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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Could 24 hour compost tea help control diseases in fruit trees?

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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Could 24 hour compost tea help control diseases in fruit trees?
  • Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 23:00:03 -0800

paul simon wrote:

It looks like a complex process in making the tea. They have quite a bit of discussion taking place and sound like they have faith in it. One place they were comparing apples to citrus to pears.

These are the replies I received from Elaine Ingham at SFI, Inc., Soil
Foodweb:
<>
From:
Elaine Ingham <Soilfoodweb@AOL.COM>
We have been working with compost tea makers preventing disease such as apple scab, leaf curl, anthracnose, and a number of foliar feeding insects.
We have done mildew control for a couple years in vineyards, this is a scientific study, and we have one more year to go to finish up. Then we'll publish the results. Been working well!
I can direct you to a number of orchard folks who are having good control, if you want. We need more replicated scientific studies in orchards in the US, and I would dearly love to get some done. The SARE grants are good places to get some grower grants.
There are a number of researchers at Washington State University that tried compost tea early on orchards, but they did not make decent tea. They even had the tea tested sometimes, but could never reach the quality control standards we have shown are necessary. But they still bad-mouth compost tea as not working. Sigh. And these are scientists? But there are much better machines to make compost tea out on the market now. If I could work with you on documenting the benefits of compost tea, I would love to talk!
<>
And the following:
<>
Yes, you can make a compost tea machine yourself, but I there's a good compost tea machine for only $99 available from www.simplici-tea.com
We have just finished testing their machine and can show that, with good aerobic compost, with adequate fungi, the tea the machine can produce is excellent. Plenty of fungi.
And fungi are what would be needed to suppress fireblight. We have suppressed many kinds of blight, and have seen anecdotal information that fireblight was removed when working on several estates in New York.

Contact Paul Wagner and James Sottilo about the results they have seen with fireblight. The e-mail address is: JAMSOT@aol.com OR soilfoodwebny@aol.com.

<> (a little editing was done here for readability):
There are machines that <are affordable>, and are effective at extracting and growing ALL the organisms you need in tea. (Bacteria tea machines don't do an adequate job of extracting and growing fungi, protozoa or nematodes. For bacteria machines one can buy inoculum of bacteria from a company like EM, or Organica, or Helena, or Agri-Energy, or... well, the list is quite long.)

There is a 5 gal machine from KIS (www.simplici-tea.com) for $99. that extracts bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes - all the organisms you need - and the soluble nutrients from the compost quite well. The data for the latest improvements are not on their website yet, but the machines are producing great tea. It takes just a pound or so of compost to make 5 gal, which is enough to put on 1 acre (you put the 5 gal of tea into the amount of water needed to spray out on the acre, make sure the water is chlorine-free).

Alaska Giant (www.alaskagiant.com) makes a 1 gal tea maker for $40, and a 5 gal tea maker for $80. Again, both very good tea makers, make great teas, with good fungi. Both good choices. They have a starter mix as well.

EPM (100 gal and 500 gal sizes) makes GREAT tea makers, and they have a 22 gal machine coming out soon. Their website is www.composttea.com They also sell the fungi that take out many root-feeding pests, as well as foliar insects.

Wormgold has just released a tea machine, not on their web site yet, so stay tuned. Nice, low-profile, easy to clean, sizes 50 to 200 gal.

Earthworks makes 35 and 85 gal sizes (www.soilfirst.com). Really great fungal and bacterial biomass.

James Sottilo makes tea makers to order. JAMSOT@aol.com

There are many tea makers on the market, for reasonable prices, that extract the organisms just fine, and let them grow without worry of the tea becoming anaerobic.

The foods the machine manufacturers make match the needs of their machines, or if you want some really great compost and activator, try Hendrikus Schraven's website, hendrikus.com. They make some super foods for the organisms.

And try some of the special bacterial and fungal inocula available - just a pinch in the tea, and grow the good guys yourself. Don't put in too much, if they grow too fast, they use up all the air in the tea, and that's when you grow not-so-good bacteria, like E. coli and other human pathogens.

It is not that difficult to do a good job. You need to have care, true, but don't be scared off.

Or find a tea center near you, and buy the tea from a professional. Check the SFI web site for the names of reputable tea centers near you.

Elaine Ingham
SFI, Inc.
info@soilfoodweb.com
http://www.soilfoodweb.com
<>

All of the above and much more about compost tea and the compost_tea mailing list (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/compost_tea/) can be found here:

http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/pcwiki/index.php/Composting
--
L.F.London
lfl@intrex.net
http://market-farming.com
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/pcwiki/index.php/london






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