[Terrapreta] Terra Preta Trials 2007

[Kelpie Wilson]

Here in the Oregon woods, we are constantly clearing small trees and 
brush around our houses to increase our fire safety. We clear the 
brush and then make burn piles - spring and fall you will see small 
burn piles in every back yard. I asked my husband to try to make his 
burn pile a little cooler to make more charcoal and less ash. After 
all the small stuff - leaves and small branches - burned up, he 
misted it with the hose to cool it down and left it smoldering all 
night. The next day we put the fire out completely with water. We 
ended up with a nice pile of charcoal for the garden, about 3 
wheelbarrow loads of mixed charcoal and ash.

I figure that if nothing else, we are keeping some carbon out of the 
atmosphere by controlling the burn pile this way - we have to burn anyway.

Does anyone have any tips for how much of this charcoal to put in my 
garden beds? They are raised beds about 4 feet wide and 20 feet long. 
How thick a charcoal layer do I need? How deep into the soil should I bury it?

Thanks,
Kelpie


At 05:01 PM 3/24/2007, Richard Haard wrote:
>On Mar 24, 2007, at 10:48 AM, Tom Miles wrote:
>
>>We learn by doing. We learn by example. And we learn from each 
>>other. As far as I know..........
>
>
>And thank you Tom for the opportunity to interact with one another 
>and to spend time reading the collection of fine articles and posts 
>you are maintaining.
>
>Larry and I are preparing to burn about 1 1/2 cords of dry alder, 
>other hardwoods and some less seasoned alder and cherry wood into 
>charcoal. He is taking the lead on this and we will be using our 
>farm tractor to make a place in a fallow field next Saturday morning 
>barring a deluge of rain like we are having now. We're going to 
>attempt to keep combustion temperatures low by quenching the coals 
>at intervals and smothering the fire with wet  hay and sprouting 
>willow shoots. This is my first attempt at such a mission but Larry 
>has done this before and has a plan in mind.
>
>I suppose with a burn of such a size there is no way to monitor the 
>combustion temperature but it will be the proximate analysis that 
>will follow that will be the indicator of how we did.  Anyway, we 
>have invited some our local friends, interested in the topic of 
>charcoal in agriculture to drop by the farm and watch two grown men 
>burn a perfectly good pile of firewood. Hopefully we will wind up 
>with enough charcoal for a treatment set in our  container 
>experiments and another batch to store for a year in the forest 
>under-story to test next year as aged charcoal.
>
>There is another element of our interest and work in charcoal in 
>agriculture, for Larry and I anyway, it is fun. I call it 
>recreational science. Many years ago, Larry and I were conducting 
>our own separate researches on riparian restoration with native 
>trees and shrubs. I had developed an 'agricultural' approach to the 
>topic and Larry's solution was to use a lot of wood chips and create 
>in his words a structure for natural system establishment. This was 
>in the early days of our local restoration movement when we were all 
>learning to do this task. He and i would have a great time setting 
>up community discussions where each of us  would take our own 
>viewpoint and debate our approaches in order to get everyone  to 
>think about how they are doing their own projects.
>
>We were having almost too much fun doing these debates but I 
>eventually came to the point of realizing that Larry may indeed have 
>the best approach.  So I set up a meeting at the PUD office to 
>discuss a Washington Department of Transportation mitigation project 
>that was 2 years old and involved a heavy layer of wood chip mulch 
>before planting. We had the DOT architect there and would walk over 
>to the project after the meeting. I remember Larry at that meeting , 
>eyes got large and he said ' You mean I'm vindicated' ?
>
>With our charcoal work I feel we are at the beginning again and ours 
>is a screening test of a number of kinds of charcoal against 
>combinations with other additives,  and alone with commercial 
>fertilizer,  commercial compost, whatever ? , in a depleted farm 
>soil that has just finished an 2 year intensive cropping rotation. 
>We might just learn something from this.
>
>Best to all
>
>Rich Haard, Bellingham, Washington
>
>
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