Lesson 6 Live Q&A Webinar
From Leticia Oberley: Are there any possible substitutes for black strap molasses as a bacterial food? I was wondering specifically about sorghum molasses.
Well, what we’re finding out is when you look at your soil, you’ll see that you already have lots of bacteria and hopefully lots of different species of bacteria as well and so adding the black strap molasses or any kind of bacterial food is a little bit unnecessary. So, if you put too much of a bacterial food into the tea then it’s really hard to keep whole tea aerobic through the whole entire brewing process. So we are really trying to encourage people to not be putting in any kind of bacterial food into the system. Doesn’t seem to be really necessary but let’s say you do have that unusual situation where there aren’t enough bacteria in your soil, you want to increase diversity a little bit. Then sorghum molasses would work as well. You just want to try to pick something that has a wide diversity of different kinds of sugars. And that’s why the non-sulfured black strap molasses is so good because it’s got a 150 different kinds of sugars in it. I’d want to know the same kind of information about your sorghum molasses. How many different kinds of sugars? And that should be easily found out. If you go to the website of the company making the sorghum molasses, how many different kinds of sugars, and it would be pretty good. Beware of the fact that they typically put a preservative into molasses. They put sulfur compound which is a fungicide. Almost all of our fungicides are sulfur based and so having that sulfured molasses means it’s got that preservative in it and that of course is going to kill your organism. So, try to get the food quality, human food quality molasses if you feel like you need to use a sugar.
Another alternative is a fish emulsion. In a fish emulsion they have taken a fish hydrolysates and cooked it and the heat causes the oils to separate on the top, all the proteins in the meat and everything else that sit on the bottom in a container start to break down because of the heat, they get to be simpler and simpler compounds, so really good for growing bacteria. Not so good if you’re trying to grow fungi. And oils are usually removed and so fish emulsion tends to have very little oil in it and then for very few fungal foods. So that would be another possibility.
Any kind of sugary material - fruit juices work well, just remember the pulp is good for growing fungi. The actual juice part, where all the sugars are - that’s good for growing bacteria. So which kind of juice? Well you’d have to test them and find out which one grows the kind of bacteria that you want.
From Damian: How do different ratios of black strap molasses, fish hydrolysate and seaweed affect compost tea?
Yeah, when you put more bacterial food in, so, more black strap molasses, you’re going to put food in, you are putting food in for more bacteria and so you’re going to grow more bacteria. If you put more fish hydrolysate in then you’re going to grow more fungi. Seaweed - depends exactly what quality seaweed you have but it tends to grow more fungi than bacteria. So the more seaweed, the more fungi you’re going to end up with, more nutrients go into that tea.
So what are you trying to do with your tea or even your extract? If you’re putting these things in at the last minute to put out foods to feed your compost extract organisms once they arrive in the soil, so, you can do that too to give some resuscitation, some foods for these organisms when they go into soil.
So how do different ratios? Think about your bacterial food, your fungal foods, you mineral nutrients, fungal foods. How do they affect your compost tea, it’s going to make it more or less fungal or bacterial.
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From Petra: When buying fulvic or humic liquid, could I just run a quick pH test to see if the material is too alkaline or too acidic to be useful instead of having to brew a tea for 24 hrs before I know if it is good? A pH test might not tell me if it grows fungi well but at least it would tell me if I will kill my soil life.
Yeah, you could stick a little bit of litmus or if you got electrodes to show you pH or you buy one of those little handheld meters where you put a drop on and it tells you the pH. Anyone of those would tell you if you had neutralized the preservative that they put into the fulvic or the humic acid and so you would know whether that was actually truly taken care of before you put the compost in. And so typically in a tea we’re putting these food resources into the water first so you’d have a chance for the water to neutralize the phosphoric acid or the potassium hydroxide or whatever preservative they have put into that material. Make sure it gets diluted out so it shouldn’t kill your microorganisms. So you put your compost in last after you’ve got everything else going in there.
And so a pH paper or quick pH test of some kind would let you know if the preservative has been neutralized. It’s not going to tell you about the quality of the food or the quality of microbial life you’re going to see. You want to let it brew and then at the end of the brewing time or maybe halfway through the brewing time or a couple of hours into the brewing time, you could pull a drop out of your tea and take a look at whether you’re seeing that increase in the numbers of fungi or the lengths of fungi or the numbers of the bacteria. And that would tell you way earlier than 24 hours whether things are going right or not in the brew.
From Damian: How does seaweed affect a compost tea - what are the benefits and what are the problems?
It’s a – usually, it’s a fungal food. It’s typically going to enhance fungal growth, it puts some nutrients into the compost tea so you may be balancing, upping the nutrient content of the compost tea. Of course you’re going to be extracting soluble nutrients out of the compost so you’re putting those into your compost tea. But let’s say you want little bit more nutrients going out there for your plants, especially if we are doing hydroponics or you’re doing aquaponics. Sometimes we need a little bit extra of that seaweed, the kelp, to give enough nutrients so our hydroponic plants are getting the nutrition that they need and of course that’s got to pass the normal nutrient cycling system providing nutrients in a plant available form.
The problems are if you put in too much or if the seaweed actually has a salt problem. A lot of these seaweeds can have very high electrical conductivity, and so you need to be aware of that and maybe read the label and see what the electrical conductivity and please be aware that it needs to be in micro so the little µS sign, microsiemens per centimeter squared. And if what it’s reading, giving you on the label is deciesimons or centisiemons or dS or a cS per centimeter squared, don’t touch it, it’s way too salty. So you want something that has electrical conductivity in the microsiemens range. So those are the problems that come to mind right away.
From Collin Attard: Question about seaweed (Kelp) as a fungal food in the compost and compost tea. 1. Is any old weed coming out of the sea going to be suitable replacement to kelp? Our beaches have truck loads of seaweed washed up on them every year. It is not the same as kelp. It is paper thin and usually 1 to 2 inches long, about 1/2 inch wide and dark brown in colour until it dries.
You have to look at the nutritional content of that material and the reason kelp has gained the reputation is that cold water kelp contains more nutrients in it than any other kind of seaweed or any other kind of kelp. Southern or hot water or warm water kelp doesn’t contain as much nutrients. So in terms of adding nutrients into the compost tea, sometimes if you’re going into a soil that’s got related nutrient value, you don’t need to worry about it. And especially as I’ve come to understand that all soils have all of the nutrients in it that your plant requires the reasons our plants don’t grow in a lot of our agricultural fields because we’ve destroyed the life. And so there’s no way to get the nutrients out of your mineral material and into a plant available form until you get the biology back into the system. So, right at first, the kelp, the seaweed might be kind of
2 | Lesson 6 Live Q&A Webinar hedging your bet a little bit. You’re putting in a good mix of all kinds of different nutrients. It should be pretty easy for the fungi and then hopefully the bacteria to get going and hold on to those nutrients and then they get eaten and passed to a plant available form.
So lots of seaweed washes up on your beach every year, it’s not the same as kelp. You might try drying it well. With the kelp or anything washing up on the shore you would probably want to wash it very, very well in water quite a number of times to get rid of the salt that could be inquested or on the surface of that seaweed.
That’s what often – when you deal with companies that don’t do a good job of washing all that excess salt off, that’s where you get a kelp that’s really high in electrical conductivity and causes salt problems. So you want to make sure you wash it really, really well. Wash it until you’re not getting any more salts coming out of the water that you’re washing your kelp in. Then you want to dry it down, grind it up, and you can use that in your compost, your compost tea. And then of course to see what organisms it actually benefits. How it actually grows?
You might even send that kelp into a chemistry lab and find out what nutrients are in it. Is it enough for you to get a good response? So could well be perfectly fine, could be not worth the time and effort.
From Damian: How does fish hydrolysate affect the fungi as I’m finding hard to get fungi dominated compost?
You have to be aware with the fish hydrolysate exactly how they’re processing it. Sometimes, you get – well for example, in the United States, with the company called The Organic Gem. When we first started working with them, they were truly just taking the fish, grinding it up, grinding all everything to really small particle size and that’s what they were selling people and it was as excellent fungal food resource. But with time, a head of the company figured out that if he heated up the fish hydrolysate and pulled off that layer of fish oil, he could sell the oils for quite a bit of money and so, he started removing the fish oils which of course are the fungal foods. So you start removing those fungal foods, and you start ending up with problems. You don’t get the fungal response that you did. Also be aware that in a fish hydrolysate they’re typically using phosphoric acid as a preservative, and you have to neutralize that before you put the biology in. So you also got to go back and look at your compost and make sure that you actually have good fungi in the compost. If you don’t have any good fungi in the compost or if you don’t have much, you’re adding that fish hydrolysate to grow the fungi but you don’t have enough, it’s kind of like putting a smorgasboard out in the middle of the dessert. And then wondering why you don’t have any people eating your smorgous board? Well, you don’t have enough people in that part of the world so one or two people come along, they’re not going to reproduce, they’re not going to increase. So you’ve got to be certain that you’ve got the inoculum to get the kind of response you want.
So check your compost first and then think about the phosphoric acid. What’s the preservative? Do they actually fool around and take off some of the fungal foods and they still call it fish hydrolysate but it’s not really? Or another thing to think about with your fish hydrolysate is did it get hot on that train coming your way? Maybe it was fish hydrolysate when it left the factory but by the time it gets to you, if it’s gotten really hot sitting in the parking lot or the feed store or wherever it’s sitting for any length of time. Well maybe, heat from the sun caused that separating and now you’ve got all the oils at the top, you’ve got all of the bacterial foods at the bottom and might want to think about not shaking it up, just using the fish oil at the top because that should be good. So think about all of those things. Observe and see what happens when you add it to a compost, make a compost tea to see exactly what’s going on.
From Damian: What is a preferred type of saltwater fish for fish hydrolysate oily or not, can you use carp?
Yes, the more oils, the better. So, every single different kind of fish is going to be growing, is going to have a slightly different mix of oils. And so when you use a fish hydrolysate note which fish it is that this is being
3 | Lesson 6 Live Q&A Webinar made out of and then if you get a really good fungal response, make sure to get that one all the time. Don’t be changing your fish, type of fish every single time because then your results are going to be bouncing all over the place and so I think a carp would be excellent because it’s very oily or at least in the United States is very oily. So, carp would be pretty good. Manhattan is very good, tunas are pretty good. So find one, see what their response is and then stick with it.
So Sebastien: Is it a good idea to presoak compost in very diluted black strap molasses in a cup of oat bran?
Um, not in the molasses before brewing tea, you’re just running too much chance that the addition of even a diluted molasses is going to get those bacteria growing so fast and while it’s still in mostly solid form, you’re not providing enough oxygen. Put the molasses, if you want more bacteria, put the molasses in the tea brew. You’re safer because you’re bubbling and you’re mixing and you’re moving. Just don’t put too much. Now the cup of oat bran, sure, not a problem because a fungi don’t grow over that fast, they’re not going to start just exploding and suck up all your oxygen the way bacteria can very well do. So a cup of oat bran, just remember if you mix that oat bran into your compost you could be slicing and dicing the very fungi that you’re trying to grow. So maybe be putting the oat bran in and water it lightly, bring it up to your 50% moisture and then have the fungi take off on you.
When applying compost tea to the roots of a tree in a sandy soil, should I put some compost into the hole I’ve made near the roots before adding the tea? So the tea doesn’t just simply drain down and away.
I would put the tea in first. You’re going to get things inoculated and then you put the compost down. After that just apply that long-term and what you’ll see is the roots will grow into that compost because there’s lots of good nutrients. You’ll get a high density of roots in that area. The liquid that you put in, the other organisms attach to the organic matter that they encountered and yeah, it moves down a little bit in your soil but hopefully the organisms will be there as roots start growing into that area around the root zone.
Can applying a fungally dominated compost tea to compacted sand help to decompact of the soil? Or does that only work if there’s clay presence?
No, the fungi work to build structure in every kind of soil. You would just want to make sure that that was at least a decent amount of organic matter, that it’s not pure sand or fungi tend to go to sleep pretty rapidly. So, in that compost tea make sure that you maybe send in, when you’re applying the compost tea, you send in some other fungal foods. Make sure that there’s a compost that you’ve put out there. So you’re putting in the organic matter that fungi likes; so the humic acids, the fulvic acids, the fish hydrolysate, all those various things.
Why is foam on compost tea bad?
The foam isn’t really bad, it’s some proteins are present in your brew that’s causing that foaming. And if it foams too much, that foam bubbles up and over and the foam falls out and I’ve had people that put yucca into their compost teas and put way too much yucca. If a little’s good more’s better? Wrong.
We had a 500 gallon tea brewer, they put a whole gallon of yucca in and it was – didn’t have any problem for the first two or three hours but of course then he left at 5 o’ clock and after that the yucca started to foam, by the time he came back in the morning, almost all 500 gallons were out on the floor. He had this tsunami of foam, wiping them out as he walked in the door to his business the next morning and of course everything was hip deep in foam in the whole building. So that’s the danger of foam in the compost tea. It’s not really bad, you want to be aware that it can cause this kind of problem. So if you’re starting to see a lot of foaming, put a little bit of oil in and then figure out what it is that is in your compost extract or compost tea that’s causing that foaming and maybe delete it. So don’t add that component.
And I was just in England working with some tea brewers there and they were having exactly that problem. They had gotten a microbial inoculum from some commercial source and they were told to add that into 4 | Lesson 6 Live Q&A Webinar their compost tea and it started foaming. It immediately started foaming and they would have lost 2/3 of their brew if they hadn’t gotten right in there and put the oil on the top. But still the oil kind of wore out before they were finished brewing and they still lost a lot of their brew on the floor because of that foaming.
When analyzing compost tea are the active bacteria or the total bacteria number’s more important?
It depends on what you need in your soil. So, look at your situation where you’ll be putting that tea. Now if you are putting the tea out on foliage, you’ve got to have good sticking. So those bacteria are quite important to have adequate increase in the number of bacteria because they make the copious amount of glues that will allow things to stick right away, it will help your fungi stick to that leaf surface too and I mean that especially on the bottom. You’ve got to be kind of sticking rapidly enough so that gravity doesn’t take it right back off.
Fungi do make them glues?
Not as much as your bacteria so you want balanced bacteria and fungi and it depends on what are you lacking in your soil or on the compost tea.
So let’s see, I’m going to go back here.
From Damian: I have a lot more amoebae than flagellates, how do I balance the ratio and vice versa?
I don’t really worry a lot about what I’ve got more amoebae or more flagellates. They both perform the same function. They both are just as good as the other and so there’s something about your compost or the conditions and the brewer, maybe then, your soils especially if it’s a local compost that you’re using your plant materials have way more amoebae on them than flagellates. So you’re already matching exactly what needs to go back out into that real world.
So, it’s only if your soils were way high in flagellates and very few amoebae and not here’s your compost or compost extract way high in amoebae - that’s – might want to give me some data on that one and let’s think about what it might mean. But for right now, I’d say, don’t worry about it.
How do I encourage nematodes to enter the soil once the compost tea is applied or do they reproduce in the tea?
Nematodes have life cycles that are typically longer than two weeks. So you’re not going to get the nematodes reproducing in the tea. You’re going to extract out of compost, the nematodes that are in the compost. So if you want to get more nematodes in your compost tea, you’re going to have to manage your compost so you’re getting more nematodes in that compost to extract into the compost tea. And in order to get those nematodes in that compost, we got to make sure the moisture stays right up there and we have to make sure that it doesn’t go anaerobic. The nematodes need the food.
If you don’t have a lot of fungi in your compost then you’re not going to have the fungal feeders. If you have lots of really active bacteria, you’re likely to have a lot of bacterial feeding nematodes. So, to get the nematodes to get in the soil, you got to provide the foods. So you got to get the fungi going, you got to have bacteria, and you can see where most of the time we’re seeing bacterial food in nematodes come back into the system. And it’s not until you get that fungal component back up, you start to see the fungal foods.
Is there any vegetable substitute for fish hydrolysate?
Yeah. Any of the grain that still have seed coats where they actually grind up the seed coat with the grain. If you can get seeds from a seed, a place that separates the chaff, separates not viable seeds from the viable seeds and now they’ve got this waste stuff. They don’t know what to do with it. That’s a great substitute for the fish hydrolysate. Anything that has a wide C:N ratio would be vegetable substitute for fish hydrolysate, it’s fungal foods. 5 | Lesson 6 Live Q&A Webinar
From the talk on compost tea with Darren and Gerhard, aloe vera was mentioned, what role does aloe vera play in compost tea?
It’s just another fungal food and it does tend to foam quite a bit. So I probably wouldn’t add more than very small amounts, maybe a milliliter or two into a 500 gallon compost tea brew. It is good fungal food but look out, you’re going to have to deal with the foaming. So test, try out some of these things. Maybe especially with a small size container of the compost tea. See what helps to grow the fungi that you’ve got in your compost while you still work to improve that fungal component in the compost.
Where can I get your paper you said you will be publishing on treating needle cast on spruce trees?
I think that has been published, I would have to go back and look for it in the scientific literature. We did a literature search for all the papers recently published on compost tea and there’s about 418 recent publications in the scientific literature like in the last two or three years and half of them are showing – wow, great results. The other half are – it doesn’t work. Well, because they’re not monitoring for the organisms so I will try to keep looking for that one. If you have some local graduate students or high schoolers or kids in school that would like to have a project, have them do that lit. search for you looking for needle cast and treating needle cast spruce trees. It was work that was done up in Canada at a Christmas tree farm. So, I’d have to go looking for it. Sorry. (Follow up?)
I have a bush cherry that suddenly become losing its leaves, remaining leaves are covered in brownish red spots.
You’ve got a fungal disease.
If the bush loses all its leaves this season, can I still recover it next spring by applying compost tea at bud swell?
It’s going to be iffy if it will produce buds next year. Cross your fingers and hope that it’s got enough energy stored in the root system in order to redo the leaves. I would get out there right now and just dowse that tree in as much compost tea above ground, get into the soil, inject into the root system, punch through whatever compaction layer might be there and try to kill that disease causing fungus that might be down in root system causing this problem as well.
So, from Rob Grylls: I checked my compost tea as it came out the nozzles of my boomless jet sprayer and found activity was still good. (Yeah!) However the fungal hyphae were broken into smaller segments. Are they still able to grow back or does this kill them? How do soil fungi reproduce?
As long as it hasn’t broken into tinie-tiny little-iddie bits. As you’re looking in your microscope, do you see intact cells? And so what you might do with that compost tea that’s come out of the sprayer is maybe add a little bit of pretty good fungal food to that liquid and see how much of that fungal tissue actually regrows. I would suspect that it’s probably still fine as long as you see the strands and know, be able to convince yourself, that those really are fungi it’s probably enough of a cell to be able to regrow.
So keep going.
Also the protozoa I observe at the nozzle exit point appear to be mostly flagellates because, although I am unable to see their tails, they have a jerky swimming habit compared to the more cruisey ciliates. Also the flagellates’ tails appear to get hooked up on pieces of organic matter sometimes. Am I on the right track with this comparison between flagellates and ciliates?
Absolutely! Yeah, it’s so often, especially if there’s a decent amount of bacteria, the flagellates will get their flagellum stuck on an aggregate and so the flagellate is young, jerking, and trying to get its flagellum free and finally it gets lose and goes off. If it get too close or someone else gets too close to that aggregate, he
6 | Lesson 6 Live Q&A Webinar make get stuck for a little while again because apparently it’s really sticky glue but yes, the jerky motion as compared to real smooth sailing when you’re a ciliate, that’s a good enough ability to differentiate.
Also am I right to assume nematodes drown in compost tea?
No. No, they do not drown. They might if you got really high amount of agitation, the nematodes might get kind of crumpled and crunched. And so, maybe but if you’re seeing remains of nematodes, like bits and pieces where it, gosh that looks like the tail end of a nematode and that looks like a front end of a nematode you might go back to your compost and consider how often you’re turning and try to leave it alone. Instead of turning the compost when it, after it’s finished and that temperature’s come down, instead of turning the compost to like even out moisture to even out maybe little hot or cold spots. Just put holes into the compost and stick an air pipe down there like a PVC pipe with holes punched in it to maintain the middle of that pile aerobic.
If it seems to be getting to wet, seems to getting a little stinky, you start seeing the actinobacteria growing in a finished compost, just open up some air passageways so that you’re not turning that compost all the time. That seems to be what maybe slicing and dicing some of the nematodes. And if you turn the finished compost pile, you frighten your nematodes. They tend to leave for quite some time and maybe months before they come back into the compost and you have to stop turning.
Okay. From Karstein: I grow (Italian) ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum) as a cover crop on a field of low quality (lack of nitrogen, low water infiltration, uneven growth, etc). If I apply compost tea and get good soil biology, will the ryegrass only grow stronger/larger or will it also grow faster? I do struggle with a short growing season (it is in Norway).
Yeah the – if you can supply by getting this biology going in the root system, if you can supply this nutrient cycling then the plant’s in control, well the plant wants to grow fast? Then you will see more rapid growth rates. You will see more rapid green material being produced above ground and that green material will be healthier. So, the rye grass will grow stronger, larger, and typically faster especially as you can get this nutrient cycling back into the soil, you typically can grow some longer season grasses because we supply the new trans at such a rate that’s totally matched to what the plant requires that we see plants growing much more rapidly and much larger and much more healthy. So I think we will change our attitudes about these you know “the warm season grasses only can grow in southern climes and the cold season grasses” because we developed those attitudes about those grasses in conventional chemical fields and we’re opening up a whole new understanding of how the physiology of plants work.
So, I would give it a try. Don’t go bananas and turn everything into some of the longer growing season or warmer season requiring plants, test them in small strips and small areas and see as you get the biology as well back to a condition of health.
We have 250 Acres of Soy , sown a little late. We want to make up a compost tea to try and bring the crop on. Could you advise on best recipe for this and also volume we would require, application rates and number of applications etc.?
It’s really dependent on the biology of soil. So I would look at your soil and see what’s missing. Why isn’t your soy just growing at gang buster speeds? Why is it not just really taking off and getting nice and healthy right away because typically plants do make up? If you plant a little bit late or you had a kind of cooler early part of the season as soon as they germinate and start growing they catch up if they can and therefore I’d look at your soil. What’s missing there? And therefore the best recipe is to put in foods. Make sure that your compost has the organisms that are missing in your soil. And then put in the foods to make those grow more rapidly. Make sure you have the protozoa, that you’ve got the flagellates and the amoebae. Try to get the good guy nematodes into that compost. What would be the volume that you would require? Well, if you have really super-duper, let’s say you’re looking at ten strands of fungal hyphae per field that you’re looking at through the microscope and you’ve got good bacterial number and you start seeing protozoa and some
7 | Lesson 6 Live Q&A Webinar nematodes in there. I’d say you put it at out like five liters per hectare because you’ve got really good biology, you don’t have to put on a lot.
Let’s say you’re taking 5 fields to find one strand of fungal hyphae. Lots of bacteria but the protozoa are kind of sparse too. Well for the protozoa, I will go make up protozoan infusion and up the number of protozoa in that tea before you put it out but because that fungal biomass is so low, especially for soy that should have the equal biomass of fungi and bacteria in that soil, you’d want to be putting out 20 liters per hectare, maybe 200 liters per hectare to try to get the fungal component backup to what needs to be there to get those – that soy to come on and grow really fast. So, application, recipe, number of applications is all dependent on the biology.
As soon as you put that compost tea on the compost extract on your soil, which is where were going so extract would be a whole lot easier to get up there and check to see if you got the fungi and just keep extracting more compost and more compost and more compost until you get the fungi up to where it’s reasonable to put out an application of your compost extract. Check the soil maybe even 5 days or 7 days after application and see how much the biology in your soil has improved. If it hasn’t improved anything, I would go again. If it’s improved and you’ve got 500 micrograms of bacterial biomass and at least you got your 300 micrograms of fungal biomass it’s improved massively but you want it balanced for soy. So keep working on the fungi.
Also we need to buy an Air pump so would need to get the correct size.
I cannot keep up with all the changes in the pumps and which one’s better. I would encourage you to email Gary Mauler at greenprosolutions.com and it’s [email protected]. He’s in New Jersey I believe it is but he’s always been my best at giving best answers and he’s very good about giving things for free although where you can, if you’re picking up his brain, could you please buy something from him so that he’ll stay afloat? So, I’m not good at the air pumps, sorry.
I was wondering if you could use the same oxygen probe for a compost pile and compost tea?
Sure, yeah. Not a problem. An oxygen in the atmosphere in that compost pile, oxygen dissolved in the compost tea, yeah. A compost for, an oxygen probe should be able to measure oxygen in both of those different kinds of things.
In a compost pile, though, what you want to think about is like a pipe that goes down into the pile and at the end up here in the air you have a suction cup so you’re going to pull the atmosphere out of your compost pile up to where you’ve got a little – here’s your pipe, you have a little side pipe coming off of that and that’s where you sit your oxygen probe so the oxygen is – the oxygen probe is measuring the air that you’re pulling past it from whatever depth you’ve got your pipe in the compost pile works much better.
Compost tea just put the oxygen probe straight in to the compost tea.
So, I like to use the microorganisms to tell me about oxygen conditions in my tea or my compost - much more reliable. You can get some bizarre readings from oxygen probes especially if you haven’t cleaned the electrode, if you haven’t put a fresh new membrane on, there’s so many problems with the oxygen probe rather just take a sample of the liquid or the compost and look to see what the biology is. Lots of ciliate? Okay, you’ve got problems. All bacteria, no fungi? Okay you got problems. So be using the organisms to indicate rather than going and buying an electrode.
What defines a fungal food? 8 | Lesson 6 Live Q&A Webinar
Oh, a fungal food is something that has a wide carbon and nitrogen ratio. It’s a material that has a lot of cellulose, a lot of lignans in it, recalcitrant kinds of materials.
What percentage of chemical reduction can a conventional farmer expect to see using compost tea? On say a 5000 acre wheat farm. What’s a realistic time frame to ease off the chemicals and the fertilizer?
It depends in what the conventional farmers using. Wheat, it depends on the kind of wheat they’re raising. In the dry land wheat they’re not using much anything on that to begin with. So, sometimes trying to convert dry land wheat a farmer is kind of well, they’re not really putting out much anyway. Now if you deal with someone who’s out there with the full load of chemicals, it -- they have been doing some nasty things to that soil and it -- they’re not farming on soil, they’re farming on dirt. And so how are we could have successfully bring that biology back long because not only are they coming over to a host, you’re bringing those organisms to a whole strange new world. You’re bringing them into a toxic strange new world. So it’s going to take some effort. So I often with conventional farmers that been just maximizing their use of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides and toxic materials I will suggest to them that they need to back up by 50% their chemicals and then start getting the biology and that they should see benefit that very first year if they’re getting any improvement in biology.
Working with a grower in Pennsylvania where they basically did that. They increasde yields by 15% in the first year and have their chemicals. So what’s their pesticide budget? And so if they’re only putting out half of the toxic chemicals that they’re putting on before and they still getting 15% increase as compared to the conventional, you saved them so much money. It’s just it’s not funny.
And so the second year, get them to reduce that chemical burden by another 50% so you’ve saved them another 50% of their pesticide inorganic fertilizer bill. By the time third comes along they’re not going to be interested in using any of those toxic chemicals. Why should they? They’ve got the nutrient cycling back but it requires biology in there. Please be monitoring the organisms in the soil and make sure that they’re improving. If it’s so still toxic in that soil that it whatever biology you’re putting in is dying instantly, you’re going to have to work on that harder and harder and harder.
So, let’s see, keep and going with this slide over here.
How are CO2 probes used for compost? Can you recommend some good probes for both?
I just don’t like the oxygen probes are pain, they’re very persnickety, they’re difficult, you will drive yourself crazy with them. So CO2 probes are much better and the standard CO2 probes that you have the liquid inside and you use the pipe and suck your atmosphere out of your compost pile, past your probe, comes that way to begin with. You buy it in that configuration to begin with. You just have to remember that the red liquid inside your CO2 probe has to be changed every 100 to 150 uses. You’ve got to remember to change the pH indicator in there so that you can actually determine whether there is any CO2 or not.
I remember one time going to a composting operation in Australia and out there in the middle of the country and, “Oh yeah, we’ve got great compost, is not evolving any CO2 at all.” “Oh, excuse me? Decomposition is happening and you’re not measuring any CO2? I don’t think that’s possible. You should be getting measurable CO2 out of a compost pile because decomposition’s going on. The bacterium, fungi are growing. So even when you’re back down to ambient temperatures on a compost pile, it should still be measuring CO2 being produced. Not a lot, but there should be some.” So if you’re measuring zero, there’s something wrong with your probe, fix it. And usually it’s that they’ve forgotten to change the indicator inside the probe.
I would have to have go looking for names of those different CO2 probes but they’re, they are quite rugged. I’ve even had graduate students to leave them in a compost pile and they’ve gone to the turner without being hurt, which is amazing. Not going to be the case for the oxygen probe. You treat an oxygen probe nasty, it’s not working for you. So, I would have to go look and then maybe get back on for you.
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Since compost tea is more active than a compost extract wouldn’t it be better to use compost tea for a soil drench instead of an extract?
Well, the idea with the compost tea to be used for foliages you have to have active organisms there for them to stick to the surfaces. When you put something that over your soil, it’s going to be moving into the soil and really it’s not going to be – it’s not going to grow, not going to continue to do its thing if it gets into a situation where there isn’t food, where things aren’t right for it. So, putting an extract out you do have to remember that in a compost, even when it’s at ambient temperature there still active growing organisms in there depending on the foods in your compost, on the temperature, on the moisture and things like that. There still activity going on in that. They’re not going dormant or something. So when we put a compost extract out, there’s still active organisms and they’re going to find the place in the soil and then, woo, out they go having a grand old time. We don’t have to worry about driving a compost extract anaerobic before it gets to the places where it needs to get going and function very, very well. So, I will prefer to put it on compost extract on to the soil surface so we’re putting things in there are active and they wake up and go faster once they get into the place in the soil where they are capable of growing faster.
As far as applying some liquid organic fertilizer could it be added in right before the tea or extract was applied?
You have to look at what was in that liquid organic fertilizer, is it fungal foods? Is it bacterial foods? In a tea, you could use that as a food source if you do exactly what was in your liquid organic fertilizer. In an extract, you would add that liquid organic fertilizer at the same time as you put an extract out. You want to send your extract out with a lunch pack. So when it gets to that soil, it’s coming along with a little extra food to help it get resuscitated in your soil right away.
So liquid organic fertilizer, you have to ask what’s in it. What is it? Is it fungal food? Bacterial food? If its bacterial food, you really don’t want to be putting it into the tea or the extract until you’re applying it because it could drive your compost tea or extract anaerobic. So, right before, as you’re applying.
What is the best practice long term for a large farm? Is it building small piles of compost every year and making compost tea to put on our pastures or do you get a far better results when spreading compost onto paddocks every year. Your opinion would really help to decide which type of machinery we buy. Thank you for a brilliant course.
Now, I think it’s more dependent on what’s affordable by you and what’s easiest for you to add into your practices? Is it easier for you to build smaller compost piles and not to have the cost of a turner, a water wagon, a tractor that you can out a PTO on and has the granny gear. Or is buying the tanks and going out with the spray tank that you probably already have which one is easier for you? The compost puts a solid, no, not leachable form of organic matter into your soils so if you’re really lacking in organic matter in the soil and you don’t have a lot of residues going back down onto that soil on annual basis. You might really want to think about doing the compost.
What’s your density of crop out in a field? I know like in South Africa when we were dealing with a datu. Their rows were quite far apart on their tomatoes because they were very concerned with enough airflow through the tomatoes to prevent mildew from becoming a problem. You start putting your rows too close together, you don’t get enough air flow, mildew wipes you out in a one week of our harvest and it so much for all the effort you put into it. So if you’re like your rows far apart because of the residue, the plant material that you’re putting back into the soil at the end of harvest is really kind of minimal go for the compost because you need to be putting that amount of organic matter, building it up pretty rapidly. If you’ve got a lot of plant material like on pastures or something, you’ve got grass growning all the time, you’ve got all the mixture of herbs in there as well, so compost tea would probably be the better way to go because it’s less expensive to go that way.
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Small piles where you’ll be putting it out and once you get the biology up and going, then you don’t have to be making either large amounts of compost or tea. So small piles more might be more economic so think those once through and maybe come back at one on one we could look at some of the other factors that are important on your farm so you can figure this out better.
What special considerations have to be given if I work in farmlands which are restored from desertified land with an annum temperature difference of -20 to 40C and annual rainfall below 200mm? Underground water can be made available through pumps.
The special considerations are probably that you want to protect your soil surface from that hot baking sun in the middle of the summer. So you want to have mulch material, just 50-50 mix of green, woody material that go out to straw, something to protect that soil surface in that really dry part of the year, especially if you’ve got crops growing you will want to be protecting that soil surface with something to intercept that baking hot sun going down.
If we have any salts at all in our soils and that water pulls the salt along with them as they rise to the surface of the soil and the water evaporates but it leaves behind the salts. It’s going to turn your soil surface into that concrete-like situation and now you’ve got compaction at the surface of the soil. You’ve got to break up that compaction by getting really good organic matter. So protect it, don’t have that happen. Have all that covered by either nice understory plants that go very dormant in that dry, dry part of the year. They’re only green and growing when –
Helen: Excuse me, Elaine.
Elaine: Yup?
Helen: Elaine, this is the question that came from Josephine that we put up on the top of chat. I just want people to be able to read her story while you are answering this question because she’s doing work in Mongolia. So, please continue.
[Here’s the chat: Dear Helen,
Wonder if you can convey the following information to Elaine. I am working as a volunteer (tree planter) in Dengkou County of Inner Mongolia. Sixty years ago Dengkou was almost wiped out by sand storms from the Ulan Buh Desert, some northwest of Dengkou. It has taken the people and forestry bureau of Dengkou almost sixty years to keep the encroachment of Ulan Buh desert under control and now basically the farm land in Dengkou are land rehabilitated from running sand dunes. The basic method used was first to stop the sand dunes from running by building checker boards of dry straws, a method which has been used by China since the 1950s' to stabilise running sand dunes. In the past, I didn't know why the dry straws can stabilize the running sand but now I understand that it is the microorganism in the decayed straw that has transformed the structure of the sand, glued the sand together to form a sheet-like cover so that the sand are less easily blown up.
To further rehabilitate the land, local shrubs like Sacsaoul (Haloxylon), Tamarisk, Poplar and local tress like Elm, Pinus sylvestrisas are planted to further change the nature of soil and protect farmland from sandy wind.
People there treasure their reclaimed land very much and as there is no industry in the vicinity, the land has not suffered from industrial pollution like most other places in China. Quite a number of farm owners want to practice sustainable agriculture rather than conventional and they try to use organic fertilizer only. I hope I can introduce to them this concept of soilfoodweb and run an experimental farm there to demonstrate the use of compost and compost tea, etc. Therefore, I want to know whether the principles introduced in Elaine's soilfoodweb course can apply to areas where the climate is more extreme and where the land is mostly sandy. The major irrigation system we are using are drip pipes (developed from Israel) from pumps with underground water or water from Huang River. The annum rainfall is about 150m We 11 | Lesson 6 Live Q&A Webinar have good harvest of melons, grapes, tomatoes, egg plants, certain kind of legumes, etc. during summer time but temperature goes down to -20+C in winter. There are also free range farms for cattle and sheep where native grasses are used as feed. Compost are made mostly from manures.
Best
Josephine]
Elaine: Okay, so why temperature differences? We’re just talking about having that really cold season, hot dry season and annual rain fall below 200 millimeters, not a problem, we’ll store all of that in the soil. So, especially in those kind of systems you have to have protection on the soil surface. You want to have really good structures so any rain, any dew that falls and particularly when you’re dealing with annual rainfall, below 200 millimeters, dew is going to be critical for you to catch and so we want short low, growing plants in that system even if they’ve gone dormant, that’s fine. Those surfaces are still collecting the dew and dropping it on to the soil and that has to infiltrate, it cannot evaporate. If it doesn’t infiltrate, it’s going to evaporate when the sun comes out later in the morning. Whoops! You just lost that really critically important water, so protect that soil surface, low growing perennial plants. So you’re not going in and tilling those systems any more than you have to. Every time you till, we’re going backwards in succession we’re setting the stage to grow weeds which don’t put the roots down very far. They don’t build structure; you don’t get the infiltration of the water which is so critical in desert areas or low rainfall areas.
Is there a way to get rid of cutworms with compost tea?
Typically you want to be putting in, making certain that the right sets of organisms that will take out your cutworms are in the compost tea. So, we typically want to have some beauveria in there, we want to have those fungi that will attack and consume the cutworms. We want some kinase producing bacteria that are taxi cab for example on heterorhabditis and so buy the heterorhabditis from the store that carries and taxi cabs around all those kinase producing bacteria. So yes, so it’s easy to get rid of cutworms with compost tea. Just want to make sure that you have the right sets of organisms and I believe I went over those in the course.
What’s a good material to use as a compost tea bag?
Fine mesh. So you want something that is about 400 micrometers opening size, stiff, nylon material and arrange it so it’s got a nice zipper or Velcro closing at the top. So if you go to EarthFort, Earth Fortification Supply Company they sell those kinds of bags and that’s in the United States.
Reference: http://earthfort.com/products/equipment/brewing-bags.html
Now I suspect there’s companies in Australia that do the same thing over there. Maybe the SFI lab at Lismore carries them so, you just want to be looking for them or make it yourself if you’re handy with the sewing machine, you find that real stiff fabric, just a nice material to go around the edges and then a zipper at the top or Velcro closure at the top. (Find in Aust)
I am in Montana, are you guys having luck with the cover cropping and more biological approach or just getting started?
Now the person I would suggest you to – the people I would suggest you to go to especially Montana, you’re so close to South Dakota, North Dakota would be J. Fuhrer. He is an extension service person and I believe it’s Bismarck, North Dakota and he already has this list of cover crops, short low growing cover crops that work really well for most of the crops in part of the world. So pastures, as well as soy bean, corn, wheat already has those and he has like 25 years worth of data on how this works really, really well. You might also look at the University of Washington, Washington State University. They have a fair amount of research going on using understory plants, plantings, things like that, for making a really waxy broad leaf
12 | Lesson 6 Live Q&A Webinar plant materials, reduces water evaporation from the soil, maintains that really good, below ground soil food web. So, check those out. (Find list?)
Getting started we have heavy flat soils here and the soil health has been in decline with alkaline around sloughs
Yeah it’s because you’re not dealing with soil, you’re dealing with dirt and you got to get the biology back in there. So, what’s the easiest, fastest way to do it and certainly having permanent understory short growing plants going to push you a lot in that direction much faster than just putting out one application of compost at a fairly low level every year? Whenever residues go down, there’s the time to be putting your compost extracts or compost tea out so you get all of that residue inoculated right away. So you will get really fast conversion of that residue material into soil through that wonderful winters that you have in that part of the world.
So going on.
From Julia: Elaine, what do you think about ‘crimper roller’ technique that Rodale is teaching? Was this part of the farm trials in Georgia you mentioned? I am now wondering if the experiments that failed using this (esp in CA) did not have the proper biology, and quit before realizing the benefits.
Yeah, exactly, you need to have the nitrogen fixing bacteria in the soil and if you’ve got the wrong ones for the place, it’s not going to give you the benefit. Also, in the rolling and crimping system that Rodale has developed and pushes, vetch can be a real problem in other parts of the world and Pennsylvania. So, yeah hairy vetch works fine for certain parts of the world but in California, Cecilia, woud have been the better choice. So they need to be a little understanding the point and purpose of that – the grass sward in which you’re growing the nitrogen fixer, grow a nitrogen fixer that’s native to your habitat.
Believe the hairy vetch in California caused a lot of binding, it bound, it grew up the plant and pulled it over because the seasons are quite different in California from Pennsylvania so you have to look for a nitrogen fixing plant that has the beneficial characteristics. If the nitrogen fixing plant binds up your crop, it’s going to be a mess and so pick a more appropriate nitrogen fixer. Pick an understory grass that is more appropriate for the part of the world that you’re in, rye grass in California, too hot. You got to pay attention to the principle and then pick the species of plants that do the principle in your part of the world. So, yeah it probably was not destined to work in California. They got to think this one through.
I’m in the process of buying a soil analysis microscope and would like to order some glass slides decided to go with the microscope.
That comes, if you go to microscope.net, that one that I recommend.
Reference: http://www.microscopenet.com/binocular-microscope-soil-study-c-25_36_94.html
They send you field microscopes and a box of cover slips with it. Now, the types of glass slides, just the normal microscope slides and you could go to any scientific supply company should give you that. It should be on there. I always get the 18 millimeter by 18 millimeter cover slips and that’s useful. Always get those kinds and any other accessories that might be useful.
Buy the test tubes that come with the markings on the side so you can put in one milliliter of your soil or your compost tea, it’s marked right there on the side of that little test tube and then add your four mls of water so you can see right there five ml mark is where you want to go to with you water and shake with the test tube on. If that delusion is still too thick, now you have to dilute more to be able to count your bacteria successfully. Well, once you’re done with that first initial assessment you just add five more mls of water and now you got a one to 10 dilution. If that’s still too thick, then you take one ml out of there, put it in your next test tube so you can see where you’ve got the one mil in there add your four mls, now you’ve got a one
13 | Lesson 6 Live Q&A Webinar to 50, one to 100. How that makes it really easy? So get those test tubes that have a nice screw cap tubes on the top and are marked in milliliter amounts on the side.
I would also get a pipette, a little pipette that has a one mil mark on the side. So, it just expedites, you’re making the dilutions if you need to. Get a nice cloth like you use for cleaning your glasses, nice, fine, soft glass so you can go in and clean the dust and the dirt off of the eye pieces of your condenser glass off of your illumination glass.
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