Even among the experts there is a lot of debate on some of these things. The 'best' molasses - often called blackstrap, is the residue left after the third boiling to extract the refined sugar. It has a lot of trace minerals and many different types of complex sugars in it. Manganese, magnesium, iron, phosphorous, calcium.... all sorts of nice stuff that is left after the simple sugar is removed for processing. As a disclaimer, I am NOT a recognized expert on the complex biology of aerated compost teas but I have some knowledge when it comes to aquatic systems after many years as a semi-pro fish breeding hobbyist. There are certain types of very sensitive fish from the soft, acidic waters of the amazon region and others from the hard water african rift valleys who need specific chemistries and that stuff I know cold. Back to compost teas and molasses.... I've read volumes from the acknowledged experts regarding the ratio of fungi to bacteria to microbes over time at different oxygen levels and I get that stuff but I have to reject some of the stuff that is written because it is VASTLY over-generalized. The notion that dissolved O2, sugar level and temperature are the only factors is just silly. PH matters. Trace elements can be a limiting factor and the system is constantly in flux. If you pull a beaker of your brew and run it to your lab and then spend two hours analyzing it then the brew you come back to a couple hours later has changed dramatically. Let's look at a simple example - the same experts who say that they are doing a detailed analysis say that certain organisms are doubling in number every 20 minutes. So if their sample has 16 representatives of 2 different organisms when they pull the sample then 2 hours later one of them may have doubled in number 6 times. 32 64 128 256 512 1024... so one or both of those 'critters' may be 64 times more concentrated than the analysis says or it may be wiped out because there is a bloom and crash cycle going on all the time. When one critter is multiplying exponentially it is not forever - eventually it hits a wall - all the food is gone, the O2 is used up or some trace mineral it needs is used up or the metabolism/excretion of the food has caused a massive shift in PH that makes another critter more suited to the environment and it is taking off as the first critter population crashes... and then some other critter starts feasting and doubling off the corpses of all the bacteria that just died off. How does that work in aquaculture? Well, in a closed system you use bacteria to purify the water for the fish and inverts - a 100 gallon tank is tiny and chemistry changes very quickly compared to say an ocean, right? Fish peeing and pooping causes ammonia to spike and ammonia burns a fish's gills when PH is above 7 and everything crashes and your fishies die. They call that new tank syndrome. It takes a few weeks for even an expert to get the bacteria right because there is one type of bacteria that breaks poop down into ammonia, another that converts the ammonia to nitrite (also poisonous) and another that breaks the nitirite into Nitrate which feeds plants in the tank or is removed by water changes or by slow filtering the water through an anaerobic filter populated by the anaerobes that can break down the nitrate and leave you with clean water... I know this is wayyyyyyyy more info than anyone probably wants but let me finally get to my point: The beauty of a natural system is that it will eventually balance out. If your tea goes anaerobic because some critter is using all the oxygen up and anaerobes start multiplying then what happens when the aerobic organisms crash? Well, oxygen levels start going back up and the anaerobes that cannot tolerate O2 levels above a certain level begin to crash and they are eaten by some other aerobic critter. If you brew a tea that gets way too acidic or ferments into alcohol I can see it having a negative impact on plants that don't like that but once out of the brewer and into the soil any imbalance is going to self-correct. I'm just starting to play with aerated teas and the results have been quite interesting and very positive. When I brew it up I am running two batches at once in separate containers. I start with a mix of well aged cow manure compost and a few pounds of nice, fungus rich broken down mulch and soil from under the bushes where there are lots of worms and such. I mix that up with dechlorinated water and stir it up several times then strain it with a mesh just fine enough to prevent my sprayer from clogging into two 5 gallon buckets as a starter then fill it the rest of the way with water. One gets a few ounces of horticultural molasses, the other gets whatever i find interesting that day - banana peels, some leftover oatmeal, the dregs of my wheatgrass, berry, protein, flax, chia smoothie I could not choke down despite the health benefits.... non sugary stuff.... I'll brew for a day, use up half the liquid in each one in the sprayer before or during a rain and then fill the buckets back up to replace the water and let them run for another day or two without adding anything and do it again and sometimes a third time. Replacing the water will dilute anything that has gotten too concentrated and I am sure that the biology of the 24, 48 and 72 hour brews in each bucket are quite different. I aerate them well but I don't bother measuring because I just don't buy into the idea that what's ideal for one area of the property or type of plant is ideal for all and I know for certain that 'ideal' a fallacy within any biological system that is undergoing rapid bloom/bust cycles. Once I spray it, the tea microbes are in a completely different environment and will undergo lots of changes very rapidly but the soil is going to develop a proper balance and figure the rest out on it's own. Still reading? OK, so the point is that one way or another I managed to get all those nice trace minerals to my plants in a form they can use and if I am a little early or a little late then so what? I think if you ask ANY of the experts they would tell you that the biology of their tea when analyzed is different than it is if you spray it a few hours later. I also think they would tell you that it is hubris to even imagine that we can dial it in exactly but that is the beauty of using compost and the aerated teas - you don't need to get it right and you can't get it perfect but if you are somewhere in the right general zip code then the incredibly complex and only partially understood processes that have evolved over billions of years will take over and fix your mistakes. ...have been in current property for a year. When we moved in the property had been under the management of a service for several years, Weed sprays, insect sprays, fertilizer sprays... compacted, little evidence of worms. Now? Worms in abundance, neighbors hate my guts because they can't figure out how I get the Bermuda so dark green and lush and the beds and baskets are overflowing. Due to back surgery last year I can't spread truckloads of compost or turn a pile easily but I can make an aerated tea and I generate about a gallon of pee every day and you could putt on the lawn because I am one of those weenies who likes the bermuda at 3/8" and gets the dremel out to sharpen the blade every time I cut so that the clippings are tiny and break down into the tea-pee'd soil instantly :-) Don't overthink it to the point of stressing out. It makes sense that you don't want to brew a tea full of salmonella or e coli by brewing up a batch of poop in the sun without aeration but otherwise it's kinda hard to go too far wrong with compost and/or teas with or without molasses because if you jack it up? Hakuna Matata baby - that whole circle of life kicks in and fixes your mistakes. Whether in tea or just mixed with water and sprayed on the turf, Molasses seems to have a huge impact on a lawn within a couple weeks. When plants are short on nitrogen they can excrete some sugar into the soil around their roots - what's that do? well the bacteria metabolize the sugar and they poop and die and release nitrogen. If you get 'too many' sugar bacteria into the soil and they fix too much nitrogen on Monday they will run out of food and die off on tuesday and become fertilizer for plants and food for other microbes. Nature figures stuff out so long as you hand it stuff that it made in the first place.

MulchMama, the full paper is not yet available to me through the university. The wording in a reviewed accepted scientific paper is subject to scrutiny by the reviewers and the editor. This wording is also consistent with what I have read in the scientific literature. The commercial fungicide that they compared with is Topaz (a penconazole based "azole" family fungicide). For plants I assume that the greatest concern is whether the Topaz is damaging the mycorrhizal fungi relationship with the plant roots. "Abstract In order to quantify the importance of ectomycorrhizal fungi on nutrient uptake from the coarse-soil fraction of a haplic Cambisol (alumic), a microcosm study that allowed for nutrient budgets was designed. Ectomycorrhizal- and fungicide-treated spruce seedlings were grown on isolated and cleaned gneiss fragments (6.3 mm > à> 2 mm) from 90 cm soil depth. The substrate was the only source of Ca, K and Mg. Ectomycorrhizal seedlings showed no signs of nutrient deficiencies and biomass increased significantly compared to initial seedling biomass. Ectomycorrhizal seedlings seemed well adapted to survive on the coarse-soil substrate and acquired Ca, K and Mg from the coarse-soil substrate. Gneiss fragments of the ectomycorrhizal treatment were covered by fine roots and ectomycorrhizal hyphae, as observed microscopically. Fungicide-treated seedlingsâ root development was retarded, and shoot biomass only increased from stored nutrient reserves of the seedlings. The suppression of EcM colonization by the fungicide Topasî apparently caused a root growth inhibiting effect. Furthermore, the extinction of mycorrhiza initiated an increased nitrification and acidification and a consequent nutrient cation release triggered by nitrate in the drainage." A Google Scholar search with the keywords: penconazole and mycorrhizal fungi Here is a link that might be useful: link for above

Hi Jim: Alfalfa pellets is OK to use IN CONJUNCTION with gritty lime. When used alone, alfalfa pellets is acidic, and WORSENS black spots. We get so much acidic rain this year, that I see zinc deficiency in the holes which I brought the pH too low with cracked corn (pH 4). Re-quote from earlier link: "Zinc deficiency: Soils that are acidic often have deficient zinc. Michigan State University mentions that zinc deficiencies also are more common in soils that are naturally rich in phosphorus ... Young leaves may be yellowed or reduced in normal size (called "little leaf"), narrower than normal leaves with wavy edges or abnormally expanding and puckered. Another cue is what is called "rosetting"--space between new leaves is very small, and tiny leaves and shoots bunch up into a clustered tuft." Yves seedling's previous hole was acidic ... I put too much pine bark (pH 4). It was a BS-fest with smaller leaves. When I moved it to its new location, the leaves are bigger, shinier, and healthy ....Thanks to my alkaline clay fixed with alfalfa hay (less acidic than alfalfa pellets). CONCLUSION: Alfalfa hay is cheaper, $8 per bale, and great to mix in soil months in advance, to aerate soil and improve drainage. Alfalfa pellets is more expensive, $17 per 40 lb. bag, more acidic, but convenient to use on top, if neutralized by lime. Kordes Barcelona (smaller red bloom) has a fantastic fragrance, and blooms lots with alfalfa pellets. That one is susceptible to mildew, which I fixed easily with gritty lime. It's the only one that doesn't break out in BS with alfalfa pellets. See bouquet below: My roses this year are NOT as healthy as previous years with horse manure & alfalfa. I will shop more with cash, just to collect pennies (the ones after 1982 are made of zinc, and the ones before 1982 are made of copper ... both are anti-fungal agents).

Paul: I'm glad you took a look at the pictures and gave some leads on what else these worms can be. I'm not entirely convinced that they are bloodworms, but I don't doubt that it's possible they are not E. fetida. If it helps, under a 60x hand lens, they are transparent except for a single red blood vessel running down the body line, and there are no visible protrusions, bristles, feet, jaws, or anything that looked different than a very small EF worm. The fish farm where I got my tillapia sells dry fish food, from powders on up to kibble, but they don't sell live food. I don't suspect that they feed their fish bloodworms with the wholesale dry stuff on hand. My system has had significant contact with soil and vermicompost though. Could these be some form of terrestrial worms that are not the EF's I deliberately put in there? If you look at the 'coosh balls' picture, you can see 2 ( I think ) small red creatures that look like tiny centipedes with poorly developed legs. Although those things worry me, I don't think they are the same creatures. The can that I took that first picture in went under aeration shortly after the picture was taken. I'll check in on it tomorrow to see what's going on. cb2: What happens if you put a drop of soap in the AVCT? Up until now, I was under the impression that it was a commonly accepted wetting agent in all sorts of garden and farm applications. I will never use it near my fish, but what about garden plants?