The Helpful Gardener wrote:Hang ten Gixx, good to see you on the book club forum too. You're doin' fine...
10-4, G5, the training wheels are officially gone. You're getting the hang of this...
To come back to thread, when we add tea to soil, we are adding biology above all other things. This biology becomes the innoculant for a larger colony that becomes a nutrient sink BEYOND the CEC, AND our soil "coagulant" (increasing tilth and field capacity), AND one of the key forces that helps bring nutrients out of the CEC and make it plant available (ionic forms are plant available forms). My position is that THIS is the key focus to soil health going far on beyond ANYTHING you can do with chemicals. THAT'S why we love this thread as we do...
HG
Hmm, so the the microbes store up all the cationic nutrients that the soil can't handle and the anionic ones the soil repels. That makes perfect sense. Not only do they store it, they also move it into the plant's root zone since they are attracted there by the polysaccharides (?) (remembered the concept, forgot the term) that the plants exude through the roots. If you think about it, having microbes is like having a 100% organic fertilization system built right into the soil

.
OK, HG, here is something that intrigues me. A few pages ago, we spoke about the benefits of adding ACT to little seedlings since the microbes not only add some nutrients, they also help in the development of the seedlings roots. However, I recently read that you want to plant seeds in soil-less, or at least sterile, planting medium and not compost because the microorganisms in compost that help large plants grow well are actually detrimental to seedling and can kill them

. Could these be the anaerobic microbes that are killed in the aeration process of the tea that are harmful to seedlings?
What are your insights on this subject?
Toil, it looks like you might be in the right with your statement. At the very least, my math a few pages ago does not pertain to it

. You are speaking about disolved oxygen (something I don't fully understan...yet

); my calculations were referring to how many times the pump turns the water in the bucket.