Thanks, Frank, I appreciate your good thoughts on this matter. I have a long
way to go to come up to snuff on many aspects of our own farming practices as
well as the road project. I can see I need to put more time in goal-setting
and planning for both.
My Dad was raised on a farm in Hickson, TN, and had to come home from school
and hoe strawberries until he got nosebleeds. He did not want to make a living
as a farmer. He got a job with the Corps of Engineers during the Depression
and stayed with that until he retired. He had 100 12 foot high camellias in
the back yard and I used to go out there with him and he would show me the
blooms on each bush and tell me their variety name. My mother and I would
often wear camellias to Sunday School and Church. He also had tomato plants in
the small sunny space under the pine canopy that were luscious. When I started
my first garden in Cambridge, MA, my dad drove from Mobile, AL to Cambridge
with a sack of compost, a gallon can of worms and some tools. I'll never
forget our time in my garden with me trying to hoe. He finally said, "Sister,
you can't hoe," took the hoe and made expert, definite, sure strokes with it
compared to my tentative, timid ones. I loved him very much.
I saw your compost page on another site, I think. I still don't know whether
you are Frank Jr. or Frank Sr., If you are Frank Jr., you learned a lot from
your Dad. Best, Merla
Frank Teuton wrote:
> Hi Merla,
>
> I am not an 'experienced BD person', more of a fellow traveller I suppose.
>
> In your place I would consult with my local certification body and follow
> their lead in terms of compost tea.
>
> Compost tea for use on fresh produce and fruit for raw consumption should be
> made with great care using ingredients of known character, and free from any
> risk of contamination....and it may be also be banned at any moment, that is
> how fragile its situation is....
>
> Compost tea for other crops may or may not be useful and you have to be the
> judge of that for yourself. Compost tea would be permitted for any use where
> raw manure would be accepted, and it is a heck of a lot easier to apply than
> raw manure in lots of places....
>
> Some landscaping companies out there use it to stabilize slopes being
> replanted, and like that...it may be useful to establish plantings of
> roadside species you want, to occupy space that might otherwise be invaded
> by unwanted plants, aka weeds...and these are not environments where the
> food safety issues that drive the compost tea controversy are at play.
>
> Re the flip flop Allan has done from his previous 'soil scientist du jour'
> to his new ones, I think there is no real basis for a rush to judgment.
> Sometimes it seems to me that Allan is 'turned on' by the latest person he
> has heard speaking....which is not a bad thing in itself...but here, the
> jury is still out, and only time and practical tests will tell if aerated
> compost tea, or stirred occasionally compost teas, or other forms of
> microbial phyllosphere/rhizosphere interventions are worth using all the
> time, some of the time, or not at all for most situations.
>
> Allan is certainly right about this, that there are industrial motives at
> work here. The compost tea makers, including some who do, and some who
> don't, support Dr Ingham, and the soil testing professionals, including
> Ingham, Will Brinton and Vicki Bess, are all industries with a stake in this
> dispute.
>
> Nonetheless, the dispute about the practical efficacy of different sorts of
> compost teas, including aerobic nutrient added ones, is not an industrial
> dispute, but a scientific one, and will ultimately be resolved by running
> tests on crops under controlled conditions, meaning here one kind of tea in
> the same field with the same crop, here another kind, here no teas, and here
> perhaps other controls for the same problem.
>
> In my view the need for Dissolved Oxygen meters and concerns about pathogen
> regrowth, plus ideally a fair amount of testing, means that roll your own
> aerobic-nutrient added CT for fresh produce is outside the realm of really
> small growers. Costs in time and expenses would indicate that. But by buying
> a proven system and OMRI listed ingredients for it you might be able to
> still make certification and not spend a fortune.
>
> Larger growers should still keep an open mind about them, I think. The
> argument that molasses is 'simple sugar' (molasses is in fact what is left
> over after the extraction of simple sugar) and will lead to a 'distortion'
> of compost microorganism diversity is about as persuasive as the argument
> that composted manure is unnatural and should not be applied in large
> amounts on fields and gardens.
>
> After all, one should not exceed the amount of manure that would naturally
> be applied in a 'wild' pasture, eh? ;-)
>
> But, farmers and gardeners the world around have found that yes indeed
> composted manure makes a fine amendment for growing vegetables and other
> crops, and so here we all are.
>
> In other words, I no more accept Allan's reported version of Bess and
> Brinton's position (assuming it is correct) than I accept Dr Ingham's a
> priori criticism of mustard seed meal as a seed treatment for corn over on
> SANET as correct. Finally you have to dive in and find out, and the job of
> collecting microbial data on any kind of a large scale necessary for
> comparative purposes is daunting, not to mention expensive.
>
> I will say this, though. Unlike Elaine Ingham who at least has the courage
> to defend her views in public forums such as SANET and the Compost Tea list,
> I have never seen Brinton or Bess do so, nor present a coherent argument or
> data in support of their critique where anyone could see it and evaluate it.
> I notice Allan also does not have the guts to flat out say in a forum that
> Elaine monitors, that he now believes Brinton and not her ('egg on my face'
> and like that). That's his choice and theirs, but it doesn't really help us
> understand the details of all this much.
>
> What would be useful is if we could hear specific cases where teas succeeded
> and failed, followed up by microbial analysis of these successes and
> failures. The problem there is that to interpret microbial analyses you need
> a microbial shaman of some sort---competing shamans include Elaine Ingham,
> Will Brinton and Vicki Bess...
>
> So I guess it may be all about industry after all...
>
> I will disclose that I bartered some of my worms to Laura Sabourin in
> exchange for a meal and lodging for a night for myself and my son, so my
> worm mogul industry connections are revealed, and I also had a friend in the
> states send some worms to Allan...but he never tells me how they are doing,
> which may explain my special pique with him...;-)
>
> Basically Merla, my advice is to go slowly, make sure what you are doing is
> safe and well founded, and look for the reasons underlying different
> opinions being offered to you. If at all possible look for data that has
> been published somewhere when seeking to choose between conflicting
> opinions. And, when in doubt, try it out, and see what works best for you.
>
> 'The way of the old masters, was to find their own way'.
>
> Frank Teuton
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Merla Barberie" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "BD Now" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 4:46 PM
> Subject: CT=BDcompost,preps+Alaska humus, forest humus & kelp
>
> > Experienced BD folks,
> >
> > This is my year for my own BC & 500 AND for 24 hr aerobic compost tea.
> > Exactly in what proportion do you combine them? Do you stir the 500 and
> > then put in in the CT for 24 hrs? Do you put it on separately in the
> > ritual way? Allan's post questioned whether CT is needed if you're
> > using BC. I'm confused. The latest posts make me wonder for an instant
> > whether buying a Bitty-O-Later would be a good idea or not.
> >
> > Also a post from Ms. Berkley, possibly on the regulation committee on
> > the NOSB standards in the Compost Tea list/serve files states that CT is
> > considered raw manure. I thought that was not being enforced this
> > year. Am I asking this on the wrong list/serve or can someone answer?
> > I don't want to have my OG certification denied.
> >
> > So much potential--so much confusion!
> >
> > Merla
> >
> >
