Terra Preta - The parent thread which started it all

[gost]

Great article Michaelangelica. The idea that ancient Amazonians terraformed vast areas using a sustainable agricultural model shows a possible degree of sophistication and stewardship that is sadly lacking today. The big question is whether this system is reproducible, as well as exportable, and can be adapted by modern farmers. My guess is that it can, that there is nothing about the Terra Preta process that is unique to the tropics. Some of the literature seems to support this too.

 

The process I'm working on is to replace most or all of the "browns" in one of my compost piles with low-heat charcoal. I've decided to stick with woody material (fruit tree prunings, alder and maple branches) with the idea that most of the ADE charcoals were probably made from the hardwoods originally cleared to make the sites. I'm running this material through a chipper to make it easier to fit into a stovepipe for cooking.

 

The literature suggests that additional N will need to be added to the system until an equilibrium is reached. This makes sense in terms of normal composting, as wood chips used as browns tend to tie up N until decomposition is complete, then release it back to the soil. To accomplish this, I am adding more clover than usual to my compost mix. This past weekend I got a pile started that's 42 by 42 by 36 inches, but have only just started adding the charcoal.

 

As for making the charcoal itself, so far I have only been using material I've gleaned from a couple of old brush burning piles, but have plans under way to build an eight foot wide solar trough. In the mean time, I thought I'd try making a batch in a 4 inch stovepipe by laying it in the side of my wood-fired steel barrel barbecue when we cook diner tonight. ;))

[Michaelangelica]

Great article Michaelangelica.

The process I'm working on is to replace most or all of the "browns" in one of my compost piles with low-heat charcoal.

The literature suggests that additional N will need to be added

 

As for making the charcoal itself, have plans under way to build an eight foot wide solar trough. In the mean time, I thought I'd try making a batch in a 4 inch stovepipe by laying it in the side of my wood-fired steel barrel barbecue when we cook diner tonight. ;))

 

Glad you liked it.

I thought it was one of the best I've read.

Ancient stonehedge Wow!

 

Can you take photos of your experiments and let us all know waht happens?

tar

[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/techprogram/P16146.HTM

 

Anyone want to help me pan for gold here?

http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/htsearch.cgi?words=Terra+preta&action=search&formaction=http%3A%2F%2Fa-c-s.confex.com%2Fcrops%2Fhtsearch.cgi&meetingid=1000&dir=techprogram&override=&exclude=&config=&method=and&format=builtin-long&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.

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 :confused:

[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]

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/techprogram/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".:eek:

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.

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

 

:cup:

[Michaelangelica]

Prospecting for Gold

Sorry turtle This might be a better link

http://crops.confex.com/crops/wc2006/techprogram/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?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0044-59672004000200004

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.

[Michaelangelica]

WOW

Look at this site!

 

http://www.energy.gatech.edu/presentations/dday.pdf

 

Lots of pretty pictures

Lots of fascinating graphs

Lots of biomass-hydrogen designs (Which I don't understand)

It took me an age to download (I don't have broadband but it was worth it)

Just for the picture of the sick tree that was fixed in 6 mths with charcoal !. Great stuff

 

Some quotes:

Other charcoal benefits

• Surface oxidation of the char increased the cation exchange capacity (Glaser)

(er. . . what is "cation exchange capacity"-m)

 

• Char increased available water holding capacity by more than 18% of

surrounding soils (Glaser)

(my question in my last post answered-m)

 

• Char experiments have shown up to 266% more biomass growth (2nd Yr

Steiner) and 324% (Kishimoto and Sugiura)

 

• Plant nitrogen uptake doubled in charcoal amended soils (Steiner)

 

• Charcoal has proven to help reduce farm chemical runoff (Yelverton)

 

Smoke from smoldering fires represents lost energy that can produce hydrogen.-- A sustainable hydrogen supply cannot be separated from agriculture as it forms a key link to delivered soil nitrogen

Under modern agriculture, hydrogen is used to make ammonia fertilizer which is used for food production.

(i.e. Hydrogen=Food)

Asada reported that Asada reported that carboxyl acid groups formations natural to low

temperature charcoal (below 500 C) bind ammonia exceptionally well

 

Chars were produced at 900, 600, 500, 450, and 400C.

Crushed and sieved to #30 mesh, wt 20g.

Soaked 5 min. in 48% NH4NO3 solution.

Each rinse = 100 ml water 8.0 pH

Most stabilized after a few rinses

But chars produced 400 C very gradually released its ammonia

 

Michael

[gost]

Michael-

 

On Sugar- Sugar is much too valuable to add to the soil. Better to use it to make fuel alcohol, which is something else I've been working on.

 

On Temperature- I think that low temperatures are best for ADE charcoal as it then retains more of the plant resins that are used in binding the nitrogen.

 

On Nematodes- Yes, I'd like to read the "Quirky Science Fact." Beneficial nematodes are an important part of healthy organic soils and I'm sure are found in abundance in Terra Preta.

 

On Charcoal- I don't see why coconut charcoal wouldn't work just fine if you can get it cheap enough. One of the questions I have about the Amazonian charcoal if whether it's made from hardwoods, and whether the resulting resins might be different in various materials. I've read that alder is the preferred wood for making charcoal for use in forges, followed by mountain ash, and oak, but I don't know how that would relate to what we are doing here.

 

Coal is NOT the same as charcoal. Not only does it contain various percentages of sulfur and other chemicals, but it also has a lot of flammable volatiles, which is what helps it to burn. Coal is made when anaerobic pete bogs are subducted and put under heat and pressure for a few millenia. Coal is around 90% carbon, with the rest made up by the other chemicals. Probably not at all good to put in your garden soil. When the volatiles are removed, the resulting product is called "coke," and it burns cleaner than coal but needs a strong bellows to keep it going.

 

Regular charcoal briquettes are not a good substitute for ADE charcoal either. They are made from a combination of sawdust charcoal and coal, and sometimes petroleum coke, which can be high in heavy metals. Most of the volatiles and other chemicals actually burn away before you start cooking, but they would still be present if you ground them up and put them in your garden. Kingsford charcoal briquettes are made from: powdered charcoal, anthracite coal, limestone, starch (as a binder), sawdust, and sodium nitrate and a few other ingredients. I've just heard recently, however, that WalMart and Home Depot here in the US both carry what is called "Lump Charcoal," which is the pure stuff, no additives, and it is available in various kinds of wood: hickory, mesquite, oak, etc. You can find a bunch of other brands online as well. A little too expensive to suit me.

 

On Clays and Kitty Litter- I'm not sure about the kind of kitty litter you get, but my experience is that the stuff is simply made from dry clay, not kiln fired. When it gets wet, after a while it just turns back into sticky clay, which would not be good for a garden unless you need to slow down your drainage. I thought I'd check with my local nurseries to see if they have any broken terra cota flowerpots they'd like to get rid of.

 

I had already read that same paper about the mineral composition of the ADE pottery that you posted, but I don't know enough about pottery to see how this compares to terra cota. Some of the pictures I've seen of it though, looks just like it. That's what I'm going to use.

 

On Water- I just made up a batch of home-made Terra Preta and the very first thing I noticed is that it holds a heck of a lot of water when you get it wet. It took a little time before the water started soaking in, but the stuff holds it like a sponge. I've set a wet pot of it out in the sun to see how long it takes to dry out compared to my regular compost. I think it's going to be really good for water conservation.

 

Here's a pic of the stuff I made:

 

My Terra Pretahttp://hypography.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=593&stc=1&d=1148251168[/img]

[Michaelangelica]

gost-

Thanks for your long and detailed reply

 

alpaca poo??

You really are tying to keep it ethnically pure !

 

Temperature

The last website I posted had an interesting graph:-

275-400c best to maximise carbon storage for mankind and optimal zone for energy extraction

400-600C best for microbial life but complete devloatilization -requires addition of energy &/or oxygen

400C chars very gradually released its ammonia

I can't see how Amazonian Indians could control temperature anyway. Perhaps they had a mixture of all temps?? or Perhaps good coppicing results in ideal temperature just because of the way it is done.??

 

Thanks for sorting me out on coal and briquettes. I didn't think they would work. It goes against the whole tenant of Terra preta' environmetal ++ss anyhow.

 

Clay

Kitty Litter is Attapulgite or the clumping one is bentonite.

(a perfumer friend put me on to it can be used as a fixative to hold perumes. It can be used in sachets etc)

Both are supposed to be activated clays (whatever that means)

Attapulgite holds moisture and is a clay. It should work in potting mixes. I am experimenting to find out.

There used to be big terracotta potteries here with huge piles of broken "waste" sigh. .

But a Global Economy" and the Chinese & Italians have put them out of business. Strangely now it is hard to find a good selection of Terracotta plant pots in Nurseries. I have always preferred them for my herbs as most (thyme, sage rosemary etc) prefer a drish well drained environment.

Perhaps there was a reason Old Gardiners' invented Terracotta. The history of such pots must go back to Roman times?? I will google it one day and see.

I saw advertised on USA Garden Products web sites terracotta balls and orchid mixes with terracotta added. What country are you from?

 

Water

I agree about the water, 17% better soil water holding capacity is the figure from above web site. In pots it could be better.

Politically and economically water is becoming a major issue here.

With local dams down to 19% capacity, we water the garden by hand from now on.

 

I live in hope that my orchids(usually half dead-I'm not an orchid person, but having spent scandalous amounts of money on them I would like them to survive) will thrive in my new mix of wood (ie basic orchid potting mix), charcoal, and Attapulgite.

 

 

Find "Quirky Science Facts" by putting that in the search box at the top of the page. Go to the last 4-5 posts. You might enjoy browsing around the Hypography site I do. Try "forums' to go to areas that mainly interest you.

I recommend the first page of "Quality Jokes" apart from my posts, of course, it is all downhill from there.

 

Love the pics. will post some when I work out how.

 

 

We must have nearly sorted this Terra preta thing by now, apart from details.

I have some Google alerts going and will report on anything new they show up. (They do miss some/many things)

and will post results of my experiments.

My next job is to proselytise this to the Aussie farming community I don't know how I do that.

At the moment Australia is shipping thousands of ships full of old growth forest chips to Japan. The Japanese must be laughing up their sleeves at us for letting such a valuable resource (even if we burnt it!) go so cheaply.

sigh. . . again.

 

Thanks for your valuable posts. It is wonderful to have someone to bounce ideas off. This is not the sort of discussion you can have at the Pub:- "G'day, how's yea'r terry prety go'n Bruce"'

--

Michael

[Michaelangelica]

Yeat another article in the popular press.

Good, but not much that is new

Some quotes

http://www.deltafarmpress.com/news/051114-terra-preta/

Lehman is being interviewed by By David Bennettfrom from "The Farm Press"

 

Among the most important properties are high nutrient concentrations (especially for calcium and phosphorus). Most likely, this is linked to a unique utilization of agricultural and fishery waste products.

 

"We believe that fish residues are an important portion of the high phosphorus concentrations. Phosphorus is really the number one limiting nutrient in the central Amazon.

 

What were the Indians growing? Tree crops? Row crops?

 

"There has been some pollen analysis. It suggests manioc and maize were being grown 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. In the pollen bank, these crops didn�t pop up sporadically but in large numbers.

 

"But all kinds of crops were grown by the Indians. Palm trees, under-story fruit trees, Brazil nut trees all were very important

 

On the differences between slash-and-burn and slash-and-char agriculture�

 

"We have very good indications that the Amerindian populations couldn�t have practiced slash-and-burn and created these soils.

 

"It�s also highly unlikely that a population relying on stone axes would have practiced slash-and-burn anyway. The normal soils are so poor that with a single slash-and-burn event, you can only crop without fertilizer for two years at most. Then the soil has to be left fallow again.

 

�Primary forest trees have a diameter of 2 or 3 meters. If all you had was a stone ax in your hand, you�d find a different way to deal with agriculture than felling these huge trees every two years.

 

�The difference between (the two systems) is the slash-and-char wouldn�t burn in an open fire. Charcoal would be produced under partial exclusion of oxygen. We envision that happening by natives covering up piled up logs with dirt and straw. These charcoal-making systems are still being used around the world

How close are researchers to duplicating terra preta?

 

�We�re working intensively. We don�t need to take any terra preta anywhere. What we want to do is become knowledgeable about how terra preta was created and then create it elsewhere with local resources.

 

�Research on this is ongoing in Columbia, in Kenya. I have research colleagues in Japan and Indonesia also working on this. At the moment, there is a lot of excitement but there�s a lot of work to do.�

How terra preta could help industrialized countries�

 

"We envision systems based on some of the principles of terra preta. And this isn�t just for tropical agriculture. This could be very important for U.S. agriculture.

 

"Terra Preta could mean a reduction in environmental pollution. What works as a retaining mechanism in Amazonia could work in the United States where there are concerns of phosphates and nitrates entering groundwater and streams. We have only begun to realize the potential of how this could reduce pollution in industrialized countries.

 

Luckily the principles of creating bio-char soils will be very similar no matter what area of the world you're in. Results obtained in Brazil will be pertinent for the United States.

 

In terms of widespread adoption, it's still some way away. There are still knowledge gaps. For instance, we know there are important differences in the effects of bio-char on soil fertility depending on what material you use and what temperature and under what conditions the char is produced. That's something we should be able to resolve within a year or two. Once that's done, we can take the systems to Extension Services around the world and make larger scale, on-farm research plots.

....................................

 

m, me-

I would love to know what the Japanese Soil Scientists are up too.

They may have been using charchol for a very long time in their agriculture.

Know any way we can get Japanese research?

[gost]

LOL about the alpaca poop, Michael. I like the stuff not only because it seems appropriate to making Amazonian soil, but because it's high in N and you can use it directly on plants without it burning, much like rabbit manure. Not only that, but I have a neighbor who raises alpacas and is happy to get rid of the waste. I add it into my compost pile and figure the extra microbes can only help the process.

 

As far as where I live, I'm in the upper right hand corner of the US, about 75 miles north of Seattle, Washington, in a rural area just below the Canadian border. My wife and I own six acres of land in the hills where we play at organic gardening, amongst other things.

 

Those are some good links you've come up with, Michael, as always. I've run across the Eprida site before and find it pretty interesting. I don't know quite what to make of the charcoal temperature business and how to apply it here, but here is a quote from the author of that presentation, Danny Day, in another article, specifically about Terra Preta:

 

" The initial phase of the meetings started with a review of the current

knowledge of man made soils called terra preta occupying an area of

the Amazon that total to twice the size of Britain. Carbon was added

to these soils in the form of a low temperature charcoal. Using low

intensity smoldering fires created these charcoals. By analysis, we

can tell that they were created 1000-2000 years ago and were part of a

soil management practice designed to take a yellow clay soil of

limited biological productivity and convert it into some of the

richest soil in the world. A thousand years after its creation it is

so well known in Brazil, that it is dug up and sold as potting soil. . .

 

". . . Low temperature woody charcoal (not grass or high cellulose) has an interior layer of bio-oil condensates that microbes consume and is

equal to glucose in its effect on microbial growth (Christoph Steiner,

EACU 2004). High temp char loses this layer and does not promote soil

fertility very well."

 

The implication is that the charcoal was produced at low temps, but he doesn't state the exact temperature range. None the less, it seems probable that because the ADE soils have a fair amount of "brown" (incompletely charred) charcoal present, it can be inferred that the temps must have been in the lowest ranges of charcoal conversion.

 

The temperatures that I'm using are much lower that the Eprida temps you posted above. I'm trying to stay within the range of 470-500F (240-260C), with the idea that preserving the bio-resins and oils is extremely important in the regulation of N, as indicated in the literature.

 

I got a kick out of the idea of discussing Terra Preta with the boys at the pub. Last weekend, while I was making charcoal, my neighbor Auggie, a retired logger who we buy eggs from, stopped by.

 

"Howdy neighbor," he said. "Watcha doin'? Fixin' to smoke some fish?"

 

"Naw," I said. "I'm trying to make some charcoal."

 

"Oh." Long pause. "How come? You gonna have a barbecue?"

 

"No, I need a special kind of charcoal to make something called Terra Preta."

 

"Oh." Another long pause. "That some kind of Mexican dish?"

 

"No, It's a type of soil that the people in the Amazon used to make to grow their food in."

 

"So . . . you're makin' dirt?"

 

"Yep."

 

"How come? Don't you have enough already?"

 

"Well, yeah, but you know, making Terra Preta just might be a way to help solve the problem of global warming. I'm just playing around with the idea."

 

"So . . . you're makin' charcoal, to make some dirt so you can fix global warming?"

 

"Yeah, something like that?"

 

"Well, ain't that something!" Long pause. "Say, you got any more of that home-made raspberry wine in the fridge?"

 

"Sure Auggie, help yourself."

 

Around here, everyone's used to my crazy notions. I'm known as the mad scientist/songwriter/farmer/computer geek with the loud electric guitar and the finest raspberry wine ever made. I owe it all to alpaca poop, I tell them.