[Terrapreta] growth

[Gerald Van Koeverden]

I'm sure that the inventors of terra preta used mud to cover up their  
fallen trees and brush to make charcoal!  It's still made that way in  
many places around the world.  In fact that would largely solve the  
matter of how they mixed the topsoil and charcoal, because they are  
both right there together.  In contrast, how much effort is it to  
work all that land every single year - six inches deep - to mix in a  
few pounds of corn stover charcoal for a culture that didn't even  
have one single draft animal for cultivation??  It doesn't seem  
feasible.  It makes much more sense to do it all in one shot,  
considering the amount of work required to mix the two.

But how did all this get started?  I'll speculate that they learned  
about it by accident.  Perhaps an understanding of it grew out of  
their firing of pottery and the disposal of the wastes?  From the  
photos I've seen of some terra preta soil profiles, they made lots of  
it.  Maybe the quality of their clay was poorer than elsewhere and  
they had to make it more often and thus...??

Whatever a month or so ago, Saibhaskar Nakka wrote about the terra  
petra 'signatures' he was finding in India - areas associated with  
the potter's work.  Maybe there lies the answer?  Baking of clay  
within semi-airtight containment, results in a mixture of ash and  
charcoal.  And these wastes were then used by the potters for their  
fields.  Maybe this was the way it all started in the Amazon?

To my mind, the real mystery of terra preta might not be so much how  
the Amerindians discovered how to use charcoal as a soil amendment,  
but why no other culture did!

Gerry

On 31-Jul-07, at 6:04 PM, Robert Klein wrote:

> I cannot see a practical way to achieve slash and char
> without using mud to slow the access to oxygen.  Slash
> and burn is global and we fail to achieve a
> significant carbon content.
>
>
> And if you are going to use mud, then you want to
> minimize the surface area of the stack as they do in
> traditional charcoal manufacture.  Corn completely
> lends itself to this process as I described earlier.
>
> As an aside, normal slash and burn will leave a great
> deal of uncombusted material that is easy to then also
> handle and haul to a biochar stack.
>
> The real surprise is that the locals caught on to the
> idea of producing as much biochar as possible to put
> back into the soils for the next crop.
>
> The biochar became their immediate source of local
> fertilizer.  It could have started as a simple way to
> put some organics in the soil that proved its worth
> over several seasons.   And corn also lends itself to
> that approach were direct wood charcoal or biochar
> will need to be pulverized and the unburned wood
> slowly rotted.
>
> I grew up near a nineteenth century camp site that
> still had plentiful campfire charcoal lying around
> doing no good.
>
> That again is why a culture designed around corn as
> the primary carbon source is so attractive.  Even if
> half of the corn is only well scorched, it will still
> breakdown quickly in the soil and not interfere with
> the growing process.  And well scorched corn biochar
> is easy to carry back into the field.  Wood charcoal
> is not.
>
> The point of char in the soil is that it will grab and
> hold nutrients for a while in the face of leaching.
> This will be true even in the beginning and we
> obviously can expect accumulation over sustained
> cropping.
>
> In any event, we need to run field tests to remaster
> the method.  And it needs to be done in the Amazon
> over a dozen crop cycles.
>
>
>
> --- Gerald Van Koeverden <vnkvrdn at yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
>> I'm on Sean's side in this debate.  To get enough
>> charcoal into the
>> soil to jump-start the process and get ahead of the
>> leaching by
>> torrential monsoons, I suspect they would have had
>> to do slash-and-
>> char of the tropical forest.
>>
>> (A huge tree can be brought down simply by girdling
>> it and letting it
>> die, and then burning away at the base to bring it
>> down, (or maybe
>> even encouraging the termites attack it?)
>>
>> It's possible that corn stover was charred as well,
>> as you described,
>> but to maintain and up the quantity of char in the
>> soil, rather than
>> jump-start the process.  I would strongly doubt that
>> there could be
>> enough char produced from a few crops of corn to
>> counter the leaching
>> sufficiently to maintain and build fertility.
>>
>> The only thing that the presence of corn and cassava
>> pollen proves is
>> that those crops were grown on, or near, that land.
>> In fact, I've
>> read that Brazilians of the present day avoid
>> planting cassava on the
>> terra pretas.  Cassava doesn't produce enough shade
>> cover to compete
>> successfully against the heavy weed infestations
>> that 'plague' the
>> nutrient-rich TPs.
>>
>> gerry
>>
>> On 31-Jul-07, at 1:07 PM, Robert Klein wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Sean
>>>
>>>
>>> This goes to the heart of the problem facing the
>>> originators of the terra preta soils.
>>>
>>> 1     They did not have the tools to physically
>> handle
>>> the available biomass.  We actually have
>> limitations
>>> today.  Their solution was as always to use slash
>> and
>>> burn.  The burn off of the undergrowth would also
>> kill
>>> off the larger trees which would then rot out over
>> the
>>> next two years or so.  Remember, that this is the
>>> Amazon.
>>>
>>> 2    The ash would provide the nutrients for corn
>> and
>>> cassava culture.  Without terra Preta methods,
>> this
>>> would be exhausted in two to three years.
>>>
>>> 3      With terra preta methods applied to the
>> corn in
>>> particular, and a continuing burn off of the field
>> to
>>> suppress weeds and regrowth we get the resultant
>> soils
>>> with a modest labor input.
>>>
>>> 4     I emphasize the corn because it clearly
>> produces
>>> the several times as much biomass as any likely
>> crop
>>> can produce, and it lends itself to the
>> manufacture of
>>> a biochar stack.  However, any other convenient
>> waste
>>> material that could be handled by hand would also
>> be
>>> thrown into the stack.
>>>
>>> 5    Pollen analysis has confirmed the two
>> principal
>>> crops of corn and cassava, which ended any
>> uncertainty
>>> I might have had.
>>>
>>> The problem is that the only energy available to a
>>> farm family then was their own.  That is the over
>>> riding constraint that we cannot avoid.
>>>
>>> --- "Sean K. Barry" <sean.barry at juno.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Robert,
>>>>
>>>> You said this again, (and I questioned before
>>>> whether you meant what you had posted before) ...
>>>>
>>>> "As I posted a while back, the only practical way
>>>> that
>>>> the soils in the Amazon could have been created
>>>> would
>>>> have been in conjunction with the bio charring of
>>>> corn
>>>> stover."
>>>>
>>>> Why do you think the Ancient Amazon rainforest
>> had
>>>> corn, circa 2500 B.C. or since?  I think, like
>> now,
>>>> that there is far more "rainforest" fauna in that
>>>> biome (i.e. big trees, in a jungle, like American
>>>> Mahogany trees, etc.), rather than corn, or maze.
>>>> Don't you?  There surely is now.  Is there any
>>>> evidence that the charcoal in the Amazon is from
>>>> corn stover?  The native soils (without charcoal
>>>> amendments) in the Amazon rain basin are Antisol
>> and
>>>> Oxisol soils.  These are high in Aluminum
>> Silicates
>>>> (clays), low in carbon, and very low in organic
>>>> material (humus) or plant nutrients.  Corn will
>>>> hardly grow in this kind of soil.  It's kind of a
>>>> chicken or the egg thing.  Corn can't grow well
>>>> until you plant it in "Terra Preta" soil - "Terra
>>>> Preta" soil is made by amending soil with
>> charcoal
>>>> made from lots of corn?!
>>>>
>>>> Do you have any evidence for your conjecture?
>> Or,
>>>> are you supposing that corn stover must be the
>> only
>>>> or main source of biomass used to make the
>> charcoal
>>>> in the original "Terra Preta" soils of the
>> Ancient
>>>> Amazon?  Why do you suppose this?
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>>
>>>>   ----- Original Message -----
>>>>   From: Robert Klein<mailto:arclein at yahoo.com>
>>>>   To: Richard Haard<mailto:richrd at nas.com>
>>>>   Cc: terra
>>>> preta<mailto:terrapreta at bioenergylists.org>
>>>>   Sent: Monday, July 30, 2007 1:00 PM
>>>>   Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] growth
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>   Hi Richard
>>>>
>>>>   One of the great delights of doing science, is
>>>> that
>>>>   every experiment introduces new areas of study.
>>>>
>>>>   As I posted a while back, the only practical
>> way
>>>> that
>>>>   the soils in the Amazon could have been created
>>>> would
>>>>   have been in conjunction with the bio charring
>> of
>>>> corn
>>>>   stover.
>>>>
>>>>   Running test plots with such a biochar perhaps
>>>>   produced at several temperatures in conjunction
>>>> with
>>>>   wood charcoal comparibles would be very
>>>> informative.
>>>>
>>>>   The question, of course, is there any obvious
>>>>   difference?
>>>>
>>>>   Certainly wood charcoal needs to be taken to a
>>>> high
>>>>   temperatue to provide crushable charcoal,
>> whereas
>>>>   stover is far less fussy and much more
>> forgiving
>>>>
>>>>   Bob Klein
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
> http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com<http://globalwarming-
>>
>>> arclein.blogspot.com/>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>   --- Richard Haard
>>>> <richrd at nas.com<mailto:richrd at nas.com>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Some results from the 28 - 17 foot planting
>>>> block
>>
> === message truncated ===
>
>
>
>
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