permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

On 11/1/2011 3:43 PM, Lawrence London wrote:
> Microbe Organics
> website includes a microscope advisory
> http://www.microbeorganics.com/
>
> Gardening With Microbes
> Putting Nature Back In Control
> http://gardeningwithmicrobes.com/index.shtml
> see also:
> http://gardeningwithmicrobes.com/microscope.shtml
> "Here is a microscope advisory written by Tim Wilson of Microbe
> Organics for looking at organisms in compost teas. His website is
> www.microbeorganics.com. I found his knowledge invaluable when
> researching microscope for my own testing.
> Tim has also created a DVD for microbial identification. It is a 2
> disc set and is available by clicking here or on the picture below."
> http://simplici-tea.com/microscopedvd.htm

Found this in a thread at permies.com:
http://www.permies.com/permaculture-forums/11093_0/permaculture/celestron-deluxe-digital-microscope
Celestron Deluxe Digital Microscope
<>
http://www.celestron.com/c3/product.php?CatID=81&ProdID=605
LCD Deluxe Digital Microscope
Item #44345
$299.95 USD Add LCD Deluxe Digital Microscope to Cart
<>
"Having just completed a 2.5 day training with Elaine Ingham, I can 
envision quite a few ways to use a microscope for permaculture.

- direct counts from a soil sample of bacteria, protozoa, and fungi
- assessing if the soil microbiology is appropriate for the crops you 
are trying to grow
- testing the quality of compost
- verifying the aerated compost tea you just created is fungally 
dominated, bacterially dominated, or full of anaerobic pathogens
- verifying the beneficial nematodes you just bought are actually 
present and alive
- verifying your "microbial inoculants" such as Effective 
Microorganisms(tm) are actually present and alive
- assessing the trends in soil biology over time

Hope these are good ideas and could probably be its own thread. But, to 
do all this, you need to be able to identify what you are seeing in the 
slide. I haven't some across a lot of good freely available materials on 
the web that helps to ID all the microbes.

Dr Ingham recommended a trinocular microscope with a condenser for all 
the above work. Without the camera, the price is the same as LFL's choice.

http://www.microscopenet.com/40x2000x-trinocular-compound-microscope-reversed-nosepiece-p-9047.html

And she suggested calling them and asking that they change out the 100x 
objective for a 40x, since the 100x is never used for the above work. 
And the 100x is so long that you stand a chance of smashing it into a 
slide accidentally anyway.

Her camera suggestion was Celestron #44421, priced about US$40."