Terra Preta - The parent thread which started it all

[gost]

I'm trying to document everything as I go, but haven't taken any pics yet. The solar trough was calculated by using the same formula that Turtle used with p=24 inches, and the width at 96. I plan on including crushed flower pots as well, but not sure of how much to use yet or how large to make the fragments. I have a theory that the pottery is helping to regulate phosphorous, since P doesn't seem to be bound by the microbial community, and because analysis of fragments in ancient ADE seem to show high levels of it. I'm also adding a lot of crushed eggshells and may throw in a bit of bonemeal.

Unlike some of the researchers, my own belief is that the ancient Amazonians knew exactly what they were doing. Nothing in the Terra Preta mix was an accident. I will try to post everything I come up with and hope others who are experimenting and researching will too. Who knows, this could be one of the most important discoveries of the 21st century thanks to the ancient soil scientists.

[Michaelangelica]

See also the hypography thread/topic
"Solar Parabolic Trough Charcoal Oven"

[Michaelangelica]

Another nugget of information gleaned from the net

"priming through co-metabolism of added glucose has been observed to increase mineralization of bio-char."
http://crops.confex.com/crops/wc2006...ram/P16146.HTM

Anyone want to help me pan for gold here?
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/htsear...ong&sort=score

[Michaelangelica]

Pehaps the old behaviours of the long lost tera preta farmers lives on in the way amazonians behave in their gardens.?
following from above website and:
Creating Terra Preta in Homegardens?: A Preliminary Assessment.
Antoinette Winklerprins, Michigan State Univ
Saturday, 15 July 2006
133-7

This presentation is part of 133: 1.6B Amazonian Dark Earth Soils
(Terra Preta and Terra Preta Nova):
A Tribute to Wim Sombroek - Poster
Creating Terra Preta in Homegardens?: A Preliminary Assessment.

"Recent intensive ethnographic research in 50 home-gardens in the Brazilian Amazon demonstrates that gardeners could be creating terra preta through their daily actions of sweeping and burning garden and household debris.
This poster will explore preliminary data on these activities in the Municipality of Santarém, Pará, Brazil. Local residents, particularly smallholder farmers of mixed ethnic ancestry, utilize a soil management strategy locally termed terra quiemada (burned earth), to improve the soil quality in home-gardens in both rural and urban areas.
On a daily basis gardens are swept clear of leaf litter and other debris. This material is swept to an area of the yard where it accumulates and is sometimes combined with other organic household refuse. Periodically, often on a weekly basis, this debris is charred.
The remains of this process are then used as a soil conditioner and directly applied to the base of recently planted fruit trees and other productive plants in the garden.
Is this sweeping and burning activity something that will contribute to the eventual formation of ADEs? This is unclear at this time, but certainly the routine and pervasiveness of the activity, and the self-reported darkening of the soils through application of terra quiemada, indicates an area of potential future research.
Wim Sombroek's dream was to find ways of making terra preta (terra preta nova) and these preliminary findings in home-gardens offer some ideas how daily praxis may contribute to this.

Any biochemist/microbiologists here who can trasnslate this?:-

Saturday, 15 July 2006
133-9
This presentation is part of 133: 1.6B Amazonian Dark Earth Soils (Terra Preta and Terra Preta Nova): A Tribute to Wim Sombroek - Poster
Biodiversity in Amazonian Dark Earths Soils.
Maria de Lourdes P. Ruivo, MPEG, Belém, Brazil, Maria de L. Oliveira, UEPa, Belém, Brazil, and Dirse Kern, Museu paraense emílio Goldi, Av.Perimetral, 1901, Belém, Brazil.


Earths showed higher diversity, including a distinct higher number of the fungal and bacteria genuses, a lot of actinomycetes, and much occurrence of the organic substances and micelles distribution. These results show that ADE soils from Caxiuanã, Santarém and Manaus compared with at soils of the Roraima and Juruti. These organisms, important decomposers of organic matter, in the Dark Earths have more occurrences and more production of the organic substances and micelles. The identification tests showed the presence of gram-negative bacteria of the Achromobacter, Flavobacterium, Nitrobacter, Nitrosomonas, Pseudomonas, Escherichia, Enterobacter and Celovibrio genera; and gram-positive bacteria of the Arthrobacter, Bacillus, Micrococos, Streptomyces and Sarcina genera. Among these genera we can find cellulolythic, humic acid producers, lignine decomposers, starch decomposers and nitrogen producers. The fungi that were identified were from the genera: Rhizopus, Rhizomucor, Trichoderma, Cladosporium, Penicillium, Mucor, Aspergillus, Fusarium and Chaetomium. The analysis of Amazon anthropogenic soils indicate that alterations by human actions, such as the incorporation of organic residues and the effects of fire in the superficial horizon influenced some of the chemical (carbon, phosphorus,..) and physical (aggregation,..) characteristics. Studies of the soil micromorphology, chemical and biological show that the high fertility of anthropogenic soils are the result of a favorable combination of mineral and organic components, making these soils highly enriched in exchangeable forms. The organo-mineral stabilization of soil organic matter showed that is mainly stabilized via chemi-sorption to mineral surfaces, as well as physical stabilization via entrapment into interior of aggregates

[gost]

I've run across info about this upcoming July soil conference before and read most of the abstracts. I think it underscores the "bleeding edge" value that many soil scientists are placing on the discovery of Terra Preta. Most of the research is still very preliminary and I have yet to find much to help me out as an organic gardener in North America, or for anyone else living outside the tropics. One of the presentations does have to do with home gardens, but it focuses on gardeners in Brazil burning their leaf litter and dumping the residue back on their fruit trees.

I think that for the time being, most of the research is being focused on the idea of readapting ADE into modern Amazonian agriculture as an alternative to the "slash and burn" methods practiced today. While I think that there is a great potential in this idea in regards to the tropics, I also believe there is an equal potential for many other parts of the world.

I recall reading a paper published in the eighties that suggested that native peoples here in the Pacific NW of N. America (where I live) had terraformed large tracts of land in the area around modern day Fort Lewis, about 75 miles or so south of Seattle. These large cleared areas were called "prairies" by the European settlers and had been thought to be natural formations. Scientists studying the area, however, were surprised to discover that these clearings were in fact man-made, created by "burning off" the temperate rain forest cover and encouraging the growth of certain plant species that the native peoples then harvested. These included various types of berries, root crops, grasses, etc. The highly productive land also provided habitat for various species of game animals. Had these people created their own version of Terra Preta? I wish I had that paper to reread today, but alas my memory of where I read it and who did the study has vanished from my gray matter. The fact is, those "praries" are still there today and the US military uses these sites for artillery practice. What I do know is that if you clear any land around here, it's only a matter of time before the forest grows back. Somehow the natives were able to create sustainable, productive ecosystems that endure for decades or even centuries.

What is difficult for us modern geniuses to comprehend is that people in the distant past were every bit as intelligent as we are. They had the same number of brain cells that we do. We like to call them "primitive" while we call ourselves "advanced." At least we've quit calling them "savages," for the most part. Some of the researchers in the Amazon suggest that the development of Terra Preta was probably an accident. Some uneducated native discovered that his beans grew better in the garbage heap. With our technocentric viewpoint, we fail to credit the idea that somebody besides ourselves could possibly have come up with an original idea. Terra Preta and it's manufacture is apparently so complex that the soil scientists are still struggling to understand it after numerous years of study. For me, the very idea of covering a single field of up to three or four hundred acres with as much as six feet of perfectly balanced compost that doesn't degrade over time is almost incomprehensible. I look at my measly little compost piles and think about how much effort I put into maintaining them, then shake my head in wonder.

While we may have focused our science in the direction of physics and engineering, other cultures may well have directed their science in quite different directions. My gut feeling is that many ancient peoples might have developed horticultural technologies that may still be a little bit beyond our current understanding. We have spent the last hundred years developing an agriculture based on petrochemicals and are quickly coming to the realization that this is not a sustainable practice. The ancient Amazonians developed a method of organic agriculture that sustained them for at least two thousand years, possibly much longer, and is so stable that their fields, covering an area at least the size of France, are still viable today. We have so much yet to learn.

[Michaelangelica]

QUOTE=gost]
I recall reading a paper published in the eighties that suggested that native peoples here in the Pacific NW of N. America (where I live) had terraformed large tracts of land in the area around modern day Fort Lewis, about 75 miles or so south of Seattle. These large cleared areas were called "prairies" by the European settlers and had been thought to be natural formations. Scientists studying the area, however, were surprised to discover that these clearings were in fact man-made, created by "burning off" the temperate rain forest cover and encouraging the growth of certain plant species that the native peoples then harvested.
We have so much yet to learn.[/QUOTE]
Same thing in Australia but the Aborigines had about 50-70,000 years maybe more to change the environment.
Captain cook when he "discovered" Australia commented on the many fires he saw on the East Coast.
Early Botanists had no idea that the bio-diversity, the total environment had been man made! This has been a very recent an amazing revelation.
The theory is that Aborigines used "Firestick" farming to encourage the growth of grasses; this attracted herbivores(kangaroos etc) which they hunted.
Much Australian Flora now will not germinate without fire or at least smoke.
You can sometimes even buy "smokey water' to soak your native seed in so they will germinate!
Soils here are poor so the burning would have added some fertiliser and perhaps charcoal to the soil.
any most are sensitive to excess phosphorus and should be fertilized with special "native Plant" fertilsers low in phosphorus.
Our farmers use masses of Suppephosphate in order to grow wheat

This is from the CSIRO
http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/S96060.htm

Phosphorus requirements of Australian native plants

Kevin A. Handreck

Abstract
Many Australian plants have highly developed abilities for acquiring and conservatively using P.
This is seen as an evolutionary response to the combined environmental pressures of fire, soil P levels that are in the lower part of the range for world soils, and low and eratic rainfall.
In natural Australian ecosystems, more than 50% of the P in the A horizon is in organic combination.
Organic matter is the main source for the growth of perennial plants, so the only successful assessments of ‘available’ P measure labile organic P and microbial P.
However, the inorganic P of ashbeds is essential to the rapid establishment of fire ephemerals and tree seedlings in natural ecosystems
. Almost all Australian plants develop associations with mycorrhizal fungi, or produce hairy roots, as ways of increasing P uptake. Highly developed abilities to redistribute P from ageing to young tissues enable Australian plants to have a low P requirement per unit of biomass production
--
Michael

[gost]

Michael- Translation of the abstract on Biodiversity in Amazonian Dark Earths Soils that you posted above:

ADE soils have a much greater biodiversity and greater biomass of both bacteria and fungi, as well as actinomycetes, than other local soils. In other words, this stuff is loaded with organic decomposers. The presence of these critters makes lots of good organic chemicals. They list the various genera. Then the authors suggest that the purposeful combination of ingredients in ADE, along with the microbial community it sustains, creates a very fertile and stable mix.

The question I still have is whether this whole arrangement will work outside of the tropics. I'm assuming it will since ultimately it still seems like a specialized sort of composting. Not too extremely different from what I'm doing now, except for the charcoal and pottery fragments. What I'm hoping is that even though the specific microbial community may vary from place to place, along with the species of available plant material, the result will be the same.

*****************

My recipe for Terra Preta so far:

1) Low-temp charcoal from local hardwoods and fruit tree prunings, ground to a fine powder.

2) Organic compost mix made mostly from leafy weeds, along with added comfrey, nettles, dock, and clover.

3) Shredded dried leaves and ground up branches.

4) Lawn trimmings.

5) Broken terra cota pottery.

6) Old compost and garden soil to provide microorganisms.

I'm using standard proportions for organic composting, but turning some of the browns into charcoal. The starting volume for the mix is a 42 inch covered cube. The pile is mixed daily and enough water added to maintain moisture.

*******

Very interesting info about the P limitation in Australian soils. Sounds like the Terra Preta concepts might be very well suited to your location. It's possible that the pottery fragments play an important role in the long term regulation of P, so you probably need to be sure and include that in your mix.

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Michaelangelica

Another nugget of information gleaned from the net

"priming through co-metabolism of added glucose has been observed to increase mineralization of bio-char."
http://crops.confex.com/crops/wc2006...ram/P16146.HTM

Anyone want to help me pan for gold here?

I have prospected & mined for years. Your enclosed quote receives no further explanation in the article linked; I simply have no idea what it means to "prime through co-metabolism of added glucose".
On the other hand, the link does offer some temperature-for-charcoal-production info that is interesting in regard to our attempts to build solar trough ovens for charcoal production.

Originally Posted by crops.confex.com

The temperature of carbon conversion is critical for the stability, with recent results indicating that temperatures of 200°C and above significantly increases stability against microbial decomposition, whereas bio-char produced at a temperature of 1000°C showed less recalcitrance to oxidation by ozone than that produced at 400°C

[Michaelangelica]

Prospecting for Gold
Sorry turtle This might be a better link
http://crops.confex.com/crops/wc2006...gram/D1002.HTM
Then you have to sort though each session
I agree a lot of words to say "sugar helps we think"!
That why I got tired of prospecting.

Temperature
How important do you think temperature at which the charcoal was produced is in Terra preta?
I think activated charcoal might be easier to find
(especially used?-some uses may be benign to soil)

Gost
An interesting "Quirky Science Fact" came up yesterday about the incredibly ubiquitous nature of nematode family worms.
Want to read it and tell me if you think it adds anything to this discussion?

Charcoal
I can only buy coconut charcoal.
Local laws don't allow burning.
I have found a close by farmer who does make it, but only makes it from time to time.
My next stop is the Charcoal Chicken Shops" to see what they use.
How close is coal to charcoal?
There are lots of coal mines nearby

My experiment
I have 5 pots of parsley planted
2 with 6 handfuls of charcoal (various sizes mostly small)
2 with 3 hand fulls
1 with nothing although I did add some Attaputite to the standard 'cheap' potting mix
My one uncontrolled variable is the possum he loves parsley!

Clays
I am playing around with Attaputite (kitty litter-activated?whatever that means- clay) in pots of orchids in particular.
It is a clay and is easy to get and cheap (Bentonise as well?)

Water
Our local dams are down to 19% capacity at the moment and as of next week it is only hand watering.
Fortunately it looks like rain all this week
It would be good to know how well charcoal holds water in the soil.
Many local gardeners would be interested.
--

[Michaelangelica]

On Clay
What do you make of this?
The chemistry is beyond me I'm afraid
m
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?scri...72004000200004
ABSTRACT

Several archaeological black earth (ABE) sites occur in the Amazon region. They contain fragments of ceramic artifacts, which are very important for the archaeological purpose.
In order to improve the archaeological study in the region we carried out a detailed mineralogical and chemical study of the fragments of ceramic artifacts found in the two ABE sites of Cachoeira-Porteira, in the Lower Amazon Region.
Their ceramics comprise the following tempers: cauixi, cariapé, sand, sand +feldspars, crushed ceramic and so on and are composed of quartz, clay equivalent material (mainly burned kaolinite), feldspars, hematite, goethite, maghemite, phosphates, anatase, and minerals of Mn and Ba. Cauixi and cariapé, siliceous organic compounds, were found too.
The mineralogical composition and the morphology of their grains indicate a saprolite (clayey material rich on quartz) derived from fine-grained felsic igneous rocks or sedimentary rocks as source material for ceramic artifacts, where silica-rich components such cauixi, cariapé and/or sand (feldspar and rock fragments) were intentionally added to them.
The high content of (Al,Fe)-phosphates, amorphous to low crystalline, must be product of the contact between the clayey matrix of pottery wall and the hot aqueous solution formed during the daily cooking of animal foods (main source of phosphor).
The phosphate crystallization took place during the discharge of the potteries put together with waste of organic material from animal and vegetal origin, and leaving to the formation of the ABE-soil profile.