Terra Preta

[maricybele]

Thanks for help everyone.

Dan, The issue with those beds was too little clay soil mixed in, the ratio of native soil was too low. I mulched with cocoa shell and coconut husks last year and it didn't help. I remember filling those beds with whatever I had on hand, manure, coffee, compost, topsoil, grass clippings. I took out of each bed approx a wheel barrel of the fluffy stuff and dug up the clay below in the raised beds to mix it a little better.

Thanks silver seeds, I am going to get a fish pump today and there is a thick layer of compost on top, the beds are empty right now. So silver do you use compost as mulch? My local nursery recommends bumper crop ( a super compost) as a mulch. I was planning to use straw this year on top to reflect light instead of absorb (dark mulch) making the temperature of the soil probably too hot. Plus we used it at the community gardens and wow, no weeding with straw, we liked that. I just bought thermometers so I can start investigating soil temps. I am going to make sure to mix my compost more with native soil. And I will keep my eyes open for more open bags of wood charcoal (get a discount) and try to find local free sources.

Chat soon, thanks for all the imput.

[maricybele]

That super stuff had bat and sea gull guano, kelp, chicken, feathers, were some of the stuff I remember in it that was different from others.

Below is a site that shows the comparison photos and demonstrates how adding charcoal positively affects plants and seedlings.
e-terrapretarooftopexp.blogspot.com/

this looks like good way for backyard gardeners to cover the ground with a bbq dome. I would be able to do something like that on small level with an out door fire pit. Any opinions?

www.buyactivatedcharcoal.com/making_charcoal

[maricybele]

Update ~ After hand crushing 5 - 9 pound bags of lump charcoal with my shovel with 2 more to go, I decided to search for a company that specializes in larger bags of charcoal for garden use because I am running out of time and the chunks appear to get larger with every batch. I am getting lazy and the chunks are getting bigger. The orchid charcoal or fish tank charcoal is too expensive for my use. There aren't many companies I could find that sell charcoal for home use. I contacted Humphrey Charcoal for help with grain sizes of their charcoal in 50 lb bags. They were very helpful in my quest and are one of the few companies that have granulated charcoal for garden use and no chemicals is a good thing for my terra preta soil amendments to my organic garden in suburbia. Humphrey website is
charcoalbq.com/viewcategory.php?groupid=7

Just an off note, I remember as a child, I had a green thumb and didn't kill any of my indoor plants, as an adult, I can't keep a plant alive. The difference? In those days, they recommend charcoal for the bottom of pots. I will update on the house plant use as soon as I get more house plants.

[canadamike]

I would put it between 2 tarps and drive the car over many many times...

[mnjrutherford]

That's a pretty good idea Michel. Maybe put a piece of plywood on the top and put it in the middle of the driveway for a few weeks? That would be feasible here at least.

[maricybele]

Has anyone tried the driveway method? Sounds like a good idea for a dry time. It rains a lot here in Oregon.

[mnjrutherford]

I haven't tried it. Ya know though... our next door neighbors had a large pile of woodchips that they set fire to after it had been sitting for about 6 to 9 months. It smouldered in an off/on rainstorm for about 3 or 4 days. Yesterday we went to check it out and nearly the entire pile is charcoal. Little bitty bits and pieces. They've asked us to clear it off and you better believe we will be doing just that!

[grunt]

Maricybele: Actually, the rain would be a benefit, as you wouldn't have charcoal dust to contend with. I will hopefully be running some charcoal through my shredder later this year, and I intend to get it very wet before I start. That way I don't have to worry about which way the wind is blowing while I'm doing it.

[maricybele]

I smashed some presoaked charcoal very easily on my concrete patio the other day with a shovel. Still haven't tried the driveway method. It smashed a little easier on the concrete, but I have yet to clean the black marks. Hope they come out.

[mnjrutherford]

Well, we are now starting year 2 of our project. Mike actually spread some of the material from Pit 1 onto one of our garden plots. Nothing planted there yet, just working stuff into the soil at the moment. I'm not thrilled about this because there is dog poo involved and I don't feel it's "safe" but he assured me that he pulled it from well below the surface where it is more cooked that what is at the top.

Here's a photo of what things are looking like at this point:



That photo shows the new pit (and it's diggers!) in the foreground with the old pit in the background. I'm really looking forward to uncovering the first pit next year to see what our finished (hopefully) product will look AND smell like!

[mnjrutherford]

Dec 4, 2010 1:59:00 GMT -5 paquebot said:

BUT, terra preta is NOT what those people grew their crops on. Those terre preta mounds are the remains of where they lived. The soil that the crops were grown in was terra mulata and not nearly as rich. An interesting thing about both is the presence of a lot of bone charcoal. There weren't many large meat animals other than a tapir now and then. We know that those people were quick to sacrifice a life, or a lot of lives, to assure a good harvest or any other good fortune. Hundreds of thousands people overall and not a single cemetery. They instead became the fertilizer for the next generation as part of the terra mulata.

Martin

We share the same premise on this issue Martin. That the terra preta was the waste material.

I had not really given much thought; however, to the fact that the crops were not grown on the "dumps", but on the lesser quality terra mulata. This year, a ton of vegetative growth occurred on the curing TP pit. Including, some volunteer tomatoes. I didn't try to do anything with the fruit of the plants, I just watched them. I did not observe a lot of blooms or fruit but the plants themselves did very well.

In fact, at the end of the growing season, all the growth was cut down and put into the second pit to burn, the pit was then turned and flattened out. After all that, two tomato plants came back up. They got to about 12" high before the freeze damaged them. Yet, they were vigorous and healthy.

What do you make of that?

[nuts]

I would say the t° wasn't hot enough to kill the seeds.
Probably you have a kind of mix of composting and burning..
What do the resulting stuff look like?

[mnjrutherford]

The first pit was definitely a combo of burn and compost. At the moment, it is covered with loose soil. Sort of grayish in color. We are not planning to uncover it until February or March.

The second pit is burning much better and has a lot more animal material in it. Both fecal matter and corpses. The pipe allows for a longer, slower, and more even burn than the first pit experienced. It will be an interesting experiment.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

No one knows how the terra preta was created. Martin certainly doesn't.

How true. Someone really should take the time to research why terra preta is different.

I have my own theory, and i don't think it's hard to understand if you are in the right frame of mind. I think it is mostly about the microorganism diversity living in the soil. The thousands of yeasts, molds, and other fungi, along with thousands of bacteria, all help to break down nutrients much better than sterile soil, or plants by themselves ever could. I think it's been discovered that nitrogen fixing legumes might not be actually fixing the nitrogen themselves, but producing something in their roots that encourages the growth of nitrogen fixing bacteria.

I think the charcoal is very important, but only because it provides a Carbon source for all these microorganisms to survive. Living things need much more than just carbon to reproduce, so a pure charcoal environment certainly wouldn't be desired either. Plenty of Carbon, Phosphorus, Nitrogen, and water (Hydrogen and Oxygen), all all essential for DNA. Both for a healthy plant population, but also beneficial microorganisms.

I don't think we should keep "hijacking" this thread about terra preta anymore, so i will be double posting this into the terra preta thread that mnjrutherford so helpfully provided. I suggest that anyone who want to continue to specifically talk about terra preta reply here:

alanbishop.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=soilbuilding&thread=1862&page=1

...as for actually testing this theory of mine, one could probably just get two petri dishes of nutrient agar, and drop a clump of unenriched soil, and in the other drop a clump of terra preta, and observe which dish has more fungi and bacterial biodiversity.

[mnjrutherford]

Martin, I agree with the conjecture that the "meat & bone" content of TP is probably human. From what I know of the history of the people and the area, it's perfectly logical.

Has anyone given any thought to what difference it would make to the nutrient make up of the end material to have animal content versus human? Given the differences in our diet, I would imagine there should be some differences.

Another thought is age. The fabulous content of the pits is what, hundreds? Perhaps thousands of years old? Does the stuff really need to age that long? Will the end result of the 2 year project really be anything even close to the real deal?

And yet one more question to ponder. I read somewhere (about 2 years ago) that the "quality" of the TP "migrated" into the adjacent soil. In other words, the perimeter of the TP would slowly extend over time because the soil next to it would, over time (how much time?) become equal to the TP. Somehow, that just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. On the other hand, if I put a small piece of yeasted dough in the middle of a mass of unyeasted dough, eventually the entire mass becomes "infected" with the yeast. So, if it is true that TP "creeps" in a similar fashion, what is the attribute that allows it to accomplish this feat?