The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e.96: A Critique of Compost Tea

Episode Date: March 16, 2018

Linda Chalker-Scott is an extension specialist at WSU with a penchant for horticultural myth-busting.  One of her targets has been the use of compost tea as a disease-preventer/pest-abater/all-around garden panacea. Seeing as your podcast host is about to start a compost tea regimen on his own farm, this seemed like a good topic to ask her about.

So this is the problem, is that when you have so many variables in the treatment, in this case, compost tea, and you've got, who knows how many different species and how many of each of those species and whatever else is in that tea. I mean, it's an entire ecosystem. And you're applying that and then expecting that every time you do that, it's going to have the same effect. I mean, you know, biology isn't a recipe. This is the Ruminant Podcast. I'm Jordan Mara. The Ruminant...

You know what, folks? This is normally the part of the podcast where I describe what the podcast is about. It's for farmers and gardeners and people who love food security and blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada. But Ted from Alberta is visiting me right now, and he asked if he could sit in on my editing of this week's episode. See how the sausage was made, I guess. But I've got to say I'm regretting the decision to let him in here. I'm a little unnerved right now.

Well, you probably get it. A lot of breathing. breathing and honestly he hasn't bling i'm actually sitting right across from ted i'm i'm literally looking right at him and ted you haven't even blinked this whole time he's just got that lazy eye anyway uh this is the room in Podcast. I've got a great guest today. Linda Chalker-Scott is an extension specialist down at WSU and we're going to talk compost tea. Stay tuned. Hey folks, it's Jordan. So I've got an interesting interview lined up with this woman. Hi, my name is Linda Chalker-Scott, and I am the Extension Specialist for Urban Horticulture at Washington State University.

my job is that I translate the theoretical science into immediate practice for home gardeners, arborists, professionals, whoever doesn't happen to be a research scientist. And what I really spend a lot of my time doing is looking at the science or sometimes lack of science behind a lot of different garden practices and products and then trying to figure out if they are worth your money or if there's something else out there that's better. So I came across Linda when I was googling around and I happened upon Linda's one of Linda's pages through Washington State University. through Washington State University. Linda maintains this horticultural myths blog with all kinds of articles kind of taking aim at a bunch of myths that exist in the gardening and horticulture world that she wanted to address. I think she's done this over a period of years and I did a deep dive there there were

some fascinating articles in there and I learned a lot and so I got a period of years and I did a deep dive there there were some fascinating articles in there and I learned a lot and so I got a hold of Linda and I asked her if we could chat on the phone and I suggested we talk about compost teas because that's something that I've been considering getting more into on my farm and she said yes so what follows is my conversation with Linda. The last thing that I want to say is that aside from her horticultural myths page, which you can just find by Googling Linda Chalker Scott horticultural myths, is Linda is part of a Facebook group called the Garden Professors blog. That is pretty cool as well.

And that's another place where she and some of her colleagues try to pass on really useful information and also address certain myths that exist in the gardening world. Now, I need to apologize in advance. There are about three to five minutes at the end of our conversation where I just started experiencing some bad feedback and didn't really realize it until I started editing our conversation. So I did my best to limit the amount of feedback that you have to listen to, but there is a little bit at the end. So once again, everyone, I'm sorry. Okay, so that conversation is coming up. I just have to attend to a little bit of housekeeping before we get to that. So last week, I announced that I had begun taking donations to

support the podcast. And I just want to take some time to acknowledge a few people who made donations last week. Daniel B, Bill P, Sasha F, and Chris B b thanks a lot for your donation and for your generosity i really appreciate it and to the rest of you uh if you're enjoying the show please consider making a donation you can visit the ruminant.ca gift registry if you want to consider doing so thanks a lot and here's my conversation with linda linda jocker scott thanks a lot for joining me on the ruminant Podcast. Oh, well, thanks so much for having me here, Jordan. Linda, you're concerned about many of the myths circulating in the gardening or horticultural world. On your horticultural myths website, you attempt to debunk those myths. And today,

I thought we could give my listeners an example of what you do by talking about compost tea. You bet. Okay, well well i want you to know linda that i'm a commercial market gardener uh up in british columbia and i'm actually in the process of developing i i've been interested in developing a compost tea amendment plan for my farm this year for the first time after reading a ton about it online and and i've been interested about it for a few years uh So I promise not to have hurt feelings in terms of what you have to say today. So I thought I'd better start by asking you to

talk about why you think my resources might be better spent than on a compost tea amendment plan. So maybe we could start this way. Linda, what is compost tea and what are its purported benefits? Okay, so first of all, what I want to do is distinguish between the two different kinds of compost tea. So the material that's studied the earliest in terms of the most research done on it is what research has called non-aerated compost tea, which I will abbreviate as NCT, so I don't have to get that whole word out there. And this is stuff that is just made passively. You take a compost pile, you run water through it, and what leaches out is compost leachate or non-aerated compost tea. And people started studying this, I think, back about the 1980s in terms of seeing

what the benefits or what the activities might be of these teas. And one of the first things that was noticed that certain types of compost tea, especially those that were made out of spent mushroom compost, so the stuff that's left over after growing mushrooms, and water, sometimes would have antagonistic effects against pathogens. and water sometimes would have antagonistic effects against pathogens. So there was some interest, although not a lot of really good studies, on whether or not this would be a way of fighting foliar disease.

So in other words, being able to take this and spray it onto leaves or fruit and see if you could keep the pathogens off. And so it's one of these things that sometimes it would work and sometimes it didn't. It's more likely to work under, you know, controlled conditions in a nursery or maybe in a lab, but not so much outdoors. So that kind of research went on for, I'd say, about 20 years. And then aerated compost tea came along. And so aerated compost tea is, again, using compost as a feedstock, running water through it, but this time under aerated conditions. And so there has to be an aerator in the system. So the system's agitated and there's constantly oxygen being put into it.

So those are the two big differences. Well, the big difference, I guess. One's aerated, one's not. aerated, one's not. And what's important to understand is that the number of or the types of microbes that you're going to have in those systems will be completely different because the ones in the aerated system will be ones that grow well in the presence of oxygen and the ones out of the non-aerated compost teas would be ones less likely to grow well in oxygen conditions. So interestingly enough, you can take aerated compost tea and stop aerating it, and then the populations all shift, and you get a non-aerated

tea, and back and forth like that. So it's something that I think is important to keep in mind is that these teas are dynamic populations of many types of microbes. And this is one of the reasons it's so hard to research it is because you can't easily replicate these conditions. Right. Okay. So I just want to sum up. So essentially, in terms of the purported benefits, you're looking at potential disease and pathogen suppression, which I think I'd like to expand on in a moment, as well as potential nutrient application in terms of gathering some of the, I guess, soluble nutrients in the compost,

suspending them in the tea and then spraying them on to the plants. So really quickly, I have that roughly correct, right? Yeah, but more spraying onto the soil. And that's what I've seen after the whole thing came out with the pesticide application. And we'll talk about the wisdom of that as we go along. And the other would be to take this as a way of getting the nutrients from compost directly onto the soil along with the microbes. And you you see claims that you know this will bring you know lifeless soil back to life so yeah one is one is disease control and the other one is kind of soil nutrition okay and then so like the most basic form is the nct the non-aerated compost because

you're you're you're really just taking the compost and and making a tea you know throwing it in a bucket or whatever throw some water in there and then use the, use the tea to spray, uh, versus the aerated, which is more of a process. But, um, why did aerated take on steam? That, that part, do you, do you, can you clarify that? Like why, why was, you've, you've described that it's going to result in different kinds of microbes, but, um, but you know, in my observation, it really has taken on prominence in terms of its popularity. So what was the specific purported benefit of those different microbes? There aren't any. And that's the thing that's kind of interesting is that in the studies

where they've actually compared the efficacy, and this is obviously in disease control, between non-aerated and aerated compost teas, there wasn't any consistent difference. And where there were differences, it was usually the non-aerated one that worked better. So this is the interesting thing, is when you look at the actual science behind these two,

is that in terms of possible disease management, that the microbes that might be most likely to work would be those that you get in a non-aerated compost tea. Why is that? Because what's funny about that is most of the quote-unquote literature, you point out that a lot of the literature that I'm referring to comes from sites that have stand to sell you something, But much of that kind of literature is really hammering the benefits of the aerated. So why is that the form of the tea that's really being kind of advocated for?

Well, I will give you my cynical response, which is because you can make money on it. And you can't make money off of non-aerated compost tea because it requires nothing special. As you say, it's a bucket of compost and water. And anybody can do that. People have been doing that for centuries in terms of, you know, making a weak fertilizer. The aerated, there are no published scientific benefits.

You know, when I say published, I'm talking about scientific literature published, showing any benefit to ACT's aerated teas, over non-aerated. It's, you know, usually when there's comparisons made, it's always made to water or to nothing, which is not even really a valid comparison because, you know, tea is mostly water. And if you're adding water to one set of plants, you've got to add them to the other. So when you look at this in a completely objective, you know, experimental way, you just can't see benefits. And frankly, I'm not even sure what you could logically say they might be.

I mean, they're different groups of organisms. And without being able to identify specific organisms that would have a particular effect, and then again knowing if those organisms are even in your tea, because of course that's going to be different depending on the compost you use. I mean, it really is just kind of a shot in the dark every single time. You've kind of alluded to two things I want to touch on. One is that you seem, and I'm also just referring to the articles you've written on compost tea that are on your Horticultural Myths website.

I think what you wrote there was that there is a little bit of science supporting the use of non-aerated compost tea and its benefits. Very, very little, if any, science supporting the use of the aerated compost tea. So can you talk briefly? Yeah, sorry, I was going to ask you if you could talk briefly about those benefits that have been documented of the non-aerated stuff. Well, as I said, there just, there aren't that many, you know, consistent, reliable benefits. As I said, occasionally it'll work and then it won't. And I think this is because every time you make the tea,

it's different because you're working with dynamic populations of multiple organisms. And it's really difficult to get the very same thing every time. In fact, I think it's probably impossible to get the very same thing every time. In fact, I think it's probably impossible to get the very same thing every time. So from what I've been able to tease out from the literature, and it's not quite clear yet, but speculation is with the non-aerated compost teas is that it might be a species of bacillus that's actually having antagonistic effects, but whichever one it is hasn't been identified. But you can kind of see where this is going.

So, you know, you're familiar with BT as a natural insecticide. And that was, you know, from the same thing, identifying a particular species, in this case thuringiensis, and seeing that it had effects on insect larvae guts. So they were able to find a particular bacterium that would do that. So given enough time and study, you could probably find the antagonistic species that if you sprayed them on a leaf that they would have an effect on pathogens, but we're not there yet. Right now, it seems just by looking at the bulk of literature out there that if you're going to find a microbe like that,

it will probably be from the non-aerated type because it doesn't seem to be any really good information on microbes in the aerated type of compost tea. Okay. So this next part might be kind of fun for you then, Linda. Like I'm going to encourage you to, I'm going to encourage you to nurture that, that cynical side a little bit. And I'm going to come at you from the point of view of the gung-ho lay person grower, right? Based on what I've been reading online from admittedly non-scientific

sources, right? So, so what I've understood is that I want to stay away from the non-aerated compost, because if we, if we take compost on its own not the tea but the compost typically i think i think we we can say well you're going to tell me if i'm wrong but we can say that it's been scientifically shown that we we want to create aerobic conditions when we make compost because that results in a lot more of the right kind of microbes that we want to

apply to the soil and an overall healthier compost that actually, I can think of one thing I know I've read that in aerobic conditions, you're going to, it's going to result in less ammonia production, for example, that's going to leach off a lot of your nitrogen, that sort of thing. So I've been led to understand that for that reason, if we make the non-aerated compost tea, we're going to encourage the same kind of bad microorganisms that we're trying to avoid when we make compost itself. So do you want to pick that apart, if you like? No, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, we know that anaerobic compost is not good on your soils because it isn't well oxygenated.

You can have pathogens growing in there. And if you have compost that's anaerobic, that also means that water and gas don't pass through easily, which means that you're going to have effects on your soil. So we know that that's not a good thing to have. So, yeah, it's a really interesting dichotomy that the research that's been done on non-aerated compost tea has actually had the most interesting results in terms of finding antagonistic bacteria. And who knows, they may be bacteria that if they were in the compost might be pathogens. I don't know, but when they're sprayed on leaves, they have a different effect. It's just because we don't know what we're looking for, and everything right now is just correlation,

you know, it's just impossible to say. But it is a very interesting, as I said, dichotomy between what we know about having good versus bad compost and where we're finding the most likely beneficial organisms well okay but so that's interesting though so so look you in the end you want to see science before you you know place any trust in any any of these practices uh so that's that's that's that's a given but if we can enter the realm of conjecture do you think it is a fair link to make for the people that are promoting the aerated compost, whether they want to sell me a compost brewer or not? Is it not a fair assumption or link to make between the organisms in a healthy aerated,

aerobic compost and the organisms that you're going to reproduce by making the aerated compost tea? Not really, because if you're looking for a specific activity, and we'll, for argument's sake, just say we're looking at disease control. I mean, you can't just do it without knowing what you're looking at, because you've got this mixture of organisms in there that are competing with each other, maybe benefiting each other, maybe destroying each other, maybe destroying each other. You don't know. And all you do is you have a correlation.

You have a correlation of having this liquid and then having an effect. And not knowing what is exactly the causative agent, you can't say. And that's why you've just got to have these really what a lot of people think are internally long boring experiments that look at individual organisms and exhaustively test but that's the only way you can really come up with saying that this particular organism will have this effect and to just say that this liquid that we don't even know what's in it is going to have the effect and that liquid's going to be different every time but still going to have an effect just it just doesn't really it doesn't fly right and and so i mean one thing that is do you know linda

do you know who elaine ingham is oh sure okay so she's a major promoter of compost tea application. And so one way she attempts to, I guess, she's advocating to get at the problem that you've identified, that it's very, very hard. Even if we could isolate the organisms that we're after, it would be very hard to reproduce them with regularity and consistency. She's saying, oh, well, the solution to that is, um, buy a microscope and learn how to analyze the, the source compost that you're going to use. Um, learn how to build that really, really good source compost. That's chock full of the organisms that she says she has been able to identify, um, buy that microscope. And I mean, getting, getting at your cynicism again also take my course that's hundreds of dollars to teach you how to analyze your uh your samples of compost and if you do that you can you can regularly and consistently create this compost that is going to give you a reliable aerated compost tea product all the time. And she's right.

You can get a microscope and you can learn to identify species, at least, well, maybe not species, but genera of bacteria, and you can learn what types of materials certain genera will go best in, but that proves nothing. That proves that you can identify microbes and that you might be able to get good, consistent growth of some of them in compost. And then past that, there's nothing because there's no evidence that's going to do anything at all.

So can we talk really briefly then about where the anecdotal evidence takes on steam? I mean, because you've dealt with so many myths, must get people constantly people like me constantly coming at you well and saying well in my garden when i started using that compost tea it changed everything um right what is you know so how do you how what is your response to that man it must be a barrage for you with all these different topics yes it is. It has been for almost 20 years now on this particular topic. Well, what I try to get people to understand is that, I mean, anecdotal information is important.

And the more anecdotal information you have, you know, one person's story, and the more that you see a pattern with increasing numbers of people's stories, the more likely that somebody is going to research it. And that's what's happened with a lot of productive practices, not just in gardening, but medical practices. I mean, this is what happens. People get curious because they hear anecdotal stories about things that work, and they want to check it out to see if it does work.

So when you put together an experiment, you know, you've got to have controlled conditions. So, for instance, when you start these types of experiments, you don't start with the landscape. You start at the lab level. And if you can get a difference at the lab level, then you try it at the greenhouse level. And if you can get a difference at the greenhouse level, then you take it outside. So you're increasing your variability, but you know what you're looking for. And the problem is that even with either aerated or non-aerated is there's so much variability that they generally can't even get a response at the lab level. So in other words, everything being controlled with having leaf disks that are the same size

and everything's in the same temperature and the only difference is that some are treated with water and some are treated with water and some are treated with compost tea and sometimes you'll get a difference and sometimes you don't and sometimes it's worse than water. So this is the problem is that when you have so many variables in the treatment, in this case compost tea, and you've got who knows how many different species

and how many of each of those species and whatever else is in that tea. I mean, it's an entire ecosystem, and you're applying that and then expecting that every time you do that, it's going to have the same effect. I mean, biology isn't a recipe. You can have a recipe and you can make cakes and cookies and have them be pretty much the same every time, but the only living thing in there really is the yeast if you happen to be using it. But we're talking about really an entire microbial ecosystem. And it can't be the same every time.

It's functionally impossible to guarantee that. So you can't even get past stage one with many of these trials just because you can't get the compost to be identical every time. But even if you could, let's say you could, let's say you were lucky and you were able to prove it at the lab level, then you take it out to a different level. And then not only do you have to have replicates, so you've got several controls and several of the treatments, and then you have to repeat that experiment, and then other people have to be able to repeat it. And this is why you will find nothing in the literature that is consistently repeated by other people. You'll have certain labs that claim they can get certain things done, but nobody can repeat their efforts.

So until you can get to that point where it's consistent and credible. As a scientist, you can't recommend it. And therefore you think that, well, I mean, I'm putting words in your mouth for fun mostly, but therefore you think my time and money might be better spent than creating a composting amendment plan for my market garden. a compost tea amendment plan for my market garden? Well, the thing is, and there's been a bunch of really good studies by a colleague of mine who's at University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point. And he's looked at aerated compost teas, and he's looked at the compost as well that he has made those teas from. And he's done a really in-depth analysis of the chemistry as well as the biology.

And the difference between a compost tea and compost is orders of magnitude, more nutrients, more microbes. I mean, the life is there in the compost. So the logical question for me is, why would you strip things away from the organic matter, which is the food stock for all these things, and then expect this liquid, which is at best a weak fertilizer and a bunch of microbes that don't have their food source? You know, it just doesn't make any sense. I mean, compost is great stuff.

You know, there's good science behind compost and all the things that it does. But, you know, to strip away the food source from the microbes and then spray the microbes on the soil, it's not going to do anything for you. They don't have anything to eat. But isn't, I mean, okay, so I should say at this point, it's a handy time to say, most of your articles on these different myths end with your bottom line,

kind of your bullet points in a bottom line conclusion. And one of your bottom line bullet points in this article is that you would advocate using compost mulch. Like put compost in your garden. That's a great idea. But isn't, I mean, isn't the answer to your kind of rhetorical question there? Just that, I mean, the whole idea of using compost tea is that you can take a small amount of hopefully really good compost and make a massive amount through reproduction in an aerated compost brewer. You can reproduce a lot of those purportedly beneficial organisms and then spray them on your soil for someone who's limited in the compost itself or limited in the immense amount of time it takes to spread compost. But what are those microbes going to eat?

What are they going to eat? I mean, sure. Sure, you could. Yeah, once you spray them on the soil. Right. They don't have, you mean they don't have the carbon material and other materials to snack on. Right.

Sure, yeah. You can absolutely build up concentrations and make it more potent. You know, and a lot of the stuff that's made is concentrated compost tea, and of course it's diluted before it's used. But all you've got is a bunch of hungry organisms. And once they're out in the soil, there's nothing. There's no molasses or whatever the additives have been, and there's certainly no compost.

So what do they eat? I'm going to do a one-off here, Linda, and I'm going to ask you, just because it's a purported benefit that's so interesting to me. So in terms of using compost tea as a foliar spray, I've heard Elaine Ingham herself say, okay, if you have a good compost tea and you spray it on your plants, it's going to cover, coat the plants in these beneficial pathogens, which in a couple different ways will prevent disease and other pathogens. One of those ways being that the good pathogens are just taking up space on the surface of the plant and prevent giving the bad pathogens any space to take hold.

This is a one-off, but I was wondering if you could comment specifically on that purported benefit. Well, sure. I mean, it makes a lot of sense. And I know that you meant to say microbes, not pathogens. So, yes, if you spray a surface with beneficial microbes, there is no space for pathogens to hit. And we're learning a lot about, you know, what we kind of generically call biofilms, especially on roots. It's the very same thing that, you know, if the roots are colonized by beneficials, there's no room for the pathogens,

and some of the beneficials even can destroy pathogens. The whole thing, especially with root biofilms, is fascinating science. So, I mean, sure, there's a theoretical logic to it that makes sense. But in order to demonstrate that it actually works, you've got to have research that shows that, and you have to have research that shows that consistently. And I will say that Elaine Ingham has never published anything in peer-reviewed literature on this topic that shows that it makes a difference. It's not to say she hasn't published. I mean, before she got into compost tea, you know, she was a well-regarded soil scientist with lots of research publications. But in terms of demonstrating her contentions about compost tea,

she hasn't published any science that supports it, and other people haven't either. I know you can't know the answer to this, but what would you guess is the reason why Elaine hasn't taken the peer-reviewed science route? why Elaine hasn't taken the peer-reviewed science route? If she so believes in this, and given her background as a legitimate soil scientist, why do you think she hasn't done that? I honestly don't know.

And it would be interesting to actually be able to ask her that. And it may be because she's tried and she runs into the same problems everybody else does, which is sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And you certainly aren't going to convince people if you have, you know, inconclusive evidence. But, you know, if you can't get the evidence, you can't get it. And if you don't have it, you know, you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot to present, you know, from a commercial standpoint, to present evidence that goes against your commercial interests. Right. Okay, so Linda, I want to kind of broaden out the conversation now. Um, we're, we're still going to talk a little bit about compost teas, but more, um, with the goal of talking in general about kind of epistemologies of, of gardening, you know, like different ways of, we've kind of already been touching on it already, but just, you know, different ways of knowing and what we think we know about gardening and that sort of stuff and earlier earlier you you talked about how hard it is for to use science to test the efficacy of compost teas because um because in general with science

you need to take a fairly reductionist approach my words not yours um that that you need you need repeat you need to be able to isolate for example like individual uh uh microbes to be able to test them um and there's just so much immense variability in in compost tea that's very hard to do but i want to ask you if if that kind of the necessity with most science of having to take a reductionist approach is doesn't that become a bit of a limitation of science when we're trying to get to a place of, when we're trying to apply these ideas or when we're, I mean,

because what I can agree with you right away is that ideally we would be able to test this and then therefore have a higher measure of confidence that this stuff is effective. But the reality is you've already described why we can't. So I don't know. It almost feels like that's just a limitation of science and that therefore, in this case, we should be putting more weight on the anecdotal.

Well, I mean, people can do what they want, you know, and it becomes a choice of whether you want to follow something that's science-based or whether you want to put your faith into something, and that's fine. I'm certainly not going to tell people what they should and shouldn't believe. However, and you're right, you're not going to be able to do it with compost tea. It's just not going to happen because it's so variable in terms of the tea itself. And you can't, unless you're lucky enough to isolate the right microbes, you're just not going to figure it out. But a lot of people are concerned about sustainability, low carbon footprint. And I will tell you that spending a whole bunch of resources and electricity on making

something with no demonstrable benefit, I think is a waste of energy resources and isn't sustainable. So, and this is interesting because it's so contradictory to what a lot of people are doing, especially organic growers, and their whole point is, you know, to be a little more gentle with the land. And yet they're spending money buying, you know buying these various additives. Some of them have to be trucked in from other places. They have to buy a brewer. They have to oxygenate, so they're using electricity.

They have to send their sample away to have it analyzed. I mean, it's expensive. And there's no real obvious benefit from it. This is, I think, what astounds me the most, is that with all this expense, that there's no measurable benefit. I mean, people think they see a benefit, but oftentimes it's just because they're adding water, or it just happens to be one year is different than another because of differences in temperature and rainfall and everything else. So without something that's a really obvious benefit, I just find it amazing that people will spend the time and money on doing something where

it might work and it might not. But as I said, if you want to believe it, that's fine. But I suppose, and I suppose, I'm just getting that there's a subtext to what you're saying, which is that you haven't said specifically, which is that why go with something that is so unproven when there are so many things that we have figured out about improving crop health and yields and that sort of stuff? Why not just stick to the stuff that we do know? Oh, exactly. And there are some fantastic organic types of practices that everybody should do.

And if you look at my website, you know that I'm a firm believer in mulching when you use the right type of mulch because mulches are one of the most important things you can do for a soil. And I've spent a lot of time researching those, both experimentally and the literature, and mulches are great.

And there are a lot of things you can do to make the soil healthier, to make your plants healthier, to make your plants healthier, that are easily demonstrable, and sometimes aren't very expensive, and may not take a lot of effort. Okay, so Linda, you've already sort of touched on the next question, but I want to ask it very plainly and have you answer it directly in this case, okay? Okay. So i've already i already touched on and you you you did acknowledge that that um their science can

have limitations because it's of its need um to to to isolate variables and that makes certain uh certain tests hard to do on like compost tea being a great example um What is the role that anecdotal evidence can or should play in gardening decisions? Well, we're going to have to suppose now that people want to do something that they can see evidence for and not just believe in, correct? So are we going to start with that premise or not? Let's start with that premise. Okay. So you want to have something that has been tested and you feel fairly confident you're going to have a certain result if you happen to use that product or practice.

So what I see, and I think I mentioned this before, what anecdotal evidence can do is is point people in a direction to research things so for instance i just started doing um research in our greenhouse on the effect of epsom salts as a fertilizer because there are so many things on the internet that say that you know you don't need to use anything else you can use epsom salts you get all this greening and all this stuff. And you know something, no one has ever tested this in a garden house plant type of situation. There's, you know, there's agricultural production, especially of tree fruits where it's been used, but nothing for gardens and landscapes. So because there's so much noise out there on that, I finally decided,

you know, I'll just go ahead and start doing some experiments that I can publish. So that's, I think, where anecdotal information can be useful in the best sense because it will push somebody to research it and try to find, you know, try to tease out, does it work or does it not? So, okay, Linda, you are very clearly, as I talked to you, you are a very nice person. I might even go as far as to say, based on my, let's see on my monitor here, 42 and a half minutes with you,

a lovely person. But, but, but no, I hope you'll take this question with, yeah, in the way it's intended. I think you'll get that real quick.

Occasionally, so you've got a lot of these myth-busting articles, and you're not the only one putting out literature like this. Occasionally, my subjective interpretation of your articles, I've interpreted at least occasionally an at least mildly disdainful or mocking tone to them in some cases. So with all that hedging I just did,

would you agree that occasionally there's a bit of mockery or disdain embedded in some of the stuff you're writing about? Well, you know, I can't say no because I'm human, you know, we're all human. And when you start talking about things that are completely nonsensical, like plants can hear music, and they

don't like acid rock. I mean, there are some things that are just so bizarre, that it's difficult not it's difficult to be completely objective. And when I when I wrote these, it was for our landscape magazine down here for Washington State Nursery and Landscape Association. So it was just kind of, you know, me dashing off these columns that just were looking at some of these practices and products. And then when, you know, when the internet got to be easier to use, I just kind of threw them up on the website just so they could be there for other people to pull down. So yeah, and it's part of my tone. I mean, I publish regular science articles too, and you won't find that in those because they are completely scientific objective papers that go through peer review.

So they don't have a tone to them at all. And in fact, if a tone seeps in, it's always taken out by the reviewers because they'll say, you know, you've got a tone. But when I'm doing something like these, you know, the kind of white paper thing, where it's more of a conversational tone, then my personality comes through. And I mean, that in and of itself is fine, but I also think it's interesting to talk about. So I'm grateful that you've acknowledged it. As you were acknowledging it, I thought of your article on foliar sprays contained an intro that was actually quite funny.

You essentially gather together all these different marketing claims by these different foliar spray products. And by putting them all together, you see how contradictory they are. And that was funny. But it was also mocking. it was also mocking. And the reason I'm asking is because it's very easy as a lay person, especially a lay person, maybe coming to these articles with some ingrained beliefs that you're challenging to feel. I guess it can make one feel bad about themselves. It can make one almost resentful. And I almost worry, potentially want to close their mind to the ideas. So I just thought I'd ask you how, I mean, if you think it's that important to strive as a person of science

to avoid arrogance, which can be a problem for a lot of scientists, or to avoid mockery, to avoid disdain. Well, I think that, oh, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And I think a lot of it is because when you've got printed words, it's flat. And, you know, you can't see me saying them. You can't hear me saying them like you can now. And I think that having listened to me, you know, you said I'm a perfectly nice person. And people have actually said this to me before.

You know, when I've heard you speak in person, you know, you're so patient and you're, you know, you're, you know, you're funny and all the rest of the stuff because I do a lot of seminars all over the world, actually. But when you've got something on a piece of paper and you've got a certain number of words, as I said, these were originally written for a landscape magazine, you tend to be more terse. You tend to, you know, be more blunt and maybe not couch things as carefully as you might. And that's, you know, and that's, you know, I certainly don't try to do that. I certainly don't try to make people feel bad about themselves. I do try to challenge how they're thinking

and their perceptions of stuff. I love challenging people. But this is the downside of having written material on the web is that people can't hear you say it or see you when you're talking and kind of get the better side of your personality. They read maybe more into it than is actually meant. Hey, folks, this is Jordan cutting in in post production. So around this part in the recording, I picked up some nasty feedback. You've already heard it happening in the background there. So I cut out the last question that I asked Linda.

Essentially, I just wanted to know her thoughts on why some of these ideas that aren't scientifically backed up are so appealing to people. And she starts talking about the emotional appeal of these ideas. And I'll let her pick it up from there. And I'm just doing this to reduce the amount of feedback you have to hear. No, the emotional appeal is huge. And this is what I always tell people to look at. I mean, I do seminars on scientific literacy and analyzing claims. And part of what I tell people to look at is the emotional appeal. So when you have something like compost tea that's called compost tea and not compost leachate, there's a reason for that.

It's called tea for a very specific reason, and that's to appeal to you emotionally because tea is a warm, soothing, comforting thing. Leachate sounds like leeches. Nobody wants to deal with that. So you don't hear it called compost leachate sounds like leeches nobody wants to deal with that so you don't hear it called as you know compost leachate brewing right do you same same with with lasagna mulching or you know it's another one of these practices that's completely without any science whatsoever but it's lasagna and it sounds great and mean, we call it compost and not decomposed plant death. Linda, that's great.

We've kind of covered this topic and I think it's a good place to leave off. But I do want to ask you two more questions. One is to promote the other aspects of your extension and your Washington State University page. And also something I don't ask enough of the extension folks that I talk to, which is, if you had your druthers, how would people better use extension? Oh, wow.

You know, the people, I guess it's people need to discover that it exists. Because people like you and people I work with that are aware of it, they can't get enough. You know, they love it. They love the fact that it's out there, that it's doing work that's accessible to them. But there's so many people that don't know it's there. And then I think even more so, there's people that don't understand that extension is really in the process of going extinct in terms of what they're used to. There used to be many, many people like me all over the country that were doing, you know, information for gardeners and for people in ag as well. And those positions, you know, once people retire, they're not being refilled.

And so extension is just dying a slow and painful death. So I think part of it is being aware that it exists in them. And here's my political push, you know. If you're in a state where you don't have enough extension, you know, you need to talk to the university or your state legislature. I mean, you need to support this type of stuff. It's one of the best uses of public money, in my unbiased, my biased opinion, I think you could have.

All right. Well, Linda, Chakrascott, I've really enjoyed our conversation. You are not disdainful. I should, it should be known. And yeah, I'm just, I'm grateful, especially as a Canadian, for folks like you that are out there to help us be better at gardening and farming. So thank you very much for coming on the show. Oh, you're welcome.

Thanks for having me, Jordan. All right. That's the show, everyone. I hope you enjoyed it. Next week, I'll most likely feature a conversation with one of the minds and talents behind a brand new seed company called Row 7 Seeds, which represents a collaboration between chefs and plant breeders to try and breed plant varieties for more flavor very cool stuff and a

neat conversation and i will talk to you then the ruminant.ca gift registry if you'd like to support the show thanks so much escape all we'll need is each other a hundred dollars and maybe a roll of duct tape and we'll run right outside of the city's reaches we'll live off chestnuts spring water and peaches we'll owe nothing to this world of thieves and live life like it was meant to be world of peace and live life like it was meant to be Because why would we live in a place that don't want us? A place that is trying to bleed us dry. We could be happy with life in the country. With salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands.

on our skin and the dirt on our hands. I've been doing a lot of thinking, some real soul searching, and here's my final resolve. I don't need a big old house or some fancy car to keep my love going strong. So we'll run right out into the wilds and graces We'll keep close quarters with gentle faces And live next door to the birds and the bees And live life like it was meant to be Bye.