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

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  • From: Soilfoodweb AT aol.com
  • To: compostteas AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Compostteas] Re: Fungi & keeping the tea
  • Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 17:33:44 EDT

Hi Scott -

18.8 micrograms of total fungal biomass is great!  Yes, you can grow more.  

EPM (Bruce Elliott, Oregon) and Soil First (Joel Simmons, New York) both get higher fungi than that, pretty routinely.  

Bruce makes the Earth Tea Brewer (www.composttea.com).  His data are on his web site.  Soil First also puts data up on their web site (www.soilfirst.com).  Leon Hussey has data on his machine (www.simplici-tea.com), and we just put data about the Alaska Bounty tea machine, www.alaskagiant.com  in the last e-zine.  We are running the tests now on John's fungal food resources, so stay tuned on that.  

Hendrikus Schraven offers a 25 gallon machine, that with the organic foods that he sells does a good job of producing fungi (www.hendrikusorganics.com).  He has data on the teas made by that machine, but you really need to chat with Hendrikus, or Gina, or me about how to get the machine to give you good fungal biomass extraction.  

In Australia, the folks at Compost Solutions (Coffs Harbour, NSW) and Ken Bailey in Perth are working on good tea makers, and food mixes.  Their results should be appearing soon on the SFI - Australia web site.

In New Zealand, there are two people working on tea makers that I know of, but early days there.  Stay tuned for results.  

In Europe, Compara (www.compara.nl) makes a good tea maker, and sells some great fungal food resources.  The Van Iersels in Holland make some INCREDIBLE fungal compost.   Contact Compara fro more information.

Each tea maker needs to put data on their website showing what their machine can do.  Will you get the same results?  If you use good compost, use good foods to help grow the organisms you want, then the machines will perform the same for you as for the maker of the tea machine.  Usually, it takes a time or two of figuring out what you are doing to get the tea brewing correctly, but everyone that keeps trying gets there and has good success.  But you do have to monitor the tea a time or two!  Or you just don't know if you're going to be successful.  

Good quality compost is most of the trick, and then foods to grow the fungi.  
So, check with the different folks about their food resources.  

I'd encourage you to go to the person closest to you for food resources.  Different fungi and bacteria grow in different parts of the country, and the food resources that grow the best organisms in your area are regionally specific.  

I would caution folks about the food resources sold by SoilSoup.  We've had several growers run teas side-by-side with and without their nutrient mix and show that fungi were at least alive and present in the tea without the nutrient mix but were not present at all in tea where the SoilSoup nutrient mix was added.  I think that's probably one reason SoilSoup distributors say that fungi don't grow in tea - their nutrient mix is often quite detrimental to fungi.

Again, I'd like to have folks tell me when they have good experience with a set of food resources, or when you have a bad experience.  We need to learn about these things.  What works to grow good fungi in New York may not be right for Kentucky.  We don't have the funding to test all things in all places, but your experiences can help us figure things out, even though they are "anecdotal".  I personally think that if we repeat things enough times, and see the same results, those results are just as worthwhile as a "real", fully replicated scientific experiment.  

Anyway, enough for now!

Elaine Ingham


Message: 3
From: "Scott Alexander" <daylily AT bigpond.com>
To: <Compostteas AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 11:21:27 +1000
Subject: [Compostteas] Fungi & keeping the tea.

Another question for Elaine and others:-
Although my last CT test showed 18.8 total fungi, I'm wondering if I can
improve on this by finding more sources of fungi to start with.



  • [Compostteas] Re: Fungi & keeping the tea, Soilfoodweb, 05/24/2002

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