North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

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