hazelnut said:
... provide to right conditions, (light, drainage, soil, etc), plant the plants, and then mix up a batch of compost tea, and let the party begin. Plants will attract the right microbiotics for their given situation, and the right microbes from the zillions in the compost tea will obllige.
I totally agree with that formula for a raised bed or other garden plot. You don't even need the extra step of making compost into tea. You can just top dress and water, or scratch in in a little, or turn it under, and still get half or more of the benefit that tea would given.
I've read that spraying compost tea adds protective micro-flora to leaves and stems, deterring or mitigating leaf and stem diseases.
I would also suggest collecting scoops of soil from neighbors with good soil and no obvious disease problems. Then top-dress beds with that neighborhood-inoculum , or add it to your compost pile before making tea.
You might import a few disease spores, but you would have gotten those anyway from wind-blown dust. And the aerobic process of composting and making tea would tend to knock down anaerobic disease microbes, anyway. (Not all harmful microbes are low-oxygen bugs, and not all aerobes are beneficial, but there seems to be a tendency that way).
