Linda Chalker Scott has made a career out of bashing compost teas. She will never change her mind because her academic standing depends on it. That being said, she's not totally wrong, but she is certainly not right.
Brew a batch of compost tea and look at it under the microscope. It's undeniable that it increasing microbial activity and biomass. That's not even worth trying to argue.
Reply: you know there exist actual methods for determining microbe populations. You can't just look at stuff under a microscope...
Which method did you use by the way?
The challenge with compost tea studies is that every batch is different. How do you control for a variable that will change every batch? You can't. I can use the same inputs and change just the brewing length or temperature or elevation, or shoot even brew two brews side by side identical and they will end up different. And yes, I did all this using a phase contrast microscope for years.
Reply: coincidentally this is also one of the problems with compost tea usage.
Owning a microscope makes you practically a microbiologist. Do you know what organisms are growing? Do you know how to determine their population. It is worth noting that harmful organisms like e. Coli can grow in your tea.
Luke at Compost Tea Lab has gathered a bunch of trials using compost tea. I have issues with these results showing positive results as much as I do with the ones that showed no difference vs control. I just don't believe you can make any assumptions or determinations from the trials.
Reply: yet you're willing to sell this stuff.
So if you want to be an armchair warrior then I'd say stick with what the WSU extension service has to say. I know at one point DDT was considered safe and we still can go buy glyphosate at our local garden centers. In those cases, it was a matter of science catching up with agronomic practices, but in this instance I don't think we will ever get there due to the issues with compost tea I listed above.
Reply: name calling, nice. I will always defer to .edu vs. .com.
Glyphosate is a consistent, formulated product. Comparing it to compost tea is a case of false equivalency.
If you're genuinely curious and want to see if it works or not, I would suggest getting or making a good brewer. Tim Wilson has an air lift design that is both cheap and effective. Add good inputs and then run a trial in your garden. If you get a good result, then we can conclude that compost tea worked in your garden and it may be a useful tool for you. If nothing happens, then you can ditch it and never look back.
I'm not buying anything.
We can't conclude anything from the experiment you suggested.
I'd need clones, a control group. The ability to identify and account for all the variables. (Good luck with that outdoors) the experiment would also need to be replicable to have any meaning. Three replications seems to be the minimum, but as you've already stated, there is so much variability between batches of tea, that it really wouldn't be that same experiment.
Hope that helps.
Reply: it does not.
