[Terrapreta] Fw: Charcoal Injector

[Sean K. Barry]

Hi A.D.

Guttation fluids coming out of the leaf tips of some plants (e.g. strawberry).  I do not know how prevalent it is in plants in general.  Guttation fluids also contain sugars, minerals, amino acids, and vitamins, etc.  Would you know what the effect of putting these solutions onto soil amended with charcoal would be?  Can these "guttation fluid" solution dissolve more soil nutrients?  Perhaps these solutions might well feed the soil microorganisms like "vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhizal (VAM) fungi" and these, in turn, then help provide more nutrients to the plants growing in the soil?

Some work which Christoph Steiner has done describes how soil microorganism growth "blooms" when sugar water is added to the soil.  Could this be the benefit of "guttation fluids" too?  Maybe you could find some experiments about "guttation fluids" that would describe how they would be beneficial in the top 10 cm of soil, which has had 5 tons/acre of charcoal incorporated into it?  Maybe you might design and conduct such an experiment?

SKB
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Sean K. Barry<mailto:sean.barry at juno.com> 
  To: adkarve at pn2.vsnl.net.ini<mailto:adkarve at pn2.vsnl.net.ini> 
  Cc: terrapreta<mailto:terrapreta at bioenergylists.org> 
  Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 11:18 PM
  Subject: [Terrapreta] Fw: Charcoal Injector


  Hi A.D.

  Thank you for that information.  You sound somewhat knowledgeable about plant physiology.  I think that will be a great benefit to our discussions in this group.  Please remember to put the terrapreta at bioenergylists.org<mailto:terrapreta at bioenergylists.org> E-MAIL address on your posts, so that everyone else can see what you are saying.

  SKB

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: adkarve<mailto:adkarve at pn2.vsnl.net.in> 
  To: Sean K. Barry<mailto:sean.barry at juno.com> 
  Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2007 10:41 PM
  Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Charcoal Injector


  Most soil micro-organisms live in the top 10 cm of the soil. The top soil is well aerated and the microbes also get their nutrition in this layer through leaves and flower petals dropped by the plants on the soil surface. This makes the top soil more fertile than the deeper layers of soil. Plants have to send their roots deep into the soil because that is where the water is. But they also have a network of roots that penetrates the top soil, because that is where the mineral elements are. In fact many species of plants wet the top soil in the night through a process called guttation and re-absorb the water through the network of roots present in the top soil. This mechanism makes it possible for them to obtain the necessary mineral elements, which are generally absent in the water that they get from the deeper layers of the soil. If charcoal were to offer a porous substrate for the micro-organisms in the soil, then applying charcoal to the top 10 cm would make better sense than applying it to the deeper layers of soil. 
  Yours
  A.D.Karve
    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Sean K. Barry<mailto:sean.barry at juno.com> 
    To: Jeff Davis<mailto:jeff0124 at velocity.net> 
    Cc: terrapreta<mailto:terrapreta at bioenergylists.org> 
    Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 8:00 AM
    Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Charcoal Injector


    Hi Jeff,

    I can't say that I know anything about this.  I would think, though, that one could find a way to inject charcoal into the slot provided by a chisel plow, behind it for instance (if you even use this form of "low till" practice).  Anhydrous ammonia injection is of a liquid.  Possibly, you could pulverize charcoal into very fine dust, mix it with water, and inject it also as a liquid with the same or similar equipment?  Barring that, I would say that the charcoal needs to be "tilled"/"cultivated" into the soil.  Most, I think, consider incorporation to the depth of the root zone is ideal and sufficient (scary when you consider that alfalfa can root 15 feet deep?!).  Is it possible that the switch grass can survive being "tilled" with charcoal into the soil?  Maybe you could wait to let it go to seed, till the charcoal in then, water the shit out of it, and when the sprouts pop, put a little fertilizer on it?

    The "SPIKE" or the "NO TILL" injectors from NUHN look like the ticket for doing what you want to do.  I think you just need to make the charcoal into a liquid "slurry" maybe to use it in those equipment.

    Just some ideas.

    SKB
      ----- Original Message ----- 
      From: Jeff Davis<mailto:jeff0124 at velocity.net> 
      To: terrapreta at bioenergylists.org<mailto:terrapreta at bioenergylists.org> 
      Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 8:51 PM
      Subject: [Terrapreta] Charcoal Injector


      Dear List,

      Being a switchgrass grower I would not want to plow up the grass in order
      to add charcoal to the soil. I do not think that adding it to the top of
      the grass would do much.

      I do not know anything about these injectors so does anybody know if the
      below machines would inject charcoal into the soil but not damage the
      grass:

      http://www.nuhn.ca/prod_injector.html<http://www.nuhn.ca/prod_injector.html>


      Jeff






      -- 
      Jeff Davis

      Some where 20 miles south of Lake Erie, USA

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