Quote:
Originally Posted by Spike Silverback  Thanks Erich. Much appreciated.
Those are some pretty serious numbers.....
...It would seem that if the object of the addition of the char were to bind nutrients and fungi to the char, then one would want to crush the char to as fine a particle as possible to increase the surface area of the char, no? Thus reducing the overall weight needed. (This, I surmise would also allow the earthworms to take it to lower depths, if taking it to lower depths is even necessary. It is my belief that feeder roots work on the top, so why take the char down? The nutrients that are in or applied to the soil are in the top 6 inches, no?
Another area that I have not seen explored or even talked about is applying char homeopathically (sp). I know it is in the thought processes of some, but no one is talking. Dead silence. It is going to happen and all the weight and volume talk will go away and you'll be able to spray char and the soil will benefit.
Best.
Frank |
Hi,
your idea of saving on charcoal is very good, and myself being tight fisted and lazy, I experimented with sweet char for terra preta.
Required volume of char is about one banana sized vertical shaft every 50 cm or two feet.
I described this in my introductory note:
Sweet char with hammer and chisel - 10-25-2007, 02:44 PM
Hi,
black earth or Schwarzerde in German has been used for millenia.
My theory especially about the Amazon variety is that charcoal was made in earth pits and after the regular inundations by the Amazon river mud crept into the char left in those pits, together with all sorts of bacteria and fungi from upstream the river, like the famous Nile mud in Egypt.
So the char captured the "magic" of the fertile várzea of the Amazon river. Our ancestors were keen observers, lacking books.
One crafty way of getting fungi and bacteria into the char is to offer them something sweet to eat: sugar!
Because a green plant will feed about half or more of the sugars it produces through photosynthesis to the little beasties in the soil, they will like that.
So the sugar only kick starts the processes in the soil "as if" the thriving plant supplied enough food to the soil life already, and the beasties and fungi in turn will supply the mineral salts and digestion products to the sugar supply factory, which a green plant actually is, seen from below.
Reports from Brazil state that a depth of at least 20 cm (8 inches) is required for terra preta to grow further.
I take from that that different levels of oxygen (lower partial pressure deeper down) are required for good performance.
Practical experiment with hammer and chisel:
Prepare sugar water in a bucket and soak charcoal in there for a day or two, until all water is inside the char.
Take a hammer and chisel (ten inches long) and drive a little hole 8 inches deep into the ground in the root zone of a plant you wish to foster.
Insert sweet char with a funnel or by hand.
Do this in spring time.
Wait and see. Compare with untreated plants nearby.
diazotrophicus (my (almost) first post)
...
Have to copy and paste, as posting links requires a few more posts by me to make up ten or so.
Use one or two "chisel holes" per plant filled with sweet char. It worked here in Germany (in a wine growing area).
diazotrophicus
