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

["Tom Jaszewski" <tomj AT lvcm.com>]

Tom Jaszewski
Horticulture Director
(read aging hippy gardener)

We have two brewers. A 50gal and a 500gal. This CT adventure is a couple of
years old and started as a search for alternatives to fungicides. A
long-term solution to an "incurable" disease, Fusarium oxysporum
"canariensis". Fusarium infected or was carried by a large group of the 600
specimen sized Phoenix Canariensis on our property. The "experts" referred
to the disease as the "Aids of palms". Armed with no choices I began to hear
stories about a Dr. lecturing on soil biota. We had already observed that
judicious water management and treatments of disease stressed turf with
Trichoderma harzianum Rifai would reduce disease loads. We also noted that
reduced fertilizer usage and incorporation of organic material further
reduced losses and maintenance costs. It seemed there were solutions just
not in the chemical paradigm. It seems to me; the chemical paradigm is a
search for an external force to be a victim of. Gardeners are not by nature
victims, rather stewards. If I were to assume stewardship than it followed
that there is a natural solution. I wondered what the soils were like on
Islas Canarias would they yield the missing components?

I'm not certain how I finally made the connection to SFI. Nor precisely how
I found APC Alaskan humus. Soil tests went off and a train carload of soil
arrived. Bags of mycorhizae arrived, and my staff quizzed me daily. "What's
that stuff in the boxes" and "you're gonna inject the roots with who?" We'd
all had the year's mycorhizae sales suits, and nylons. They tried to
convince us to spend $20,000USD on some critters that would inhabit the root
systems and build healthy trees. I don't know if anyone here has to sell
budgets but to get $20,000USD without a methodology to count and measure
improvement is all but impossible. I do not run a test facility! The
accessible advice was to "do a test plot". We aren't scientists we're
maintenance gardeners and landscapers. The population of trees were at risk,
and after all it's just a job!
The first soil tests arrived and we had little that resembled a soil......

TO BE CONTINUED.....please share your successes!


"When we kill off the natural enemies of a pest we inherit their work"

Carl Huffaker