The KIS folks were involved in the Ingham book. Good people.
hope this not a dumb?, can animal manure be used to top dress coco n what kind of animal?
Not a dumb question at all! Worm castings are the safest manure to use, in all scenarios. Guanos can certainly be used indoors or out, but care must be taken not to use so much that they crust/cake up, because this can lead to mold or fungus and I've seen someone's HUGE GIGANTO outdoors tree be taken out by some sort of infection that came after they topdressed but didn't thoroughly mix it in and allowed caking that went all the way to the main stalk. Sad thing to see. Other manures may be too hot, horse, rabbit, chicken, so should be used judiciously.
A compost tea begins with compost--which needn't even come into contact with worms at all. It's any biomass that has been broken down by natural processes. Bacteria, fungi, or any other decomposer works perfectly well for this.
There is bacteria in/on everything. No exceptions.
Even soap has bacteria on it (had to do an experiment in school where we use a sterile q-tip on random surfaces to see if they have bacteria).
Bacteria is floating through the air all over the place, you're breathing it in right now. If you just add molasses to water, this is the bacteria that will grow (along with anything that was inhabiting the molasses).
I'm not so sure that
bottled molasses should have bacteria in it. It should be packaged using a heated process that's similar to canning, so if there's bacteria in it, we're possibly looking at botulism or some other form of food poisoning. Canned foods should be the exception here, and I really think molasses qualifies. I will double-check with my personal food experts, though!
Most folks I know personally who are doing ACTs are using worm castings, not compost, and their goal is to get mycorrhizal fungi and other soil microbes cultured in their teas. However, I don't see that as where the debate with regard to TLO starts. I see it starting with the exclusion of animal products. Ok. What are all these microbes, then? They ain't plants. What are you getting when you make a compost or worm casting tea? A diversity of microbes that could include ciliates, protozoa, bacteria, fungi, amoeba (not so many of those). This isn't to say that compost can't be used, it just seems to be used far less commonly from what I've observed.
And, NONE of this should be taken to discourage someone from trying
any method of organic cultivation they like, that's the point I'd really like to emphasize. :)
This book is half truths, and voodoo magic. "The Rev" isn't into science all that much. Some of the things he does are based in science, but then he pops out with some "subcool" shit, and fucks it all up.
Veganics is a catchy term to sell products. Veganics by definition can not be vegan. Microbes are alive, and they are what makes compost. Also arthropods, micro-arthropods make compost, and their shit is part of your compost. So maybe you can leave the worms out, but the rest will be there.So no veganics is vegan if you use compost, or worm castings.
Calling this book the way to truly grow organic is a joke at best.
Keep doing your spiked layers people, and the rest of us will grow with science.
This actually reminds me about a question I've wanted to ask for the people doing no-till in pots and how that equates, or doesn't, to doing exactly that--spikes and layers. Does it? Or is there a turnover or something bringing what's laid down on the surface into the rest of the soil below?
I still think that if this book gets people to at least try growing organically, that's a good thing.