The Daily Local News, West Chester County PA

Pam Baxter Vegetable Column for April 27, 2002

"The strongest plant disease fighter"

How would you like to have zillions of tiny PAC-Man-like creatures in your garden, gobbling up disease organisms and fungi that have the potential to attack your vegetables? It’s possible with fermented compost tea.

On the surface, do-it-yourself fermented compost tea appears simple. In his new book, "You Bet Your Tomatoes", author Mike McGrath gives concise instructions: take a bucket of compost tea and set it in a shady spot for two weeks. Keep it covered with netting to keep mosquitoes from breeding in it.

After two weeks, skim off the scum that’s floating on top of the liquid. Being careful not to disturb the dregs at the bottom of the bucket, slowly pour the liquid through a strainer and into a sprayer and apply it to your garden plants.

However, in an article on compost tea in the February/March issue of "Grandiflora," Dr. Elaine R. Ingham, Associate Professor of Botany and Plant Pathology at Oregon State University, cautions, "Tea has to be made correctly . . . chances of failure are significant. There are . . . examples where people think they made compost tea, but did not actually achieve anything close to a good tea. "

In those cases, says Ingham, the tea had no beneficial effect and, in some cases, resulted in increased disease. How does that happen? For some answers, I contacted Ed Neff, president of a Seattle-based company called SoilSoup, Inc. which makes compost tea-brewing equipment for farming and gardening applications of all sizes.

First of all, Neff told me that fermenting compost tea is not new. "Fermented tea has been made since the Egyptians, 4,000 years ago," he said. But it would have been a "stinky brew" that they poured on their plants, containing plenty of pathogens.

It turns out that the "bad guys," such as E.coli, thrive where there’s no oxygen, while the beneficial organisms require oxygen to grow. If there are pathogens in your compost to start with, the brew bucket can become a perfect environment for the bad guys to get the upper hand.

Along with oxygen, the other main requirement for the good guys is food. The SoilSoup brewing system provides both. "Give the good guys a little food and air, and they’ll double every 20 minutes," said Neff. After 24 hours in the brewer, which is all the time it takes to produce a batch, "you’ll end up with trillions of good organisms." Applying the brew to the soil is like adding several inches of compost.

The small (6.5-gallon) SoilSoup brewer comes with enough "food" and tested worm castings to make 65 gallons. Retailing at $329, the unit will be pricey for some, but the ease and speed of brewing, and the benefits to the garden may be well worth it.

A word of caution on fermented compost tea from Ed Neff: "It doesn’t have to smell bad to be bad." So, if you plan on making your own bucket brew, it’s important to have your compost tested. But however you may brew it, properly fermented compost tea is a winner in the garden. As Mike McGrath says in his book, it’s the "Strongest plant disease fighter/preventer known to man."

For more information on SoilSoup, you can visit their website at www.soilsoup.com. For information on compost testing, visit www.woodsend.org

Pam Baxter is an avid organic vegetable gardener who lives in Kimberton. She is newsletter editor of the Valley Forge Audubon Society and the Green Valleys Association. Direct e-mail to pbaxter@netreach.net.