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compostteas - Re: [Compostteas] Compost tea pH

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Subject: Compost Teas: 24 hour, EM, IM, BD & fermented plant extracts

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Soil Foodweb, Inc." <info AT soilfoodweb.com>
  • To: TimelesEnt AT aol.com
  • Cc: "Compost tea List Serve" <compostteas AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Compostteas] Compost tea pH
  • Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2002 16:47:37 -0500

Hi Carol -

In answer to your question,

"Once the critters are in the soil, from plentiful applications of compost and
compost tea, won't they continue forever if enough good compost continues to
be applied? Or is there some other reason for continuing to apply the
compost tea?"

Yes, the organisms will continue as long as you have plants in the system, or
you
add foods to feed them, such as compost or compost tea or products that feed
them.

What might kill them, however? Things that we humans do quite often, such as
air
pollution, pesticide drift, driving across the golf course on the golf carts,
herds of cows, plowing, and so on.

Does Mother Nature disturb our soils? Yes, they are called flood, freeze,
drought, too hot, herds of bison, and so on.

So, there are many things that will alter and change the set of critters in
your
soil to be not-correct to grow the plants you want to grow. When these
disturbances happen, planned or not, you need to re-adjust the foodweb.

As time goes by without a disturbance, the frequency of application of the tea
can be reduced. Thus, in the first year of application you need to apply tea
once every 7 to 10 days. After about 4 months of that, you back off to
applications every month. Then three times a growing season, and maintain
there.

But what if disturbance happens? You need to gauge the intensity of the
disturbance. If the intensity of the disturbance is bad enough, you may have
to
go back to the once a week application rate. If the disturbance was minimal,
then you may not have to go back very far in increasing application rates.

Hope this helps!

Elaine Ingham







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