[greentiger87]

I don't think the bubbler method is pointless either. But it's nebulous. It's extremely confusing to me that Dr. Ingham would provide detailed instructions, in that booklet and elsewhere, on making tea in 5 gallon buckets for home gardeners - but then clearly suggest that such tea is not disease suppressive. I know how well respected she is, but I can't help but suspect a commercial motive with that kind of contradiction.

I also can't afford a home microscope. But my qualitative observations, reading, and general knowledge strongly suggest that I'm having success culturing specific organisms. That's the primar reason I do so, instead of using "good" compost. With specific organisms, I can read the literature to see if my observations line up - and get an assurance of success even without a microscope.

I apologize if any of my posts come across as adversarial. It's not my intention, it's just the way I talk when science is involved. There's no personal animosity here whatsoever. I applaud your willingness to experiment, I just don't want you to shoot yourself in the foot with the "kitchen sink" method.

Trichoderma struggles to compete in a liquid medium without lots of selection factors to prevent contamination from bacteria, yeasts, etc. In all the literature about production for use as an biological control, solid state fermentation has been the standard. Cornmeal, oat bran, waste mango pulp, waste oilcakes, are all examples of common media. The other minor possibility is production on the surface of a thick liquid, at the air-liquid interface. For example, at the surface of molasses or the surface of tomato sauce. The reason is intuitive - most filamentous fungi need a *lot* of oxygen, and providing that much oxygen in liquid medium is impossible without constantly destroying the mycelium. The added advantage for a home gardener is that Trichoderma (a mold) is really, really obvious when it's growing on a solid medium. You can quite literally mix spores with sterilized, slightly moist media in a plastic bag, stick it under your sink, and come back three days later to a bag of green Trichoderma spores.