permaculture

[Soil Doctor <soildoctor.org@gmail.com>]

Hi Killian

Compost tea that has been brewed from properly created aerobic bacterial or 
fungal dominated compost, fed either bacterial or fungal foods at the 
beginning of the compost tea brew time, and actively aerated with oxygen 
during the entire brew cycle is a collection of beneficial aerobic Bacteria, 
Fungi, Flagellates, Amoebae and Nematodes.  You may have a small # of 
facultative anaerobic microbes like Archaea and some Bacteria, and maybe very 
very few Cilliates. But the #s dominance of aerobes is absolutely key for a 
beneficial compost tea.  Actively aerated compost tea isn't a fertilizer 
(well a tiny tiny portion is plant soluble fertilizer at any given moment but 
I'll get to that below). It's an innoculum of beneficial micro-organisms 
designed to reproduce more in your soils, adjusting the bacterial:fungi ratio 
of your soils to meet your plant needs (different plant groups require 
different bacteria:fungi biomass ratios for optimal growth and health - check 
out a comment I made on this here - 
http://permaculture.org.au/2009/11/08/soil-food-web-course-with-dr-elaine-ingham/
  ).  

The amount of soluble plant available nutrients (fertilizer) like Nitrates 
(NO3) or Ammonium (NH4) is very very small in comparison to the amount of 
nutrients tied up and unavailable to plants (non-soluable) inside the bodies 
of all those beneficial microbes.  At any given moment in a biologically live 
compost tea, a flagellate is eating a bacterium and excreting NH4 as waste 
(soluble), then a fraction of second later an other bacterium or a fungal 
hyphae is absorbing that waste NH4, or an other nitrification bacterium is 
converting that NH4 to Nitrite (NO2), then another to NO3, then an other 
bacterium absorbs it, and so on, billions and billions of times a second.  
When this biologically live compost tea is placed on plant leaves or on the 
soil near plant roots, the plants "feed" a wide range of photosynthetically 
derived exudates (sugars and simple proteins) to the bacteria and some fungi, 
increasing their numbers.  Bacteria and fungi predators come in, eat them and 
make nutrient rich plant soluble excretions right on the root surface (or 
rhizosphere.) This is the true function of a beneficial aerobic compost tea: 
microbial innoculum that juices up microbial nutrient cycling that produces 
plant soluble nutrients (fertilizers).

Putting high concentrations of urine in a good compost tea means increasing 
the salt content of the tea.  This will change the ecology of your tea, 
killing some beneficial microbes and selecting for the growth of Halophilic 
microbes.  Halophiles are "extremophile" organisms that thrive in 
environments with high concentrations of salt.  Sure, when you increase the 
salt concentration in the tea you will "release" a plant soluble nutrient 
pulse because you've just burst the bodies of a bunch of nutrient dense 
microbes that aren't Halophilic.  But what you've done is get a short term 
soluble nutrient gain at the expense of losing the long term microbial 
innoculum producing ever increasing nutrient cycling.

Doug

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Doug Weatherbee, M.A.
Certified Soil Foodweb Advisor
Certified Permaculture Designer
http://www.soildoctor.org

San Miguel de Allende, GTO
Mexico
415.152.3410 (San Miguel #)
310.359.8549 (U.S.A #)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


for Chemcial salts   

On 2010-08-10, at 12:25 PM, permaculture-request@lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

> Message: 3
> Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2010 19:11:16 -0400
> From: Killian O'Brien <admin@pri-de.org>
> To: "permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Subject: [permaculture] Compost Tea and Urine question
> Message-ID:
>       
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> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> It seems a natural fit to put urine in compost tea given it is essentially 
> finished fertilizer. Any reasons not to?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Killian O'Brien
> PRI-De
> admin@pri-de.org<mailto:admin@pri-de.org>
> (313) 647-4015
> 
> killiankob@yahoo.com<mailto:killiankob@yahoo.com>
> (760) 617-4693