Terra preta For newbies

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by mom person

When you said "Now at a field application rate of 2 lbs/sq ft", I was wondering if that is a reccommended application rate. It is approximately what I have been using on my first experimental plots.

O Dear
For a newbie you ask such a hard question.!!!

In a Japanese experiment they have been adding 100g of bamboo charcoal to tea trees for 4 years. (100g per sq meter, per tree, per year.) They already have measurable results. The treated trees are much bigger. They plan to carry on the experiment for another 6 years
There is still much research that needs to be done but in pots 10-20% seems to be the level of char that gets optimum results. Over 20% results are not as good
So do you whack 20% char on your field from day one or add a bit every year? Who knows?
I am always of the opinion that more is better so personally I would add as much char as I could afford.
I Think/believe that char gets better with age so a little every year might also have some benefits. There is no science to support my faith however.

[mom person]

OK. I just did the math on thae Japanese trial and that is about 3.5 ounces per ten fquare feet per year. I am sure that if that much is making a difference, that my approximate two pounds per square foot will do nicely. I am sure that I am nowhere near the 20% cutoff point, but I no longer feel as if I am doing too little. Thanks for the ego boost and the rapid reply.

[RBlack]

To mom person,

They lower number you got may be correct. From the latest information I am getting you don't need anywhere near the 20% figure. I will try and get more information to you as I get it. Also remeber that Terra Preta also needs soil organic matter, and I believe biochar which is char from non-woody sources. Also there seems to be reasons to believe that you may need char from across the combustion continuum from partial char to charcoal and possibly higher than normal sources of calcium and phospherous to replicate the fish residues that the Amazonian Indians put into their soil. All of this has to do with establishing the microbial community and at this point we get to the fact that we are dealing with a complicated system and there are no easy or pat answers. The mess I put in my soil this year was charred manure, charcoal from pine and aspen, charred pine needles, composted kitchen wastes, bonemeal and regular NPK for vegetables. What I was trying to replicate was the haphazard mix the Amazonian Indians may have had and I do haphazard well!

RBlack

[mom person]

If haphazard is the key, then both of us will succeed. I think that the original terra preters just threw everything into the pit, wood, twigs, manure, and the bones of whatever. Sounds a bit like what I throw into the compost pit. I was wondering what it would be like to make such a pit, but I think that would not go over too well on my lot in Boston. Neighbors, ordinances, etc.
I would love to find a way to make small batches of charred "pit material" in the city. Any ideas?

[Michaelangelica]

I only just learnt this about Hypography

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[erics2112]

Unlike many other posters, I live in a neighborhood that doesn't allow open burning (i.e. in an old drum or in a pit). Is there a decent brand of charcoal that can be purchased? Is it possible to use a covered BBQ grill to make small quantities of bio-char?

[Philip Small]

Originally Posted by erics2112

Is there a decent brand of charcoal that can be purchased? Is it possible to use a covered BBQ grill to make small quantities of bio-char?

Erich tells us, for those of us in Memphis:

"you can buy charcoal for $125/ton in Bell Mo. at Dustin Strumph Charcoal yard. They have 22ton loads of dust to 1/2 inch , 4-7% moisture."

Lowes carries bags of Cowboy brand charcoal, a good place to start.

For making charcoal, I started with (and still break out) a small retort (can be made from a cracker tin, or tea tin for micro batches) on the BBQ grill, so yes, it is possible, and I recommend it to experience the process at a bench test level.

The drier the feedstock, then the less attention-getting thick smoke there is. The hotter/drier the day, the faster it goes.
r
Doug Hauge of Fillmore, California, says:

"I make my [drawing stick] charcoal in a retort. My retort consists of a steel teapot that was once glass coated. Its volume is about one-half gallon. I load the retort, place it on a back-pack type camping stove (just a burner screwed to a propane tank) and cook the wood in the teapot with the lid on. As a result of destructive distillation, flammable gases are emitted from the spout. As the cooking is in progress I light a match to the gases coming out of the spout and know that the charcoal is done when the flame is gone."

Some folks here were working on a solar powered charcoal maker, but I can't remember if that was ever successful

[Michaelangelica]

A very good clear well written, introductory web article on the major ideas of Terra Preta

You might want to use it so you can convince the neighbours that you are not crackers grinding up, running the car over, burning, burying; good BBQ charcoal.
http://www.championtrees.org/topsoil/TerraPreta.htm

[Michaelangelica]

Another introductory article on Terra preta (TP)
He does the sums on carbon sequestration (ie How to reduce global warming. I can't say I really followed that bit- but I failed maths)
Saving The Planet While Saving The Farm: How soil carbonization could save the planet while it makes farming profitable again

Apparently, the indigenous farmers of the region had taken to carbonizing their farm waste, grinding the charcoal to a fine powder, and adding it to the soil. The richest soil samples, those with the greatest fertility, were between nine and forty percent charcoal by volume, and the charcoal was powdered to a fine powder - a few hundred microns was the average particle size. There are few bits of charcoal any larger than a quarter of an inch in size. The charcoal was produced in a low-temperature process, not heating it too excessively. It contained within its molecular structure plant resins that had been heat stabilized by the pyrolization process.

Because nobody had ever bothered to investigate powdered charcoal's effects on soil fertility carefully, soil scientists had simply always assumed that charcoal when added to the soil, was inert and its effects primarily mechanical. Chemically, it is very stable at ambient temperature - even on geological time scales - and does not participate in chemical reactions, so it was simply assumed that any nutrients it trapped were simply unavailable to plants. Close investigation of the terra preta situation proved this to not be the case. Not at all.
. . .
What the soil scientists, working with microbiologists, discovered was that a community of bacteria exists in symbiosis with the root hairs of plants in terra preta soils. The bacteria produce enzymes that release the mineral ions trapped by the heat stabilized plant resins in the charcoal and make it available to the root hairs of the plant as nutrients. In return, the plants secrete nourishment for the bacteria.
Not only that, but the resins within the charcoal act like an ion exchange resin, adsorbing traces of mineral ions onto the charcoal particle surfaces from the rain water, and trapping it within the charcoal's molecular structure, where it can be held for centuries - until the soil bacteria associated with a root hair come along and secrete the enzymes necessary for it to be released once again. So the trace minerals always present in rainwater actually act as a fertilizer - providing the nutrients needed by the crops, year after year.
The secret of the soil fertility of the terra preta was finally understood. And it was understood how the indigenous farmers were able to produce bumper crops year after year, decade after decade without a single application of chemical fertilizer and without wearing out the soil.

Saving The Planet While Saving The Farm: How soil carbonization could save the planet while it makes farming profitable again

[Michaelangelica]

A German article kindly translated for us by eric1

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Translation - Today, 01:16 AM
I tried to insert the translations between the pragraphs, but this made the message too long for posting. So I have to leave you with the translation and some titles alone

Never to fertilize any more owing to the black earth of the Amazonas

The black earth from the rain forest of the Amazonas makes plants in home and garden grow faster and stronger, and on top of that renews itself almost automatically

Voices on the subject
ZDF-Reportage 2003
ZDF-report 2003 (ZDF = Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen = second German (public) television network)
Marc van Roosmalen, Feldforscher am Rio Aripuana, über die Folgen konventioneller Bewirtschaftung:
Marc van Roosmaalen, field researcher on the Rio Aripuana, about the results of conventional management.

“The Indios have started with Terra Preta in order to be able to go on living for generations on the same land – without burning as is done these days. Now the farmers cut now fields from the rainforest again and again, cultivate on them for some few years and next have to cut down a new field, leaving the soil unfertile.
Wit hall our modern chain saws and axes we can not live as well in tune with nature – as could the allegedly primitive Indios of the past.”

Marc van Roosmalen advises the use of Terra Preta for cleansing the rain forests:

“Terra Preta can change the future of the rain forest. When one knows hoi t is made, one can foroce the people to contrive their fields on Terra Preta like the Indians. Then they would need only a small piece of land, that would have tob e cleared only once and covered with Terra Preta.
Next one could work it for generations, without having to burn down more sections of the rain forest.”
Ein Bauer zum Thema:
A farmer on the subject :

For years, Damiäo has been cultivating coffee, papaya and other tropical fruits on the abandonned Indio fields – easily recognized by their black earth, the so called Terra Preta. Again and again, Damiäo discovers remnants of the Indio culture. He shows van Roosmalen an Indio oven, in which there is still a bread, possibly more than a hundred years old.. It is covered with a thin coat of tree rubber, and was surrounded by Terra Preta, the “black earth”. More and more scientists discover proofs of a highly developped Indo culture that confirm at last the reports of Francisco de Orellanas from the 16th century.

With a sample of the soil from Damiaös plantation, Marc van Roosmalen wants to determine the thickness, the age and the exact composition of the Indio soil Terra Preta. Soil experts have confirmed meanwhile that the Indios, using a mixture of molusc chalk and charred tropical wood, achieved a small miracle : a soil that is not washed out by rainy seasons.
The Indios could remain in the same loction for 2000 years. Now their fields are worked by de Caboclos, many of them for over 40 years completely without fertilizing.
Universität Bayreuth, 2002
Dipl. geogr. Gerhard Bechtold:
Geography grad. Gerhard Bechthold
:
Terra Preta (do indio) is a black earth-like anthropogenic soil with enhanced fertility due to high levels of soil organic matter (SOM) and nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and calcium embedded in a landscape of infertile soils (see soil profiles below). Terra Preta soils occur in small patches averaging 20 ha, but 350 ha sites have also been reported.
These partly over 2000 years old man made soils occur in the Brazilian Amazon basin and other regions of South America such as Ecuador and Peru but also in Western Africa (Benin, Liberia) and in the savannas of South Africa.
Terra Preta soils are very popularby the local farmers and are used especially to produce cash crops such as papaya and mango, which grow about three times as rapid as on surrounding infertile soils.
(I am not going to translate this back into German – not even if you ask for it !!!)
Arte TV 2005
Arte TV 2005
Terra Preta: Das schwarze Gold des Amazonas, eine Dokumentation von Peter Adler
Terra Preta : the black gold of the Amazonas, a documentary by Peter Adler.

Untill recently, the “green hell” along the largest hydrographic system of our planet, was considered was considered tob e unstirred for thousands of years. But not far away from Manaus, a metropolis in the Amazon area, Brazilian archeologist Eduardo Naves discoverd artefacts and fragments, obviosly relics from an early civilisation.
A memory of cities and empires that have l disappeared long ago ? Neves and his American colleague Jim Petersen believe they have struck on remnants of large villages in the surrounding forest.


The “Terra Preta do Indio” black soil lies like small islands in the otherwise extremely unfertile amazon area. Everywhere where the rain forest is burnt down, the ashes allow for a short time of aggriculture.

But the soil is washed out soon, and the farmers can not afford costly fertilizers. Instead they burn down new sections of the forest, in a diabolic spiral.


Agronomists and soil experts are sure that “Terra Preta” is man made, but how ? That is why the “Terra Preta Nova”-project is about, on which scoentists all over the world are contributing in different fields of testing.

By combined fertilizing with charcoal, biomass and compost an originally unfertile soil can be made into a flowering landscape, and allow for the economical development of poor areas, at the same time preventing further destruction of the rain forest.