Agricultural recycling

[Ganoderma]

i was thinking of that as well Hydrogenbond. I have looked into a few and found that Desmanthus (illinoensis) seems like a good candidate for this. it grows really fast, and is a legume (nitrogen fixing) so is good for soils. one problem i find with many recovery/crop rotation plants is they are generally fairly woody in the stem/roots....hard to decompose...if your worried about that aspect. like you say, its good to have chunks in there. last year i experimented with woody stems in soils and found it attracted a fair bit of pest animal species (namely slugs/snails).

i have not tried larger animals, but animals certainly have a place. so far i have only experimented with caterpillars, snails, worms and various insect species. results were not good enough. larger animals like pigs/goats/cows etc could be useful BUT pigs, for example, dont digest wood.... cows/goats seem better with cellulose containing things (grass), but sill i find it not that great.

one thing i have been wanting to experiment with (i know i talk a lot about it here) is using mushrooms to break down the wood. the application to real life seems hard, but on paper i found it to be a pretty effective use of things.

basically i was thinking have your plant waste divided in two (or more) groups. leafy and woody. make the woody into mushroom crops (sell/eat/compost the fruiting fungus). use the leafy bits as food for higher animals. take left over (spent) mushroom waste (mushroom manure) and give it to various decomposing insects/worms etc (make your choices). take the good leafy waste from earlier, and take the feeder insects/worms and mix them together for a fish feed. i am thinking aquaculture here. the left over water, animal waste and excess mushroom manure can all be put back out into the fields.

thoughts on that? i realize cost is high, and realistic application has many problems....but it seems, to me, to be fairly efficient as far as waste management goes.

the above posts on a composter that you can wheel to the farm seems much more feasible.

[Eclipse Now]

Biochar can be formed from most organic wastes, cooked up to produce fuel and the miraculous Biochar which permanently sequesters Co2 in the soil, and then it:
* Makes the soil more efficient with water
* Minimises nutrient loss
* Encourages nitrogen fixing microfungi to grow in the soil, multiplying both the Co2 stored in the soil and the micro-organisms in the soil.
* Returns the soil to a healthy ecosystem.

Biochar is then added to a mix of chicken manure and other goodies that you composting types already know about and the results are quite miraculous.

[Ganoderma]

ya, they are quite amazing. but there is still probably need for animals at some point in the cycle....whether the tiny fellas in the soil are enough, or the bigger hogs are needed, i am not sure.

you got me reading into the biochar more seriously, but it just seems to me that it would still leave soils lacking various things, if the only system used was that. chicken poop and that seem like a good mix.

[Essay]

Originally Posted by Ganoderma

ya, they are quite amazing. but there is still probably need for animals at some point in the cycle....whether the tiny fellas in the soil are enough, or the bigger hogs are needed, i am not sure.

you got me reading into the biochar more seriously, but it just seems to me that it would still leave soils lacking various things, if the only system used was that. chicken poop and that seem like a good mix.

Absolutely!

Just adding char to dirt will not make rich soil (even if it is chicken-activated char).

Lots more organic matter needs to be added, just like the regular soil amendment process.
Bolstered in many ways by the char--as Eclipse shows, the beasties then turn that into rich soil; more quickly and more efficiently than would happen without the fascilitated beasties--and a soil more bio-available to the plants--than would happen with an "un-charred" soil.

...or words to that effect, I think. Does that make sense?

...gotta run.
~

[freeztar]

Spot on Essay!

Soil is a mixture of 'stuff'. An imbalance in any direction can create problems.

Ganoderma, I too believe that mushrooms/fungi are the key to breaking down 'stubborn' material. I'm very much interested in your trials! The climate here in Georgia is significantly different than Taiwan, but fungi plays the same role everywhere.

It would be interesting to see results from an experiment that involved a culmination of smashed woody debris and char added to a native soil. It would be a difficult experiment in terms of quantifying input and output, but it would yield, imho, very interesting results.

[JMJones0424]

I use a layer of aged wood chips (about four inches thick) in pathways between vegetable beds to prevent erosion, water evaporation, and for weed control. Some years ago, I seeded the pathways with Stropharia rugosoannulata (also known as garden giant, wine cap stropharia, and many other common names). I also use a six inch layer of straw mulch over the beds themselves, and I do not till. After a year, I found mycelium filaments throughout both the pathways and the beds themselves. I get mushroom caps in shaded areas in the spring and fall, and by winter time, I remove the top layer of wood chips from the pathways and dig out a nice inch layer of decomposed peat-like substrate that I mix with redworm castings to make container soil, if needed. Otherwise, I just place it on top of the beds under a new straw layer. Then I replace the left over wood chips, and add more wood chips to bring it back up to four inches.

I learned about Stropharia rugosoannulata from Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms by Paul Stamets in which he claims this fungus in a wood chip bed is capable of filtering bacteria from manure laden run-off water. I have not tried it on a pile of wood chips removed from the garden, as I have always assumed the runoff and leaching of nutrient rich water from the garden was helping the fungus. It is however, a far more forgiving fungus than most, and it survives both the few cold snaps here in the winter and the unbearable summer heat.

I do not use corn stalks, cobs, tomato vines, and other woody vegetable garden waste in the compost pile, I just feed them to the neighbors cows, and grab a small amount of manure in return. The majority of my compost is made from horse manure that I receive for free (if you don't count labor to remove it from the stalls). This is also the source of my straw, as horses are generally fed a higher quality hay than other animals, and are just as sloppy, so waste hay is common in the stalls. The owner of the stalls used to burn this straw twice a year. The wood chips I get for free from a local landscaping company.

I have not yet tried biochar, and I don't need it in my current gardens, but I am toying with the idea of starting a test plot with biochar soon. Tilling wood chips into native soil usually is not recommended, unless you plan on a higher than normal nitrogen fertilizer regimine.

[Eclipse Now]

The reason biochar works so well is that it creates all that fungi and micro-organisms... it acts like a "coral reef of the soil".

Eclipse Now: Replenish the soil

I even read that in the Amazon, where it was practiced for thousands of years, the locals know to use the terra-preta soils as a fertiliser and yet leave the last third of it always! The biochar activated soil is so rich in nutrients and organic life that if it is left there, and forest matter falls on top, come back in a few years and much of that life has moved up into the new matter and soil, 'recharging itself' so to speak.

Did I already say to watch ABC's Catalyst on Biochar? Moving fast... sorry if I'm repeating myself... gotta run somewhere else....
Catalyst: Agrichar – A solution to global warming? - ABC TV Science

...because in another forum "Someone on the internet is wrong!"

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by JMJones0424

I use a layer of aged wood chips (about four inches thick) in pathways between vegetable beds to prevent erosion, water evaporation, and for weed control. Some years ago, I seeded the pathways with Stropharia rugosoannulata (also known as garden giant, wine cap stropharia, and many other common names). I also use a six inch layer of straw mulch over the beds themselves, and I do not till. After a year, I found mycelium filaments throughout both the pathways and the beds themselves. I get mushroom caps in shaded areas in the spring and fall, and by winter time, I remove the top layer of wood chips from the pathways and dig out a nice inch layer of decomposed peat-like substrate that I mix with redworm castings to make container soil, if needed. Otherwise, I just place it on top of the beds under a new straw layer. Then I replace the left over wood chips, and add more wood chips to bring it back up to four inches.

I learned about Stropharia rugosoannulata from Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms by Paul Stamets in which he claims this fungus in a wood chip bed is capable of filtering bacteria from manure laden run-off water. I have not tried it on a pile of wood chips removed from the garden, as I have always assumed the runoff and leaching of nutrient rich water from the garden was helping the fungus. It is however, a far more forgiving fungus than most, and it survives both the few cold snaps here in the winter and the unbearable summer heat.

I do not use corn stalks, cobs, tomato vines, and other woody vegetable garden waste in the compost pile, I just feed them to the neighbors cows, and grab a small amount of manure in return. The majority of my compost is made from horse manure that I receive for free (if you don't count labor to remove it from the stalls). This is also the source of my straw, as horses are generally fed a higher quality hay than other animals, and are just as sloppy, so waste hay is common in the stalls. The owner of the stalls used to burn this straw twice a year. The wood chips I get for free from a local landscaping company.

I have not yet tried biochar, and I don't need it in my current gardens, but I am toying with the idea of starting a test plot with biochar soon. Tilling wood chips into native soil usually is not recommended, unless you plan on a higher than normal nitrogen fertilizer regimine.

Awesome stuff Jones!
Paul Stamet is the man when it comes to mushrooms. It's good to see people using his ideas and products all the way across the country.

You may not *need* char in your soil, but I highly recommend it! If you have not already done so, take some time to familiarize yourself with the concept by visiting Hypography's Terra Preta (TP) forum. It's a lot to digest (no pun intended), but it's worth it!

[Eclipse Now]

The biochar thing sounds too good to be true... like those "5000 year old recipes for reversing baldness" or something. "Just add charcoal". But remember Leonardo's statement ...

"We know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot." - Leonardo da Vinci, circa 1500s