Yeah this guy...
What bothers me is he gives me the impression he hasn't really understood soil life, so some of his reasoning is kinda off and hence confusing
I read a few pieces by him and have decided to ignore him
You don't need a lab, just a microscope with 400x magnification that can shadow, to verify and compare microbial herds in compost and compost tea. Still an investment not everyone will be willing to make.
I was and did, and can confirm that in
Activated Compost Tea the microbes are indeed more numerous and
active - dormant ones are woken up, and especially bacteria and protozoans reproduce very quickly and become real busybodies, producing glues and building microaggregate structures.
Dam I wanted to post some pix - of the compost under the microscope as compared to the ACT made from it - but can't find them at the mo. But I'm in the process of making some compost tea from reasonable quality compost I just bought (to see whether what I saw as a bunch of cysts are indeed dormant microbes, not something else - still learning here
) so I can post comparative pix in the next few days.
As for nutrients, pest resistance etc. attributed to ACT.
This all comes from the fact that larger amounts of
beneficial (=aerobic) microbes will increase nutrient cycling, making those nutrients the plant is ordering via exudates available to it in a form it can use well. So the myth guy can measure chemistry for as long as he wants. Bedrock contains all the nutrients we would ever want (chemically), but try biting off a chunk of that for breakfast haha
It's all about the form the stuff is available in, and the amounts, which are dialled in by the plant more effectively when all the buddies it needs are actually around. It's more about
diversity and balance and a functioning system of cooperation than absolute numbers.
Yeah, there are even bacteria in molten lava, apparently. Doesn't mean we can grow healthy plants in it. We have been destroying the microbial herd with our agricultural practices, and in the past 100 years with chemicals, to the point that there are areas where the only way to recover the soil ecosystem is to import microbes from very far away, as nature would take ages to rebuild a good balance.
I started an experiment this year in my garden, which I couldn't go through with as I ran out of wormcast and haven't been able to make some nice thermal compost yet, but still.
Everyone's roses have been getting increasingly severe cases of black spot and rust in our gardens. This spring, I gave my roses an ACT foliar, and while all the other roses around had already dropped their leaves a month later, mine just started getting their first spots and held through another few weeks before they went as derelict as the others. That's powerful. And my wormcasts & hence ACT wasn't even 1st class, just "ok" in terms of diversity and fungal presence.
I imagine had I been able to continue foliaring, AND give the soil biology a bigger boost, maybe my roses would have resisted the diseases altogether!
Ugh so now I've gone off on that rant you didn't intend haha sorry
In a nutshell, ACT is useful for foliars (because of the increased amounts of glues the activated micros make in it, allowing them to stick to the leaves better), and when you want to activate your soil biology quickly.
Otherwise, use compost directly in the soil, as it maintains its full complexity (whilst tea mostly doesn't contain much fungal mass or nematodes, just to name 2 I know of).
As for the guano, that's a different story, as far as I understand it.
Not about micros at all, just lots of nutes. I'd guess they recommend diluting in water so the soil gets drenched with it right away? Whilst when you just sprinkle it on dry it will gradually seep into the soil. So mechanical distribution. has nothing to do with ACT brewing at all.
