Part 1: Basic theory of microorganism introduction by the use of compost teas, compost extracts and high quality compost
Hello,
Many of you who read this post may have seen me post before on the Yahoo Compost Tea listserve , I have posted off and on sporadically for years and even abandoned it for a year or so when there was just too much chatter and not much learning going on for awhile. I will start this posting out with how I got involved with the uses of teas then on to making a quality product to creating a company based around supply of the liquid, consulting and other company ventures along the way. If you are currently considering buying into this movement, this information might be worth your time to investigate. Either way, lets get started!
Some time ago, around the year 2001, I was required as part of my job as a organic farming consultant for Magic Valley Compost a Jerome Idaho company to travel to Indianapolis Indiana to attend the ACRES conference. ACRES is a sustainable farming and a general all around the government is out to get us kind of conference whereas the majority of the attendees if not menonite are looking for ways to do anything other than conventional in order to queitly rebel against the current establishment. I looked at my intended training schedule for the event and noticed I was signed up to sit in on Dr. Elaine Inghams soil biology primer class or one titled with the same content. Not knowing or interested in reading about what form of microbiology that resided in the soil I manuevered my way into another class that I thought might be more pertinent, Soil Balancing the Dr. William Albrecht way as presented by Neal Kinsey of Kinsey Ag, a consulting/soil testing company.
While sitting in the rather organized and somewhat dry class of Neal I could hear the laughing and other noise emitted from the class next door, I seemed like they were having a lot of fun over there. During one break outside in the hallway on one of the days there was a large crowd of people posing questions to a short woman with dark graying hair and glasses whom seemed geniunely interested in their questions while being very confident and convincing with the subject matter. I was later informed by a friend of mine that it was indeed the guru of Compost Tea concoctions and everything that slithers and hides beneath our feet in the soils called microbiology. This brief encounter led me to want to attend other classes in the conference that she would be giving and during one such class after I was sufficiently pumped up wanting to get back to the shop and brew my own little batch of life giving sea monkeys she said that Soil Foodweb a company she owned that had offices in Oregon, New York and Austraila would soon be doing a first ever certification for Advisors. Recognizing right away that this might be a good oportunity for marketing services and learning more I checked into it when I returned to Twin Falls Idaho.
I called the Soil Foodweb (SFI) offices and immediately signed up for the certification course and was introduced to Shep Smith, an Oregon transplant from Florida who had trained in entomology and general laid back attitude of live and let live, Arden Anderson, a doctor who also studied the Carey Reams theories, consults and promptly told us to never give out free information, Jim Toler, a quiet man who later went on to form Willamette Organics, Alli Clark, the best personality Soil Foodweb ever employed, the Soil Foodweb (SFI) staff and a host of other people who would go on to be good friends or contacts.
About a year before I attended these conferences my employer and another employee had upon the recommendation of SFI purchased a Growing Solutions compost tea machine. The machine was a large light green circular contraption that contained several baskets that sat upon the top of the water tank as air disc on the bottom released thousands of bubbles per second designed to break free the microorganisms contained within the compost that was placed into the baskets at the top that in theory was to be extracted but instead just compacted the material within. Well after many thousands of dollars sent to SFI proved we could not reach the threshold that supposedly meant that we were making good compost tea, we tore into the machine and modified it. We removed the baskets and the air disc and placed Bobo-Laters along the sides. The Bobo-Later is a PVC pipe/door screen design by Bob Norsen of Seattle Washington that is cheap and works really well in most situations. Finally we had a machine that was nothing more than a 500 gallon holding tank for $12,000.00 or so being the initial investment that still couldnt make the SFI minimums, so we did what all good students do and set the machine out behind the shop and purchased another brand. The second machine we purchased was an EPM 500 gallon machine, or Earth Tea machine. This machine, now the latest and greatest according to SFI since Growing Solutions had since fallen out of favor was tested and for sure THE machine to own according to them. I believe we paid almost $9000.00 for this one not counting freight. So, doing what SFI recommends we tested, then tested again, then tested some more, almost gave up after still not recieving any good high quality tea according to the SFI test using the manufacturers powder blend then tested again. Sometime during this endless stream of money flowing back to the SFI labs I was spending a lot of time on the phone with the EPM ownership and was told that SFI test were not an indication of the machines performance as others were getting results in the field without the test. I was told to add a little Beauvaria if I wanted a good test and also to take the dirtiest sludge containing sample, pour most of the water out and leave the sludge in the bottle then send that in for testing. I never tried either system to see if they worked, bummed that we had spent so much time and money on machines and test. I did call SFI to inform them of what I had learned but was informed that I must have not heard the instructions right and was wrong, but soon thereafter others were reporting the same results and instructions and EPM soon fell from being SFI recommended. Although on occasion I did witness otherwise.
Dennis Hronek, a Nebraska farmer/Entreprenuer had sometime during this same time period, around 2003, invented the Extractor. The Extractor if you can visualize works on the concept of a top hopper that you shovel compost into that contains a common screw type auger with wide flites that the compost gets forced between and through a metered hole into the wash chamber. The wash chamber has another auger that carries the compost to the dump end but on the way sprays the compost with 7-10gpm water through metered nozzles and a screen of approximately 50 mesh surrounds the auger to allow the dirty compost water to flow through a pump into a holding tank. This is extraction in a nut shell and I have often described it as sending the compost through a carwash and collecting the liquid runoff minus the large particles. This machine, for all its worth, cuts the production time down to making 500 gallons in about 15 minutes ready to apply whereas a common brewer may take 18-24 hours with the added cost of adding foods to grow the microbes.
Next time I will continue with Part 2, the benefits of aerated compost tea ACT compared to liquid compost extract or LCE and large scale production techniques.