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

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  • From: Dave Robison <drobison AT teleport.com>
  • To: compostteas AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Compostteas] chroma
  • Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 10:07:07 -0700

On the housekeeping, I vote to show the originating handle in the "From" line so that we can reply without bothering the whole list if we so desire.

Someone wrote:
Chroma I understand. What does BD stand for?

Biodynamic. There's a lot of overlap between this group and Allan's BD Now! email group.
The idea behind the BD chromas was different. Pfieffer was trying to demonstrate the "formative forces" of natural materials. If you do a chroma on a mixture of compounds, you might expect to see a blob with circular bands of colors as the materials wick at different speeds to the outer circumference. But Pfieffer observed something different, "live" organic materials showed dynamic patterns, it's not just a uniform merging of colors. For some examples see the last part of the "Intro to BD class" at http://www.oregonbd.org/Class/Mod5.htm

Are BD chromas easy to do? Well, not exactly. There are reasons to use silver, in part because it develops the colors. And that means that the papers have to be prepared shortly before use and kept in the dark -- light develops the silver. Finally, the interpretation of the chromas is difficult. How exactly does one classify patterns as "dynamic" or not? I have done a bunch of these chromas but never been too clear on what they reveal. My attempts at soil and compost just show a brown blob of humic acids, not very interesting. I haven't tried it on the tea.

Do you need noxious chemicals? Maybe not. Ag is not so poisonous but it is expensive, stains clothes, etc. It is a potent biocide so disposal can be a problem. NaOH is used to extract the compost into liquid form, I think you could do without that, the tea is already soluble. Other metal salts can be used as color developer reagents, Fe was mentioned, but even that adds to expense. Filter paper can be used but coffee paper would be fine for a test, I would use the white paper to better distinguish color seperations.

And one needs a clean space for the work. The chemicals (if used) have to be measured precisely (needs a good scale and volumetric measures), dissolved in distilled water (no problem, readily available), and the papers need to dry is a fairly dust-free place (not every working farm has such).

So I don't think BD chromas are the way to go. Can you do just plain chromas as Elaine suggests? Give it a try. But what compounds do you expect to see separated on the paper? And how will you be able to tell a good mixture from poor, given that we are using tea to spread the biolife, not the chemical compounds? I don't have a batch of tea going at the moment, but would be interested to hear other's experiences.


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Dave Robison





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