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Old July 6, 2013   #68
RayR
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Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Cheektowaga, NY
Posts: 2,464
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Originally Posted by greentiger87 View Post
I don't think the bubbler method is pointless either. But it's nebulous. It's extremely confusing to me that Dr. Ingham would provide detailed instructions, in that booklet and elsewhere, on making tea in 5 gallon buckets for home gardeners - but then clearly suggest that such tea is not disease suppressive. I know how well respected she is, but I can't help but suspect a commercial motive with that kind of contradiction.
I don't see it as a contradiction, her focus with compost tea is restoring the Soil Food Web, nutrient cycling and all. Overall disease suppression is a result of restoring that healthy soil biology. A home brew compost tea itself may or may not suppress certain pathogens as a foiliar spray or a soil drench, there is no reliable way of knowing that beforehand as we all agree.

Quote:
Originally Posted by greentiger87 View Post
I also can't afford a home microscope. But my qualitative observations, reading, and general knowledge strongly suggest that I'm having success culturing specific organisms. That's the primar reason I do so, instead of using "good" compost. With specific organisms, I can read the literature to see if my observations line up - and get an assurance of success even without a microscope.
Yep, targeting specific beneficial microbes that are known to be effective against specific pathogens is the smarter way to go.

Quote:
Originally Posted by greentiger87 View Post
I apologize if any of my posts come across as adversarial. It's not my intention, it's just the way I talk when science is involved. There's no personal animosity here whatsoever. I applaud your willingness to experiment, I just don't want you to shoot yourself in the foot with the "kitchen sink" method.
I like your healthy skepticism and research into the scientific literature.
I think too many people want a magic bullet in a bag or a bottle to fix every problem or think that if a little of something is good then a whole lot is better.
Experimenting is good as long as you expect failure along the way.

Quote:
Originally Posted by greentiger87 View Post
Trichoderma struggles to compete in a liquid medium without lots of selection factors to prevent contamination from bacteria, yeasts, etc. In all the literature about production for use as an biological control, solid state fermentation has been the standard. Cornmeal, oat bran, waste mango pulp, waste oilcakes, are all examples of common media. The other minor possibility is production on the surface of a thick liquid, at the air-liquid interface. For example, at the surface of molasses or the surface of tomato sauce. The reason is intuitive - most filamentous fungi need a *lot* of oxygen, and providing that much oxygen in liquid medium is impossible without constantly destroying the mycelium. The added advantage for a home gardener is that Trichoderma (a mold) is really, really obvious when it's growing on a solid medium. You can quite literally mix spores with sterilized, slightly moist media in a plastic bag, stick it under your sink, and come back three days later to a bag of green Trichoderma spores.
I'm going to have to try that Trichoderma in a bag culture.
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