A candid interview with Jerry Erickson —
SoilSoup founder and developer of SoilSoup technology and its products.

What makes SoilSoup so unique?

The SoilSoup Bio-Blender and SoilSoup nutrients are a fast and easy way to gain all of the benefits the soil gets from compost. It is affordable to the person who has a one or two acre farm or even a back yard garden. I have spent a considerable amount of time working with organic farmers as well as with a biologist developing effective nutrient solutions that work and do not require large amounts of compost or long periods of time to brew a powerful compost tea. We have had wonderful results with many of the plant diseases seen each year in the Northwest.

What makes your compost teas so effective?

By adding our special nutrients to compost tea you are able to produce a greater quantity of microbes than were originally in the dry compost. The value of compost is the quantity of aerobic microbes present in the compost.

The Bio-Blender simply takes this process and moves it into a liquid process, rather than a dry process. The aeration created by the Bio-Blender along with the nutriants multiples the number of microbes in the solution. You start out with a few thousand per teaspoonful and you end up with hundreds of millions per teaspoonful.

The true value of compost whether it’s liquid or dry is the microbes that are put in the soil. They are the bottom of the food chain. When you feed the soil microbes, you're feeding the other critters in the soil as well. It's a complex and fascinating process.

How important is it that SoilSoup is environmentally sound?

Very important that's one of SoilSoups greatest assets. We feel we have an obligation to take care of our planet. There's certainly been enough damage done and the earth needs to be repaired. I think what we're looking at is a way of gardening organically that doesn't cost any more than gardening inorganically and at the same time helps heal the planet.

By inorganic, you're referring to fertilizers?

Yes, I'm referring to chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Healthy soil produces healthy plants and healthy plants produce healthy people. Right now, organic foods cost far more than non-organic foods. I'd like to see that change to the point where all foods are produced organically and at an affordable price.

How did you test it?

I started out with one prototype and worked with two organic growers on Bainbridge Island. One unit was just not enough for both farms, so I built the second prototype and started making all the compost teas for one of the growers who has a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm. Sometimes I would make a couple batches a week. He'd bring his rotor-tiller drawn sprayer down and fill up the tank with our SoilSoup Compost Tea. It took him only a half an hour to cover his entire two acres. He was able to spray the whole farm and even had some left over which he put into his drip irrigation system.

Before that, making compost was a very frenetic activity. He was spending a couple days a week making compost by going to get horse manure and various other materialbs. It seemed he was always making compost. That's the common denominator among organic growers. They have this huge need for compost. According to the literature and input I have received from several farmers that grow crops, they use about 10 to 25 tons of compost per acre fertilize properly. adequately.

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