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No, it hasn't, but I expect it's of little consequence. The idea of using charcoal as a nutrient buffer is an obvious one, and I'm a little surprised more hasn't been made of it historically. Of course burning slag in fields has been part of ag practice for centuries and it was certainly known in all cultures to be beneficial to soil. I'm trying a couple of different types of mix and match of about a 1lb per square foot for starts in the Uala, which is genetically identical and should provide sensibly good indications, at least, satisfactory to myself.
The guava, again, makes near perfect charcoal.
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Please do keep us posted on the process and progress of your terra preta soil experiments in Puna! Photos as well as pH and plant yield data from side by side plots of terra preta and untreated Puna soil would be great to see.
In case anyone does not already know about terra preta, a very good 5 minute snippet about this remarkable soil (showing excellent images of it in situ) is available in an outtake from National Geographic's "Lost Cities of the Amazon" here:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...mazon.html
More background and detail on terra preta at Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta
...with discussion of some more technical aspects at (&/or via) these sites, among others:
http://www.amazon.com/Bacterial-diversit...B000PC0KDU
http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2008/09/t...ffect.html
http://deltafarmpress.com/news/051114-terra-preta/
http://www.amazon.com/Amazonian-Dark-Ear...=304485601&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-2&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B000PC0KDU&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1BHYFB21VD36C7GB2NTQ
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehma...tahome.htm
http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:7Ly...eta+amazon&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=8&gl=us&client=firefox-a
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"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
Pres. John Adams, Scholar and Statesman
"There's a scientific reason to be concerned and there's a scientific reason to push for action. But there's no scientific reason to despair."
NASA climate analyst Gavin Schmidt
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Astonishing skill! This archer is a real-life Legolas and then some!
http://geekologie.com/2013/11/real-life-...rs-anc.php
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Unfortunately many of the links although scholarly are not dealing with the process in a holistic sense. We're so eager to find solutions that we often gloss over the defects of the techniques.
First and foremost--creating terra perta soil is a big project. You're going to be adding hundreds and hundreds of pounds of material into the soil. Ideal content is about 12 percent, and if you start adding that up you're going to see that you're going to be burning a lot of brush. Tones of it. This isn't a project for HPP.
Secondly, if you're pretending in the slightest to do something good for the environment, this is not a place where YouTube Hippy engineering is called for. The manufacture of charcoal releases copious quantaties of methane, 60 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2; you must figure a way to capture and burn that off gas. So, more than wood in a pit or a simple barrel is needed. Not a lot more, but it does take more than that.
One must be careful too, as a lot of nasty carcinogenic tars are released and you don't really want that stuff in your soil, I expect. Great for treating your foundation, though!
Last, the itself char adds nothing to the soil, it only retains what is there. Poor soils will need more than carbon to be re-constituted, and I plan fully to hit my terra preta hard with 16-16-16 while it's still sensibly affordable. If you're all fully committed to strictly organic farming, it isn't going to work for you, at least, on the time scale less than decades. It would be good to know that from the start.
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...char adds nothing to the soil, it only retains what is there. Poor soils will need more than carbon to be re-constituted, and I plan fully to hit my terra preta hard with 16-16-16 while it's still sensibly affordable....
What sort of method are you thinking of using for this step? Placing guava charcoal in 55 gal drums and then soaking the charcoal in the drums with a strong 16-16-16 solution for some length of time? Churning the charcoal in together with soil and then applying the 16-16-16 to the mixture?
I am hoping to test the terra preta approach on a small scale in raised beds next year, inside a Puna greenhouse.
Can anyone comment- are there any fish processing plants on the East Side which discard or sell fish heads, bones, and innards in quantity? If a person has enough acreage to be able to mix and compost fish waste together with the charcoal (and bits of broken up terra cotta, too, if it can be obtained in quantity- another porous and long-lasting material) without "creating a stink" among the neighbors then this could be useful.
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"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
Pres. John Adams, Scholar and Statesman
"There's a scientific reason to be concerned and there's a scientific reason to push for action. But there's no scientific reason to despair."
NASA climate analyst Gavin Schmidt
)'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'(
)'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'(
Astonishing skill! This archer is a real-life Legolas and then some!
http://geekologie.com/2013/11/real-life-...rs-anc.php
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Nope,
All you're doing, as I can see, is making clean carbon. I really doubt there's any other magic to it.
Of course carbon bonds with near everything, and will be stripped of most everything after it comes out of the retort. Very simple organic chem.
The problem with tropical soils is nutrient leaching and PH trouble as a result. Everything is simply washed out. The climate is great, and you've got lots of good rainfall. You can compost at a ferocious rate, but you'll lose the benefits as it simply washes out. Hence the need for a buffer. Otherwise it's rich and then quickly depleted.
The purpose of the carbon, as I read it, is to act wholly as a buffer to prevent losses of nutrients. That's all there is too it, or at least as I read it. The rest of the "magic effects" are just the icing on the cake from having a very nutrient rich soil. I wouldn't get all worked up about fish heads or what ever. In fact, I bet plain old bbq charcoal like Kingman or what have you will work fine.
Was graciously provided two barrels today and I expect I'll be up and running with biochar pretty quickly. I would expect to make 40 lbs or so per run per barrel with guava. Obviously this will take a dedicated effort to get up and running as ultimately I want at least a full acre wildcrafted among the existing trees of the 3 acre parcel. It's coming along, but I need like 10 tons of char to get even close to terra preta levels of C in the ground.
So, once it's in there, simply pitch your conventional fertilizer on the ground. I'm doing this because I don't think I've much time to fiddle with getting up to real production. The only difference with terra preta is that it will require much much less to achieve the same results, or so I see it. Or so the evidence suggests.
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Before he retired, one of my Ag engineer friends worked at LSU on composting. They tried putting fish heads, etc. in rice hulls in a ring of metal mesh. It worked great - no odor and the fish AND BONES just disappeared. I do not remember the time frame, but it was not more than a few months. I would expect sawdust or any other fine-grained high-carbon material would work. This would give you nitrogen, etc. and trace minerals to bind to your terra preta.
Allen
Baton Rouge, LA & HPP
Allen
Finally in HPP
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Allen,
I think that's true, and certainly true up here for me. Banana leaves are gone in 3 weeks, which shocks me.
The point is, unlike sawdust, the near elemental carbon doesn't compost. And so, acts as a near permanent buffer.
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Jay,
I agree, the biochar will hang around. What I meant was as a complement to biochar and in addition to 16-16-16, fish and offal could be composted in an odorless way to return some of the nutrients leached/eroded into the ocean back to a productive use. The biochar would then hold on to the fish/compost nutrients to benefit the plants for a longer time.
Allen
Baton Rouge, LA & HPP
Allen
Finally in HPP
Posts: 1,273
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Joined: Oct 2007
I wonder if the vary nature of charcoal, being a super filter, or holder simply has a combination effect of being a buffer and storer of nutrients simultaneously. Maybe it achieves this all the while maintaining the soils ph.
Volcanic cinder may have some of, but no where near this capacity.
I think if this is true in the way it works, then it will take time to create this. Maybe the key is that the charcoal has had 10,000 years of exposure to the natural composting action of the forest floor to make this happen.
Maybe if we treat the charcoal aggregate to hot levels of nutrients we could fast forward the progress and basically design a super amendment.
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