don't use it. How is it hurting you? I make no false claims. I've
seen plants turn around and get well, where it should have died. Increase in
biota populations in soil positively does indeed help with nutrient uptake as a
result of the process between the symbiotic relationship, plant to biota.

Like I said, don't use it. Use your freedom to avoid it. You are always
miserable. This is no different than any other time.

On Wed, 10 Sep 2003 10:14:13 GMT, "Compostman"
I read the article. 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


With all due respect, it IS a pesticide. Calling it a pesticide is not
incorrect for either professional or lay people. The specific type of pesticide
it is, is a herbicide. Still, it's a pesticide and can be called such.

V

In article VPC7b.133178$0v4.9749357@bgtnsc04-
news.ops.worldnet.att.net,
says...
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.


Pesticide is the overall group which will contain
herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, rodenticides, etc.
Same as Citrus the group containing oranges, grapefruit,
lemon, etc
--

http://home.comcast.net/~larflu/owl1.jpg

Lar. (to e-mail, get rid of the BUGS!!

Well, it's obvious that these are two superior minds who are
permanently ensonced on their respective sides of the fence.

At this point, the main question in my mind is whether or not compost
tea serves as a good nutrient boost for my garden. I wasn't aware of
any cure-all claims for the potion, nor was I aware that it was even
available commercially. I just want to know if I'm wasting my time in
preparing a batch of the brown liquid if my primary goal is to feed my
plants.

Thanks for your well-informed posts.

-Fleemo

"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

"Compostman" wrote in message ...
And I've come to the conclusion that people who post extremely long messages
have made the internet their life. The garden is virtual.

You've come to so few rational conclusions in your life haven't you.
Now get the hell off the net & go stir your eency weency pile of
compost that has defined your sole alleged expertise on UseNet.
Sheesh, talk about the pot calling alabaster black.

-paggers

On 10 Sep 2003 12:04:40 -0700, (Fleemo) wrote:

I just want to know if I'm wasting my time in
preparing a batch of the brown liquid if my primary goal is to feed my
plants.

A letter posted today on yahoo groups compost-tea.

Compost tea has been around a LONG time. Since the Roman Empire, to
the best of anyone's knowledge. Just like aspirin, or honey for a
sore throat, biodynamic preps. the science behind using these
practices was lacking. Scientific studies were not performed with
these materials, because of the weight of tradition behind them.

Aspirin began to be studied just a few years ago, and it was clear
that effectiveness could be improved by understanding why aspirin
works. Different formulations work better for different kinds of
pains.

Compost tea is like aspirin for your soil and plants. Does it need
scientific study? Sure. That's what IS HAPPENING with compost tea.
We're getting around to studying it. But to declare that compost tea
has no benefit because someone tried it on their bushes, or did a
study where they used something that probably wasn't compost tea is a
bad case of throwing the baby out with the bath water. There's some
bath water that needs to be exited (maybe snake-oil would be another
term), but there's a core of solid knowledge developing about compost
tea.

Compost tea can work, amazingly well, but just like aspirin, some
traditional formulations leave a lot to be desired. Throwing compost
into water and leaving it to ferment can result in dead plants, or can
result in vibrant, healthy plant.

Inconsistency in results is what has probably prevented compost tea
from gaining widespread acceptance. I've killed a few plants with
stinky, smelly compost tea. That's why I know at least some of what
not to do.

Don't leave compost tea in a container until it starts to smell bad.
Just because it smells bad doesn't always mean that bad things will
happen. Sometimes there is no effect. Sometimes, the brew has enough
competitive organisms in it to out-compete the disease on your plant
and give positive results. BUT, any time harm has been observed, the
tea has been stinky and smelly.

So, how do you make a tea that is consistently beneficial?

Aerate the tea during production, and the danger is removed. If we
control the brewing conditions, then much more consistent teas are
produced.

When someone assumes that non-aerated tea will automatically be
anaerobic, they reveal that they don't know much about the entire
business.

How do you know for certain something is aerobic? A real scientist
would use an oxygen probe to measure oxygen concentration. Data are
required to make a statement about aerobic - anaerobic conditions in
tea. Non-aerated teas can still be aerobic.

If you are a non-scientist, smells are a reasonable way to assess
anaerobic conditions. If the brew stinks, or smells bad, there's a
real possibility that some very bad things will happen to your plants.
Putting bad smelling, anaerobic tea into your soil may not cause the
soil to go anaerobic, but it will certainly help move it that way.
Anaerobic liquids may kill or put-to-sleep the beneficial organisms in
soil that make soil aggregates. That means compaction will be more
likely in the future, and your soil will be even less of a good place
to grow your plants if it gets more compacted.

Do we need to test each batch of tea? Not if the data are there to
show us that a machine can maintain aeration and mixing to produce
good tea. You have to follow directions about temperature, water
quality, added foods in the brewer, and compost quality. But if the
tea machine maker has done the testing and can show the data about
bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes in the tea brewer, and you
follow their directions, then the tea you make should be fine. Maybe
testing the first two or three batches to prove to yourself that you
are doing fine would be a good idea.

Why is there so little published on actively aerated compost tea?
Because the machines to make consistent compost tea were only invented
within the last five years. And the first people to make such a
machine did not do adequate testing on exactly what that machine was
able to do, or why it worked so well.

So, we're working on the science. But just because there are some
snake-oil sales-people out there doesn't mean you throw the whole
industry out the door. What is needed is education on which machines
give tea that works every time, and which machines are snake-oil
purveyors.

The International Compost Tea Council (www.intlctc.com) is working on
testing all the kinds of tea-makers on the market. They have a good
explanation of what is good tea, and why it is good tea on their
website.

Soil Foodweb Inc (www.soilfoodweb.com) has compared different tea
machines on the market. Our findings showed serious differences
between different tea machines in their ability to extract and grow
the organisms from the compost. The biggest split was between
machines that often become anaerobic during the tea brewing cycle,
such as the Soil Soup machines, and the Growing Solutions machines.
These two machines CAN make aerobic teas, if you are careful to use
very low amounts of foods in the tea brew, but then you can't grow
decent levels of bacteria or fungi if the compost used is truly
mature. Fungi are never adequate in the Soil Soup machine, and only
occasionally adequate in the Growing Solutions machine.

All of our agricultural and urban or suburban soils are typically low
in fungi. Humans till and disturb soil, and that tillage knocks the
fungi for a real loop. So, it is critical to get fungi back into the
soil, and get the disease protection needed back on the roots, leaves,
stems, and blossoms of the plants.

Machines like the KIS brewers (www.simplici-tea.com), the EPM brewers
(www.composttea.com), the WormGold brewers (www.wormgold.com), and the
Bob-O-Later brewers (check the yahoo groups.com compost tea list
serve, for their info) make excellent tea,
with all the organisms in the compost extracted into the tea. They
have data on their websites, they have demonstration areas they can
send you to show where the tea is working (the best demos are in
Idaho, on potato land, but the daylilies, people's lawns and gardens
and even golf courses can be seen as well).

Now, if soil is already healthy, and toxic chemicals are not needed to
maintain the system, what does that tell you? That the biology needed
is in your system already. More good won't hurt, but it won't improve
things. But you don't shut down an entire industry because one
person's yard is in good health.

That's like saying that because I'm healthy right now, the whole
antibiotic industry is pointless and antibiotics should be banned.
What about when you get sick? What about when there is a disease
outbreak? You are going to need the antibiotic.

When people do have plants that are not healthy, they need an approach
that will bring back the healthy condition.

Same thing with human health. We need a medical system that pushes
health, instead of antibiotics. Oh, you don't get rid of the
antibiotics, because people will get into situations where there is no
other solution, but you don't use the "nuke-em" approaches unless
absolutely necessary. Same with compost tea. There will be
conditions where the disease is so bad, that the tea can't keep up.
So use the toxic chemical and then get tea back out there so you don't
have to keep using the nuke-em.

But there is more work needed to learn exactly what conditions result
in the best compost tea. That work is on-going. Keep checking the
ICTC website, the SFI website for more information.

Compost has the benefits it does because of the organisms and the
foods to feed those organisms in the compost. The organisms interact.
Logic is lacking when someone suggests that compost tea is a problem
because we "have to now worry about the microbes interacting" (quote
from the B&B article that appeared in August).

There's no logic in claiming "there's a potential for variability" in
compost tea without also applying that same criticism to compost. In
fact, the most variable thing in compost tea is the compost. If
someone wants to claim "some people do testing that is inconclusive",
that just says there's a problem with your sampling, not that every
tea ever made is worthless. As if the same criticism couldn't be
applied to soil, or compost, or chicken soup.

Compost leachates should not be confused with compost tea. A leachate
is an extraction of soluble materials. Tea requires the physical
removal of the whole diversity of organisms from the compost, which
cannot be achieved by passive movement of water through the compost.
Tea is also brewed, so the organisms have time to grow, reproduce, and
increase in numbers. No one who knows anything about compost tea
would call a liquid a leachate in one sentence and call the same
material a compost tea in the next sentence. Cedar Grove produces a
compost leachate, not a compost tea. Someone in city government
should push the issue with them, because Cedar Grove is
mis-representing what they are selling.

Maintaining an understanding of the difference between leaching and
leachates is also important. In properly made compost, the inorganic
forms of nitrogen (N) should be at barely detectable levels. The
inorganic forms of N are the most leachable kinds of N, which is why
compost usually gets a bad rap as a fertilizer - low to no inorganic
N, S, or P. But plenty of N is present in any decent compost, but
present as bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, microarthropods, and
perhaps worms. Biology is not leachable; the organisms have to be
attached to their food, or they don't stay active. So organisms hold
on very well indeed.

Leachates DO NOT contain significant biology because microbes don't
wash off compost or leaf surfaces with a mere rinse or wash.
Leachates contain soluble materials from the soil, compost, mulch,
potting mixes, or whatever. Data exist to show that compost teas
contain measurable amounts of nutrients, but not in a leachable form.
You want proof? Send in a good, aerobic compost tea to a chemistry
lab. They can show you that the N in compost tea does not exist in
the inorganic forms. But look at the biology. That's where the N is
located.

Now, leave a compost leachate in a vat for awhile and what Dr.
Chalker-Scott was worried about could be true. Putrefying organic
matter does not contain the biology needed to hold the nutrients in
place. Without the right biology, leachable forms of N, P, or S do
not get converted to non-leachable forms.

How do nutrients get moved out of the bacteria and fungi and back into
a plant-available form? This requires predators of bacteria and
fungi, but in the right amounts and in the right places. The plant
should control this interaction, and it does in healthy soil. But
when the soil lacks predators, then nutrient cycling cannot occur.

Compost and compost tea contain all these organisms, in greater
concentration and diversity than soil. They are both inocula of the
organisms. If the habitat is right, organisms grow and thus spread
through your soil.

Compost tea contains the soluble nutrients found in compost, but lacks
the solids that occur in tea. So, is it better to use compost or
compost tea? Compost will have a benefit for years, while compost
tea, no matter how high in biology and soluble foods, has a limited
ability for maintaining organism activity. But organisms grow, and as
a source of the diversity of organisms needed to get back in your
soil, both compost and compost tea are terrific. Compost tea is
easier to apply than compost, and can be used to deliver the organisms
to the foliage. So which is better? Depends on what you need.

Now, let's clear the air about the study that was done at UW in 2001.
Soil Foodweb Inc documented that the COMPOST contained a good set of
organisms - that is bacteria, fungi and protozoa. Sorry, the compost
wasn't outstanding, as there were no nematodes present. A Growing
Solutions Microb-Brewer machine was used, which IF PROPERLY CLEANED,
is capable of extracting good bacterial, fungal and protozoan biomass.
(But please note that Growing Solutions no longer makes
Microb-Brewers. They make a different machine now).

Note that the Dr. Chalker-Scott article tried to side-step around the
fact that the tea was never documented to be worth the time and effort
they were putting into it. Was the tea made properly? Did they clean
the machine properly? NO DATA about the TEA. What about their
sprayer? Did they ever test the leaf surfaces to see if they were
getting organisms on the leaves? Did they get proper coverage of the
leaf surfaces?

They did not document any of those things. When doing a study that is
purported to be scientific, the very least you have to do is show that
the treatment being applied is in fact what you say it is.

I visited the tea brewer that was being used for the UW study and
immediately pointed out that they had severe cleaning problems. The
insides and outsides of the brewer were streaked with bio-film, the
pipes had not been cleaned. The brewer smelled so bad that I could
not remain in the area. The excuse I received at the time was that
the person cleaning the brewer had been on vacation just before I
arrived. That's an excuse. If the person had been cleaning the
machine properly, they would have left it clean. More realistically,
the tea brewer had probably not been cleaned the entire summer.

When I was there, I pointed out that no effort had been made, despite
constant reminders, to make sure they were getting adequate organism
coverage on the leaf surfaces. They had no idea if the brown liquid
they were putting out was really tea. This is in contrast to numerous
clients of ours who have checked their first two or three tea brews
and learned that they need to do to make top-notch tea and get
excellent leaf coverage.

There were other possible problems, such as not applying the tea at
the correct rates. For example, on Jackson golf course, the FIRST tea
application was not made until after July 4. In the Pacific
Northwest, all those ugly fungal patches, take-all, molds, and
root-feeding grubs are well-established by mid-summer. To expect
compost tea to take care of all the fungicide that has been sprayed up
until then, much less all the diseases already well-established by
that point is just ludicrous. The compost tea organisms have to
establish BEFORE the "bad-guys".

During my second trip to talk with these people, at the end of the
season, when I was standing on a green riddled with horrible patches
of disease, it was revealed that when the head superintendent was away
on vacation, the person left in charge had decided to use chemicals on
the supposed "tea-greens". It was after that point that the tea had
failed. Hum, I wonder why?

So, is it fair to suspect that there was a hidden agenda operating
during this study?

At the beginning of the compost tea study in Seattle in 2001, I was
threatened with a lawsuit just for saying that I work with Jim Moore,
from Texas, who does consulting on golf courses, and has studies going
on USGA greens. When questioned whether Jim had a Ph.D., I said I
wasn't aware that Jim Moore had a Ph.D. But a golf course employee
called Dr. Moore and told him I had claimed that I worked closely with
him. Dr. Moore became so angry he threatened me with a lawsuit.

Guess what? There's more than one Jim Moore living in Texas and more
than one working on golf courses which have USGA greens. Actually,
the real Jim Moore told me that there were at least two more Jim
Moore's in Texas working on USGA golf courses. For anyone to jump
into lawsuit territory based on this "evidence" is beyond the bounds
of normal behavior. But I think it tells a significant story about
these studies on compost tea in 2001.

Compost tea has been around for a long time. The benefits have been
variable. We need to standardize the tea-making process, so we know
that each tea made is going to deliver the biology needed to improve
soil and cover leaf surfaces.

There will be snake-oil sales people who try to cash in on this
potential. There will be proponents of the old paradigm who fear what
change will bring. But you can see through their lack of logic pretty
easily.

Is more replicated, solid science required? Yes. But check out the
science that has been done on the information listed on the ATTRA
website. And in the book published by Soil Foodweb Inc.

If a scientist were really interested in doing a decent study on
compost tea, they would test the tea, and make sure the biology was
surviving in the soil and on the leaf surfaces. Just checking the
compost, before making the tea, is not adequate science.

As a consumer, how do you protect yourself? The snake oil salesmen
don't have any data to show their machines, or "compost", or "catalyst
packages" actually improve the biology in the brew. They don't have
studies that show that the biology in the tea improved the biology in
the soil. Those kinds of studies have been done by Soil Foodweb, and
are in the Compost Tea Brewing Manual, or will be published in
scientific journals. We have a SARE tea trial in vineyards in review
by a scientific journal currently.

And it is NOT just bacteria that must be present in the brew (beware
of the plate count methods that only give bacterial results!). Fungi,
protozoa and nematodes are also required in tea brews that will
improve your soil, and ultimately end up with systems that require
very little maintenance.

Neither pesticides nor compost tea are needed in healthy systems. But
we have to have healthy soils first.

Fungi have been killed by the constant fungicide applications to our
rose bushes, our cut flowers, our gardens, and ag fields. We need to
put the beneficial fungi, protozoa and nematodes back. If you add
back just bacteria, as two of the machines on the market are only able
to do, you cannot hope to get the full benefit.

So, the bottom line is that caution is required, but out-right
rejection is silly. Do some reading, check some websites, look at
some demos. Don't waste your money on things that only give you step
one in a twelve step program, and don't buy something from someone
giving you hype. Data should be asked for, and if they don't have any
data, walk away.

For more information, please contact the ICTC, or Soil Foodweb Inc.

Dr. Elaine R. Ingham is President of Soil Foodweb Inc, with labs in
Oregon and New York, Australia, New Zealand, Holland and Mexico. She
is graduate faculty at Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW.

In article ,
Tom Jaszewski newsgroup wrote:
On 10 Sep 2003 12:04:40 -0700, (Fleemo) wrote:


Compost tea is like aspirin for your soil and plants.

It gives them hemorrhagic strokes, gastric ulcers, and abnormal
bleeding times? Yuck. I just hate it when my Diffenbachia start
eating up my Tums and bleed on the carpet.


billo

In article , newsgroup wrote:

On 10 Sep 2003 12:04:40 -0700, (Fleemo) wrote:

I just want to know if I'm wasting my time in
preparing a batch of the brown liquid if my primary goal is to feed my
plants.

Yowza, I sure hope you reposted that as a hilarious example of the muddy
supernatural thinking of VENDORS trying to hornswoggle you into believing
complete & utter nonsense, leaving out even moderate scientific content!
As Dr Elain is one of the big-cheese VENDORS she perfectly represents the
VENDOR perspective on why you should spend money on stuff her company
sells. Funny she has been peddling this stuff a long time now, and STILL
pretending "real soon now" her own COMPANY research will soon appear in
scientific journals, as if her inane ad-copy could get past peer review
(hasn't managed to do so thus far!). In this "letter" devoid of citation
source or fact other than her sales-oriented company, she DOES manage to
include the following nonsense in her VENDOR's screed:

1) She repeats the old lie about compost teas being a source of nematodes.
2) she notes that science is your enemy in these matters "because the
weight of tradition" counts for more than emperical evidence of any kind
unless it can be fudged for commerce.
3) She repeats the common vendor explanation for why all the field studies
show aerated compost tea has no effect beyond that of plain water in
controlling pathogens: It wasn't "real" compost tea! (Every vendor says
"mine would've worked, they didn't use mine, it doesn't prove mine doesn't
work" -- "magic" thinking).
4) Riddles her screed with central "ideas" that are completely irrational,
like "compost tea is like asprin" -- truly avoiding the simplest logic.
5) Lyingly rephrases the extant science to make it sound as crazy as her screed
6) Lies outright that she can teach methods of absolute consistency for
consecutive batches of teas.
7) Claims that compost teas are actually DANGEROUS if you don't learn from
her methods (that's a new one! Most of these vendors don't want to link
compost tea to the idea of dangerousness -- but I can see that someone who
charges up the wazoo for compost tea workshops called "tea seminars" would
want to create another level of tea mythology, that without her input
you'll kill your garden)
8) Lies outright that safe teas can only be made with expensive commercial
equipment you should buy.
9) Lies outright about there being no studies so far proving anything one
way or another, but that her company & the equally commercial Compost Tea
Counsel will real-soon-now be publishing THEIR evidences of its miracle
values, & you should rely on that sort of vendor information ahead of time
right now since you surely know they're gonna say miracles are miracles
after all.
10) Contradicts six peer-reviewed published studies that show compost teas
quickly leach out of soils before plants are benefited, & replacese
reality with a flimflam version about compost pile leachates.
11) Uses the "baby with the bathwater" argument as back-up when the lies
don't work -- cuz even if everything the peer-reviewed science has shown
to be true really is true, you should still use the teas for purposes it
is no good for because otherwise you're throwing the baby out with the
bathwater.




A letter posted today on yahoo groups compost-tea.

Compost tea has been around a LONG time. Since the Roman Empire, to
the best of anyone's knowledge. Just like aspirin, or honey for a
sore throat, biodynamic preps. the science behind using these
practices was lacking. Scientific studies were not performed with
these materials, because of the weight of tradition behind them.

Aspirin began to be studied just a few years ago, and it was clear
that effectiveness could be improved by understanding why aspirin
works. Different formulations work better for different kinds of
pains.

Compost tea is like aspirin for your soil and plants. Does it need
scientific study? Sure. That's what IS HAPPENING with compost tea.
We're getting around to studying it. But to declare that compost tea
has no benefit because someone tried it on their bushes, or did a
study where they used something that probably wasn't compost tea is a
bad case of throwing the baby out with the bath water. There's some
bath water that needs to be exited (maybe snake-oil would be another
term), but there's a core of solid knowledge developing about compost
tea.

Compost tea can work, amazingly well, but just like aspirin, some
traditional formulations leave a lot to be desired. Throwing compost
into water and leaving it to ferment can result in dead plants, or can
result in vibrant, healthy plant.

Inconsistency in results is what has probably prevented compost tea
from gaining widespread acceptance. I've killed a few plants with
stinky, smelly compost tea. That's why I know at least some of what
not to do.

Don't leave compost tea in a container until it starts to smell bad.
Just because it smells bad doesn't always mean that bad things will
happen. Sometimes there is no effect. Sometimes, the brew has enough
competitive organisms in it to out-compete the disease on your plant
and give positive results. BUT, any time harm has been observed, the
tea has been stinky and smelly.

So, how do you make a tea that is consistently beneficial?

Aerate the tea during production, and the danger is removed. If we
control the brewing conditions, then much more consistent teas are
produced.

When someone assumes that non-aerated tea will automatically be
anaerobic, they reveal that they don't know much about the entire
business.

How do you know for certain something is aerobic? A real scientist
would use an oxygen probe to measure oxygen concentration. Data are
required to make a statement about aerobic - anaerobic conditions in
tea. Non-aerated teas can still be aerobic.

If you are a non-scientist, smells are a reasonable way to assess
anaerobic conditions. If the brew stinks, or smells bad, there's a
real possibility that some very bad things will happen to your plants.
Putting bad smelling, anaerobic tea into your soil may not cause the
soil to go anaerobic, but it will certainly help move it that way.
Anaerobic liquids may kill or put-to-sleep the beneficial organisms in
soil that make soil aggregates. That means compaction will be more
likely in the future, and your soil will be even less of a good place
to grow your plants if it gets more compacted.

Do we need to test each batch of tea? Not if the data are there to
show us that a machine can maintain aeration and mixing to produce
good tea. You have to follow directions about temperature, water
quality, added foods in the brewer, and compost quality. But if the
tea machine maker has done the testing and can show the data about
bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes in the tea brewer, and you
follow their directions, then the tea you make should be fine. Maybe
testing the first two or three batches to prove to yourself that you
are doing fine would be a good idea.

Why is there so little published on actively aerated compost tea?
Because the machines to make consistent compost tea were only invented
within the last five years. And the first people to make such a
machine did not do adequate testing on exactly what that machine was
able to do, or why it worked so well.

So, we're working on the science. But just because there are some
snake-oil sales-people out there doesn't mean you throw the whole
industry out the door. What is needed is education on which machines
give tea that works every time, and which machines are snake-oil
purveyors.

The International Compost Tea Council (www.intlctc.com) is working on
testing all the kinds of tea-makers on the market. They have a good
explanation of what is good tea, and why it is good tea on their
website.

Soil Foodweb Inc (www.soilfoodweb.com) has compared different tea
machines on the market. Our findings showed serious differences
between different tea machines in their ability to extract and grow
the organisms from the compost. The biggest split was between
machines that often become anaerobic during the tea brewing cycle,
such as the Soil Soup machines, and the Growing Solutions machines.
These two machines CAN make aerobic teas, if you are careful to use
very low amounts of foods in the tea brew, but then you can't grow
decent levels of bacteria or fungi if the compost used is truly
mature. Fungi are never adequate in the Soil Soup machine, and only
occasionally adequate in the Growing Solutions machine.

All of our agricultural and urban or suburban soils are typically low
in fungi. Humans till and disturb soil, and that tillage knocks the
fungi for a real loop. So, it is critical to get fungi back into the
soil, and get the disease protection needed back on the roots, leaves,
stems, and blossoms of the plants.

Machines like the KIS brewers (www.simplici-tea.com), the EPM brewers
(www.composttea.com), the WormGold brewers (www.wormgold.com), and the
Bob-O-Later brewers (check the yahoo groups.com compost tea list
serve, for their info) make excellent tea,
with all the organisms in the compost extracted into the tea. They
have data on their websites, they have demonstration areas they can
send you to show where the tea is working (the best demos are in
Idaho, on potato land, but the daylilies, people's lawns and gardens
and even golf courses can be seen as well).

Now, if soil is already healthy, and toxic chemicals are not needed to
maintain the system, what does that tell you? That the biology needed
is in your system already. More good won't hurt, but it won't improve
things. But you don't shut down an entire industry because one
person's yard is in good health.

That's like saying that because I'm healthy right now, the whole
antibiotic industry is pointless and antibiotics should be banned.
What about when you get sick? What about when there is a disease
outbreak? You are going to need the antibiotic.

When people do have plants that are not healthy, they need an approach
that will bring back the healthy condition.

Same thing with human health. We need a medical system that pushes
health, instead of antibiotics. Oh, you don't get rid of the
antibiotics, because people will get into situations where there is no
other solution, but you don't use the "nuke-em" approaches unless
absolutely necessary. Same with compost tea. There will be
conditions where the disease is so bad, that the tea can't keep up.
So use the toxic chemical and then get tea back out there so you don't
have to keep using the nuke-em.

But there is more work needed to learn exactly what conditions result
in the best compost tea. That work is on-going. Keep checking the
ICTC website, the SFI website for more information.

Compost has the benefits it does because of the organisms and the
foods to feed those organisms in the compost. The organisms interact.
Logic is lacking when someone suggests that compost tea is a problem
because we "have to now worry about the microbes interacting" (quote
from the B&B article that appeared in August).

There's no logic in claiming "there's a potential for variability" in
compost tea without also applying that same criticism to compost. In
fact, the most variable thing in compost tea is the compost. If
someone wants to claim "some people do testing that is inconclusive",
that just says there's a problem with your sampling, not that every
tea ever made is worthless. As if the same criticism couldn't be
applied to soil, or compost, or chicken soup.

Now, leave a compost leachate in a vat for awhile and what Dr.
Chalker-Scott was worried about could be true. Putrefying organic
matter does not contain the biology needed to hold the nutrients in
place. Without the right biology, leachable forms of N, P, or S do
not get converted to non-leachable forms.

How do nutrients get moved out of the bacteria and fungi and back into
a plant-available form? This requires predators of bacteria and
fungi, but in the right amounts and in the right places. The plant
should control this interaction, and it does in healthy soil. But
when the soil lacks predators, then nutrient cycling cannot occur.

Compost and compost tea contain all these organisms, in greater
concentration and diversity than soil. They are both inocula of the
organisms. If the habitat is right, organisms grow and thus spread
through your soil.

Compost tea contains the soluble nutrients found in compost, but lacks
the solids that occur in tea. So, is it better to use compost or
compost tea? Compost will have a benefit for years, while compost
tea, no matter how high in biology and soluble foods, has a limited
ability for maintaining organism activity. But organisms grow, and as
a source of the diversity of organisms needed to get back in your
soil, both compost and compost tea are terrific. Compost tea is
easier to apply than compost, and can be used to deliver the organisms
to the foliage. So which is better? Depends on what you need.

Now, let's clear the air about the study that was done at UW in 2001.
Soil Foodweb Inc documented that the COMPOST contained a good set of
organisms - that is bacteria, fungi and protozoa. Sorry, the compost
wasn't outstanding, as there were no nematodes present. A Growing
Solutions Microb-Brewer machine was used, which IF PROPERLY CLEANED,
is capable of extracting good bacterial, fungal and protozoan biomass.
(But please note that Growing Solutions no longer makes
Microb-Brewers. They make a different machine now).

Note that the Dr. Chalker-Scott article tried to side-step around the
fact that the tea was never documented to be worth the time and effort
they were putting into it. Was the tea made properly? Did they clean
the machine properly? NO DATA about the TEA. What about their
sprayer? Did they ever test the leaf surfaces to see if they were
getting organisms on the leaves? Did they get proper coverage of the
leaf surfaces?

They did not document any of those things. When doing a study that is
purported to be scientific, the very least you have to do is show that
the treatment being applied is in fact what you say it is.

I visited the tea brewer that was being used for the UW study and
immediately pointed out that they had severe cleaning problems. The
insides and outsides of the brewer were streaked with bio-film, the
pipes had not been cleaned. The brewer smelled so bad that I could
not remain in the area. The excuse I received at the time was that
the person cleaning the brewer had been on vacation just before I
arrived. That's an excuse. If the person had been cleaning the
machine properly, they would have left it clean. More realistically,
the tea brewer had probably not been cleaned the entire summer.

When I was there, I pointed out that no effort had been made, despite
constant reminders, to make sure they were getting adequate organism
coverage on the leaf surfaces. They had no idea if the brown liquid
they were putting out was really tea. This is in contrast to numerous
clients of ours who have checked their first two or three tea brews
and learned that they need to do to make top-notch tea and get
excellent leaf coverage.

There were other possible problems, such as not applying the tea at
the correct rates. For example, on Jackson golf course, the FIRST tea
application was not made until after July 4. In the Pacific
Northwest, all those ugly fungal patches, take-all, molds, and
root-feeding grubs are well-established by mid-summer. To expect
compost tea to take care of all the fungicide that has been sprayed up
until then, much less all the diseases already well-established by
that point is just ludicrous. The compost tea organisms have to
establish BEFORE the "bad-guys".

During my second trip to talk with these people, at the end of the
season, when I was standing on a green riddled with horrible patches
of disease, it was revealed that when the head superintendent was away
on vacation, the person left in charge had decided to use chemicals on
the supposed "tea-greens". It was after that point that the tea had
failed. Hum, I wonder why?

So, is it fair to suspect that there was a hidden agenda operating
during this study?

At the beginning of the compost tea study in Seattle in 2001, I was
threatened with a lawsuit just for saying that I work with Jim Moore,
from Texas, who does consulting on golf courses, and has studies going
on USGA greens. When questioned whether Jim had a Ph.D., I said I
wasn't aware that Jim Moore had a Ph.D. But a golf course employee
called Dr. Moore and told him I had claimed that I worked closely with
him. Dr. Moore became so angry he threatened me with a lawsuit.

[more vendor gibberish deleted]

--
"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 , newsgroup wrote:

On 10 Sep 2003 12:04:40 -0700, (Fleemo) wrote:

I just want to know if I'm wasting my time in
preparing a batch of the brown liquid if my primary goal is to feed my
plants.

A letter posted today on yahoo groups compost-tea:

[fabulously loony vendor gibbering deleted -- follow thread back if you
missed that amazingly exhibition of "why science isn't real"!]

Yowza Tom!, I sure hope you reposted that as a hilarious example of the
muddy supernatural thinking of VENDORS trying to hornswoggle you into
believing complete & utter nonsense, leaving out even moderate scientific
content while insisting the scientists are universally wrong &
real-soon-now the vendor organizations will be publishing the truth!

It's too damned bad that so many people promoting organic gardening do so
with a line of products which defines what is "good." It's downright weird
that someone with Ingraham's educational background keeps telling people
not to believe the science, to believe the vendor editorials instead.

As Dr Ingaham is one of the big-cheese VENDORS selling all manner of
books, CDs, audio tapes, manuals, services, & workshops, she may be
assumed to perfectly represent the VENDOR perspective on why you should
spend money on services & junk such as her company sells. Funny she has
been peddling this stuff a long time now, & has all the minor university
affiliations one would require to be taken seriously, and STILL pretending
"real soon now" her own COMPANY research on aerobic teas will be
appearing in yet-to-be-named scientific journals, but in the meantime you
can buy the reports in her self-published booklets & tapes. She has
published a great deal on this topic, none of it peer-reviewed, all of it
is promotional, none of it scientific, most of it is self-published. But
not until you reposted her "letter" did I realize she was actually crazy
-- I thought she was just a hack trying to make a buck on the side, not
that she actually needs to commit herself to an asylum.

I found a dozen outright fabrications & deceptions in her screed before I
stopped counting, but when it REALLY gets loony is when invents that
idiotic story about the REASON that field tests show aerated teas have no
effect on pathogens is because the researchers sneak into the fields when
no one can see them and POISON THEIR PLANTS ON PURPOSE so that the
scientific evidence will be negative & against compost tea effectiveness.
Zowwy! That one reminded me of a schizophrenic who told me her doctor
could see her through the walls of her apartment & snuck into her room at
night stealing her thoughts. This is one of the big "leaders" in the
commercialization of compost teas & associated services for extravagant
fees -- & she turns out to be certifiably nuts! I also liked her stuff
about scientists having a a secret "HIDDEN AGENDA" so nefarious & sinister
she cannot make sense of it even to herself let alone to her letter's
readers. But what is certain, you can't trust the scientists -- you can
trust only the vendors & herself for the truth.

Some of the merely deceptive & lying stuff in her Letter, as opposted to
the paranoid bits against scientists, include:

1) She repeats the old lie about compost teas being a great source of
nematodes. A small lie as her lies go, but it's interesting that about
three-fourths of the vendors have stopped telling that one since too many
people found out it isn't so.
2) She notes that science is your enemy in these matters "because the
weight of tradition" counts for more than emperical evidence or controled
studies.
3) She repeats the common vendor explanation for why all the field studies
show aerated compost tea has no effect above that of plain water in
controlling pathogens: It wasn't "real" compost tea! (Which apparently is
so magical only mystic covens of brewers know how the "real" teas are
made, horticultural station researchers sure can't figure it out.)
4) Riddles her screed with sound-bite ideas that are completely
nonsensical, like "compost tea works just like asprin" -- avoiding the
simplest logic.
5) Lyingly rephrases the extant science to make it sound as crazy as she is.
6) Lies outright that she can teach methods of absolute consistency for
consecutive batches of teas then says it doesn't even need to be tested to
see if it is as consistent as she claims, if you used the right commercial
equipment.
7) Claims that compost teas are actually DANGEROUS if you don't learn the
methods she promotes & buy the right equipment she has tested (that's a
new one! Most vendors don't want to link compost tea to the idea of
dangerousness -- since by & large it isn't dangerous at all, other than
contributing to wetlands problems -- but I can see that someone who
charges up the wazoo for compost tea workshops called "seminars" would
want to create another level of tea mythology, that without her personal
input you'll kill your plants).
8) Contradicts six peer-reviewed published studies that show compost teas
quickly wash out of soils before plants are benefited, so can contributte
to groundwater pollution, & replaces that reality with a slight-of-hand
version about compost pile leachates.
9) Claims that "real" compost teas can only be made with expensive (but in
fact cheaply manufactured) commercial devices invented in the last five
years -- that's a new one too, as most other vendors claim only that their
products make it easier (which they don't) rather than it can't even be
done without their expensive b-s plastic tubs & absurdly overpriced
bubblers.
10) Uses the "baby with the bathwater" argument as back-up in case the
lies don't work -- cuz even if everything the peer-reviewed science has
shown to be factual really is factual, you should still use the teas for
purposes it is no good for because otherwise you're throwing the baby out
with the bathwater.
11) Is still after all this time making excuses for herself when she got
caught in the past lying about having worked with Dr. James Moore on a
major research project -- got in trouble for trumping up credits for
herself & later changed it to having worked with a golf course
groundskeeper named Jimmy Moore -- because "I didn't lie! There's more
than one Jim Moore in this world!" -- as if working with a golf course guy
would've been worth boasting about in her sales pitches. I wonder how
much of the rest of her curriculum vitae was equally cooked up & if push
comes to shove would turn out to have something to do with some unspecific
guy named Jimmy at a golf course instead of at the half-dozen universities
she purports. (Of course, the reason someone bounces around from one
hinterland university to another in rapid succession is because of a
failure to do anything sufficient credible to gain tenure -- "research"
issued through vanity presses doesn't even get your contract renewed.)

Well, I'm glad at least that the advocates of this stuff are so obviousy
shy a few bricks that anyone of merely average intelligence will raise a
brow.

Just please tell me you DID laugh your ass off reading at least the
they're-out-to-getme, scientists are evil revelations, & reposted it for
laugh value & not because you personally fell into the rhythm of it &
started to think there really is a world-wide cabal of evil scientists out
to destroy her & the whole "tradition needs no science" compost tea
industry.

-paghat

--
"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 ,
(Fleemo) wrote:

Well, it's obvious that these are two superior minds who are
permanently ensonced on their respective sides of the fence.

At this point, the main question in my mind is whether or not compost
tea serves as a good nutrient boost for my garden.

If you only use it as a subsitute for non-organic liquid fertilizer, then
you're doing no harm. It's not as good as topcoating with an organic
compost, but it's a damned sight better than non-organic compounds.

It is when it gets into the areas of being BETTER than other organic
methods, or of preventing pathogenic problems in the garden, that the
science informs you the opposite is true.

I wasn't aware of
any cure-all claims for the potion, nor was I aware that it was even
available commercially. I just want to know if I'm wasting my time in
preparing a batch of the brown liquid if my primary goal is to feed my
plants.

If it doesn't smell bad, it's harmless. Even if it stinks it probably
won't do THAT much harm, but the odor is from bacterial wastes & even the
outside-chance of adding beneficial microbes to the soil is shot to hell.

-paghat the ratgirl

Thanks for your well-informed posts.

-Fleemo

--
"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 10 Sep 2003 12:04:40 -0700, (Fleemo) opined:

Well, it's obvious that these are two superior minds who are
permanently ensonced on their respective sides of the fence.

At this point, the main question in my mind is whether or not compost
tea serves as a good nutrient boost for my garden. I wasn't aware of
any cure-all claims for the potion, nor was I aware that it was even
available commercially. I just want to know if I'm wasting my time in
preparing a batch of the brown liquid if my primary goal is to feed my
plants.

Thanks for your well-informed posts.

-Fleemo

Compost tea is now more beneficial when prepared using the aerobic method.
There is no way to sell that in closed containers which would shelve well. The
container would explode from the activity of biota and they would have to use
something to keep that from happening, commercially. That means you would get
none of the benefits of freshly made, aerobic compost because the product would
be dead.

If you are fortunate (as I am) to have a responsible garden center which
promotes organic methods and sells nothing in the synthetic side of conventional
gardening, you will be able to buy it by the gallon if they have a brewer. You
would have to use it within a day, and when diluted can be used to cover 7500
square feet. At five dollars, that's hardly a rip off.

It's a proven fact that live soil produce health in plants and other micro and
macro organisms. This is not fuzzy science, it's factual. The experiments
using compost leachate is well under way and when a person can think out of the
box and try things autonomously of other claims, it's a good thing. I don't
like to depend on science "only." I also like to consider the experience of
others. One day we may blow the world up and we will not have scientific
anything to count on. Pioneers and homesteaders do this on a regular basis.
They try things for themselves and always look for a better way. They don't
count on science to determine all their needs. That's as bad as saying God will
take care of it all. God who?

About a year back I had an argument with Tom about aerobic vs. anaerobic and
fought tooth and nail. I decided to make some aerobic tea and have indeed found
that plants I collect, (brugmansia mainly) which have acceptable levels of virus
have outperformed others with the same virus (tobacco mosaic). I don't
necessarily think it's simply due to the presence on the foliage to surpress
infection, rather, the soil had much more life and made the nutrients available
in a form which was able to be used by a poor root system due to virus.

There is no demon in this notion. NObody is trying to rip anyone off with snake
oil. Thinking out of the box and trying new things is how I live my life.
Others have their own dogmatic and anal retentive ways of thinking, I do not.
I'm willing to learn and so can you.

The other hand of this is the fact that, this newsgroup was quiet and there are
people who need to have chaos in their life and when others don't, they create
it (chaos) to suit their desperate need for it.

That's what I think this thread is about. Yes, it's the understory.

victoria