Qualitative Assay

Soil Foodweb, Inc. will be offering this qualitative assay to clients that don’t want to have to do-it-themselves, as Elaine described in the July 2004 e-zine. This assay will give you information on the bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes, for only $25 per Tea sample and $35.00 per Compost sample. Details from that issue are below to understand, in-depth, the analysis.

Standard submission forms on the lab pages now have a space for requesting a QA.

"The Manual is done! Pictures galore for each group of micro-critters in soil – bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes and insect larvae. And the perennial favorite – Unknown, Non-Organisms materials!

It is always hard to know if you are looking at a piece of fuzz, thread, leaf materials, or something else when looking at tea, compost, or soil. But this manual will help you know what you are looking at. Full of pictures that show you exactly what you will see, taken while looking through the Leica microscope, or the Alexis Series J microscope, using a hand-held $200 digital Olympus camera.

The manual is written for use with a microscope with a N.A. 1.25 (or greater) ABBE condenser, with an iris diaphragm (ABBE condensers should come with the iris diaphragm) and 4X, 10X, and 40X objective lenses (that 40X lens is critical), 10X wide field eyepieces.

The microscope manual has the standard curve for compost tea quality, which can be applied to compost quality and soil quality as well. These are qualitative measures, not quantitative measures, however.

Examples of Bacillus, Corynebacteria, actinomycetes - more properly called actinobacteria – are shown, but ID to genus or species is not possible using these kinds of microscopes. You can get an idea of the relative density (lots, good levels, a bit low, or not present) of the KINDS of bacteria or fungi or protozoa, etc.

You can monitor your tea brew hourly if you want to see the changes in critters as the tea matures. You can learn the cues needed to develop for your own tea recipe, to know whether the tea is growing enough of the right organisms, if your tea is “ready”, or if you should brew longer, or add some foods, or even add more compost.

Sometimes, you just should throw smelly tea on a weed patch, because the tea is so bad that the weeds will be killed by putting that tea on them. So, sometimes, if you do things really wrong, you can make an herbicide. Sometimes, you can add more compost, or more foods, and bring the tea up to par.

Learn what things make a good tea, so that you can tell, time after time, very rapidly, whether you have a good tea or not!

Compost and soil can be mixed with water, and an idea of the quality of the life in the soil or compost assessed as well."