Terra Preta - Dark Soil - Experiment

[BioMechanical]

just wondering where are you getting your char?

If I had any place to start a fire I would probably try making my own, but I live in a condo so that's not possible right now. This guy's biochar FAQ I have been reading (http://biochar.pbworks.com/) makes these recommendations for buying charcoal:

2.01 Where can I purchase biochar? How much should I pay?

Currently manufactured biochar is in short supply and is fully utilized for academic research projects. BEST Energies is purported to have a target price of AUD $200 /Mg (Mg is the same as a metric tonne) for Agrichar™. This is equivalent to USD $0.06 /lb, and would be very competitively priced.

The alternative is to purchase charcoal safe for use in the soil, which by broader definition, can also be regarded as biochar. In Britain charcoal is widely available in nurseries. In Australia, you can ocassionally buy Redhead brand bamboo charcoal from supermarkets, or small bags of horticultural charcoal. Much cheaper is to ask your Charcoal BBQ Chicken shop for a 20 kg bag of Mulga (Acacia species native to the Australia bush country) charcoal for about AUD $30 (about USD $0.30 /lb). This will need to be ground a little in a motar and pestle before use. It is excellent mixed in rough chunks in native orchids potting mixes. It purportedly has a pH of 6.0 so can be used on acid loving plants. Cowboy brand hardwood charcoal is available in the United States in 20 pound bags by the pallet, about 600 pounds. On sale, individual 20 pound bags have been available for about USD $0.50 /lb. For larger amounts, as in a shipping container, consider coconut shell charcoal, at times in mid-2008 available for less than USD $300 /Mg (about USD $0.14 /lb). Worth repeating: It is normally advisable to avoid charcoal briquettes because the binders used during manufacture can add undesirable constituents.

I think in the next few years we'll be seeing a lot of new biochar products coming on the market, but right now I have no clue where to buy it. And correct me if I am wrong, but I think that even "Agrichar" isn't available to the public right now. So I will be going with the Cowboy brand charcoal (http://www.cowboycharcoal.com/) which is sold at my local Lowe's.

Time to start crushing soon.

 

[jaykush]

ok i was jsut making sure, you can use charcoal from the store. only down side you have to buy it, oh and crush it. just make sure its 100% natural charcoal. some brands i have tested with are lizzari, cowboy, red oak, and the last one slips my mind. i have also seen a few local brands that fit the bill.

good luck and take your time.

 

[georgi345]

tremendous thread and a veritable library of info... many thanks to all you pioneers!!

re: pottery shards, does anyone here give much credence to the notion of their having a paramagnetic effect (viz callahan and red clay pottery), or is the general consensus that their prime efficacy lies in the direction of sheltering the microherd(s)? also, is anyone aware of any further info (published or otherwise) as to what the signature microbes of in situ ABE might be?

cheers
-g

 

[jaykush]

i am more than sure the clay shards have more than one effect on the soil. like the char it has multiple benefits rather than just one.

 

[Dis]

Jay have you ever tried a peat + coco mix with char? Any concerns with that?

Thanks

 

[jaykush]

Dis, i do not use coco or peat so i cant help you there. but i know others who do. and i think silver surfer used coco in his grow in this thread. they all get good results.

 

[DARC MIND]

another amazing thread, very informative
question
i wanted to ask if it would be a good idea to use 100% natural charcoal in my soil?
i came across a bag of http://www.allnaturalcharcoal.com/
and i wanted to know if its cool to use this??
do i have to burn it first or can i just crush and add as an amendment??
thanks and sorry if this is a dumb question, im still learning

 

[jaykush]

thats ok, not the best but it works thats for sure. you just want to make sure theres no extras in the wood to make it burn longer or hotter or whatever they do.

yes crush it and pre treat it and your ready.

by pre treat i mean soak in liquid fertilizer ( i soak in compost tea ) or apply to your wormbin/compost bin and forget about it. or add it to your soil mix that is sitting and "curing". the longer it sits the more stable it reacts in the soil, and the more life it holds.

 

[maryjohn]

Genius! Now I want some char for my worm bins.

 

[DARC MIND]

Genius! Now I want some char for my worm bins.

genius indeed!!
Jay you have been a big help, if i could, id roll a fatty for you
ill pre treat this every way you mentioned, ill get my brewer ready for some tea, ill throw some in my worm bin and my recycled soil!!
if i had more id throw some in my compost
whats your take on just throwing the coal in my ACT with out crushing? maybe i can crush it later or use the coal chunks near the bottom of some of containers??
thanks

 

[jaykush]

Genius! Now I want some char for my worm bins.

if your going to add it to your worm bins, put it in a blender and powder it first. and go easy don't add it all at once, add a little with each feeding. this along with rock powders, and certain plant powders creates some really high quality castings

genius indeed!!
Jay you have been a big help, if i could, id roll a fatty for you

a big fatty sounds nice about now, in fact that reminds me

ill pre treat this every way you mentioned, ill get my brewer ready for some tea, ill throw some in my worm bin and my recycled soil!!
if i had more id throw some in my compost

the key is not to rush, TP takes time, you dont get all the benefits at once, they build up over time for sure. if you add fresh char it will "rob" N just as with other high carbon materials (think of how people have used char for centuries to filter and absorb things) pretreating in a composting process for me eliminates all the hassles and is the smart choice(because you get home compost too which alone is worth it). i just add it and forget i even put charcoal, it becomes part of the soil.

whats your take on just throwing the coal in my ACT with out crushing? maybe i can crush it later or use the coal chunks near the bottom of some of containers??
thanks

it depends, some chunks are huge if you buy those bags, if you make homemade char you can get any size you want by using different materials. one way( although not the best) like you asked is to just add the char (preferably crushed to at least 1/4 inch or like perlite) to ACT brews, then when the brew is done you take the char now filled with nutrients and microlife and amend it, add with scraps from ACT brew. i still let it sit for a few weeks before using the soil if i do that method, which i don't anymore. and don't recommend it really.

and by coal i hope you mean charcoal not actual coal.

 

[Dopeboy668]

I would love to see what this does ina 5 gallon bucket. Lookin at the size of silvers plants you could grow some serious trees with 5 gallons of terra preta.

 

[onegreenday]

Hey anybody from Brazil want to send some Terra Preta starter
soil to North Amerika;

so we can get "authentic" TP microbes going in our gardens?

 

[montanaorganics]

I got a buddy who's sister goes to South America everyyear. She graduated a botanist or something, and I've been trying to mediate thru him to her. Dont think he is interested enough So i will try to get ahold of her straight- I have her email.

I know that South Americans are farming and selling the TP but cannot find any for sale, so this might be my best bet.

To introduce myself I am an organic gardener and a little bit of a soil head if you ask my wife, anyways. I have been building a diverse organic soil I reuse in my organic grow. I use many components and ammendments, I'll discuss these another time. I also do teas to feed. I recognize the mass benefits that bacteria, microbes and fungis have to offer and have done everything in my power to foster these, essentially I'm farming my soil as much as my plants. Makes everything easier. My thanks to burnone, and lavendar cowboy for a good start and everyone else on here who has lended any small bits of advice. Did I mention I'm a long longtime lurker, both here on ICMAG and in the day on OG.

Anyways, with my interest in organics I would be fool to ignore TP. First I saw articles about it on here. It captivated my imagination, though I was skeptical of its application for our professions and hobbies. Later I started seeing newspaper and magazine articles. I decided to give it a try to see whether it was everything claimed.

So, this last season I grew a little veggie garden outside. Originally the plot was a 2.5 by 12 foot cat box, residing on the south side of my house. I raked out the feces and rocks and returned them to the neighborhood, hehe. After removing a couple yards of soil I was ready to ammend and mix everything I had. I added i believe 3 bags-cu ft- of walmart mushroom compost(the shit, I believe 2nd to EWC, cheap too),also tossed in about five gallons of fresh coco. Retrieved a few logs from smothered fires and beat all the char off with a shovel. May not be proper biochar but I figured it was close enough to what was done by natives. Visited a couple hardware stores and came home with a couple of boxes of broken terra cotta. I put the pots in a tarp and swung them overhead onto the concrete. Worked beautifully, ripped up the tarp and pissed my wife off though, hehe. Of course, I added some old bones I found about my parents. Also I added a litlle of pretty much every ammendment I had.. probably 2 to 4 cups each of garden lime, bone and blood, kelp, green sand, rock dust, perlite and my biotone plus. Think thats it... oh duh EWC. When I tilled all this into the top foot of remaining soil I left all vegetation in place, so it was worked into soil. I mulched with a few inches of cedar mulch. Into this I planted multiple veggies and shiz and pretty much let it go. The corn freakin exploded out of this stuff! It kept growing like it was on a dose of crack all the way into september, at which point it topped out at 8 to 8.5 feet. I planted perennials from seed in august and had blooms within a month. I put three little trays of French Marigolds, and a couple little trays of violas in at the very beginning. The flowers did very well. I had carpets of red and gold marigolds going everywhere for months, and the violas also did most heartily. One of my rose bushes prospered and put off some very nice blooms. This all despite the fact that i dont know *&^%all about any of these plants... just about good soil. Now it is sure to help that I added all my leftover teas from the house to the garden, and watered like an obsessed fool. regardless my little plot looked like some successful cuban yard garden, I got lots of corn, and cucumbers and tomatoes. Bugs ate all my basil...&&^%$@# grasshoppers really like it evidently. Sweetpeas, though, failed over and over again. I dunno what I did wrong... too many variables, next year Ill do more research... seems like peas do great in crap clay, so maybe it was too airy anyways.

Anyways, knew I would rant, hey its only my second post after like three years of lurking, and my wife is really REALLY tired of me telling her all this crap about soil growing because of char and how I want one of those nifty backpack lucia stoves and we need this and we should try this, and did I mention I started vermicomposting yesterday?
hehe ok cya all

 

[SilverSurfer_OG]

High everyone

Really happy more people are coming on board with this

I am still perfecting my char makin but reckon i have it sussed now...

Montanaorganics it sounds like you are off to a good start! Getting some starter Terra Preta from S.America would be most awesome indeed!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Kaneh]

Anyways, knew I would rant, hey its only my second post after like three years of lurking, and my wife is really REALLY tired of me telling her all this crap about soil growing because of char and how I want one of those nifty backpack lucia stoves and we need this and we should try this, and did I mention I started vermicomposting yesterday?
hehe ok cya all

Sounds like your wife is going through same shit as mine! LOL
Have you done Lacto B. culture yet? Or have you builded any stowes? ...Your wife will love it!


EDIT: To stay on topic: I'm just doing my first "TP" grow. I got 10% charcoal, 10% W-castings, maybe 40% compost and 40% old soil. + chickenshit, guano and some other stuff. The mix sitted in compost box for around 3 months after I watered it with LB. I planted seeds directly in this mix. after 5 days I saw first baby-leaves.

 

[maryjohn]

So, this last season I grew a little veggie garden outside. Originally the plot was a 2.5 by 12 foot cat box, residing on the south side of my house. I raked out the feces and rocks and returned them to the neighborhood, hehe. After removing a couple yards of soil I was ready to ammend and mix everything I had.

lately I have been interested in parasites, and toxoplasmosis is really cool. It needs to move from rats to cats. So infected rats get their minds controlled by the parasite, and become enamored of cats. Cat eats rat, poops out parasite, rat ingests poop, the cycle continues.

This brings us to humans. And crazy cat ladies. Toxoplasma can ruin your life, making you a reckless risk taker, unable to follow rules or have social interaction, and giving you a very strong love of cats (the worst part IMO). Humans ingest it from food grown in contaminated soil, or somewhere in the home when there is a litterbox.

Maybe you already thought of this and you have taken steps, like making sure neighborhood cats don't keep using the spot, and it sounds like you removed much of the soil? Did you put it back? You should also consider deep mulching for a while, so soil does not splash up when it rains.

 

[xmobotx]

just hunting around, i found this

i m wonderin what a good resource might be for unfired pottery

of course, to me the best organic system would mean everything indigenous - but one must start somewhere right?

w/ OPs experiment, i bet the compost/biochar group would really shine in a few years of recycling - funny how coco plants do so well. But, that's like a kind of "shortcut" (i think)

 

[MrFista]

Very nice find xmobotx. That product is top of the line and there will be many here interested in it.

 

[xmobotx]

thx i actually bought a cowboy brand bag - theres a couple chunks floating in my aerated fish emulsion/compost/batshit tea now