[Terrapreta] Field and Nursery Trials

[Jim Joyner]

Thanks Sean. I'll certainly keep that in mind.

In my 35 years of farming and gardening, nothing has excited me so about growing (and I've tried a lot of snake oil!). Even now, with as little as I know about Terra Preta, I'm telling every one I know to read about TP, that it is the coming real thing.

Jim

----- Original Message ----
From: Sean K. Barry <sean.barry at juno.com>
To: Jim Joyner <jimstoytn at yahoo.com>
Sent: Saturday, November 24, 2007 9:16:41 PM
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Field and Nursery Trials




 
 
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Hi Jim,

 

Thanks for this post.  It sounds to me like you have some valuable 
experience, very creative and promising ideas (SARE grants), and some abiding 
interest in making Terra Preta work for you.  I hope you may find ways to 
get projects started and if ever I could help, please let me know how?

 

Regards,

 

SKB


  ----- Original Message ----- 

  From: Tom Miles 

  To: 'Jim Joyner' ; terrapreta at bioenergylists.org 
  

  Sent: Saturday, November 24, 2007 12:49 
  PM

  Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] FIeld and 
  Nursery Trials

  


  
  Jim,
 
    
 
  You 
  may not have received Richard's reply to you  before you replied.  
  He said, "Our charcoal dosage was to bring 
  total carbon (OM + added charcoal ) to something less than 10%. We determined 
  this to be a maximum dose and not a dose for large scale application." He'll 
  provide the first year report to the list when it is complete. The plots have 
  been replanted with no additional charcoal and the test is ongoing for the 
  next 1-3 years. 
 
    
 
  If you go back through the field trials by the various 
  Cornell and U Beyreuth researchers you'll find that most applications land in 
  the 1-10 mt/ha range.  U Beyreuth found that most of the Amazonian soils 
  were 3C% or less. 10% is considered a maximum. See Julie Majors poster on arid 
  soils in Columbia etc. Most of these are linked on the TP site. They are all 
  listed and linked on the Cornell and EPRIDA sites.   
 
    
 
  The question remains of how much charcoal is required in a 
  particular soil in combination with other nutrients for a marginal gain of a 
  specific agronomic value such as yield, fertilizer reduction, 
  inoculation/healthy, etc. General formulas may apply as a baseline but if 
  there is value in terra preta agronomists will test the variations for 
  centuries to come. 
 
    
 
  We look forward to seeing what you finally decide to put in 
  the ground. 
 
    
 
  Tom
 
    
 
   
 
    
 
    
 
  
  
  From: 
  terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org 
  [mailto:terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Jim 
  Joyner
Sent: Saturday, November 24, 2007 10:04 AM
To: 
  terrapreta at bioenergylists.org
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] FIeld and 
  Nursery Trials


 
    
 
  
  
  Tom, Let's see, 30 gallons (assuming 231 cu inches per 
  gallon) is about 4 cu ft or 52 pounds for 85 sq feet, which is about 13 tons 
  an acre. Be interesting to know how they arrived at that rate. It still looks 
  like there response was positive. 

Sean, I guess I don't understand why 
  (Cornell) aimed at yield on nitrogen fixing beans. They didn't explain. Maybe 
  if one doesn't have a history of soil responses, that is the best one can do. 
  I too would start with legumes just to try to build up nitrogen, to see what 
  effect there would be on nitrogen or how much net nitrogen I could generate. 
  But I think it is the following crops that really count. 

If we can get 
  agriculture to the point we only have to replace the nutrients in the food 
  we've taken out, that is a very efficient agriculture. The delusion we 
  live with in modern agriculture is that NPK is all it takes to grow food, that 
  we are not mining other things out of the soil.

In my experience I've 
  applied as much as 200 tons of compost per acre, not so much for nutrient but 
  to try to get the carbon and CEC up so it would hold the nutrient. And, it 
  will, for a while. But then over the years (even with no-till) the carbon in 
  the soil will literally burns off so that no matter how much nutrient I put in 
  the soil, it is wasted because the soil can't hold it. It just washes away. 
  This has been the bane of the organic farmer particularly in the 
  south.

If, due to charcoal's crystalline structure (or some other 
  magical quality), it persists, the whole game of agriculture has changed. I'm 
  guessing, of course, but it might well be something like the paradigm shift as 
  occurred after WWII with chemical farming.

But I digress.

I 
  suspect, with proper amount of nutrients, one could grow in pure charcoal -- 
  don't know why anyone would want to, but it could be done. My guess is that 
  the maximum quantity per acre has more to do with economics than the 
  soil or even the crop.  

I find it interesting that terra preta 
  can be meters deep. Plants do move elements around in the soil. By having a 
  loosed subsoil without pans, roots will take carbon down year after year, but 
  I doubt that accounts for the pictures of the black soil so deep. (It's just 
  hard to think about a 2 thousand year time horizon.) 

Meters deep 
  charcoal clearly would not be economical. It would not be harmful, and even 
  though there would be some benefits in having biochar so deep, those benefits 
  could be accomplished better and cheaper in other ways. For example, in Guam, 
  after a super typhoon, we buried palm trees in land that was replanted with 
  fruit trees. In Missouri we buried saw dust up to a depth of 6 feet (in the 
  sub soil) before planting grapes. Both worked great for giving the plants a 
  store of moisture and showed clear benefits over planting without. And the 
  biomass can take decades or longer to go away.

I think, generally, it 
  would be better to put charcoal in the soil in one shot rather many. First, 
  the expense of doing it, not including the charcoal, is significant. Second, 
  often such tillage or plowing is two steps forward and one back as there can 
  be a loss of erosion control and the loss of soil structure itself. 
  

BTW, has anyone considered the SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research 
  and Education) program? They give out completive grants every year for both 
  research and education. Their grants can be in the hundreds of thousands $ and 
  for multi-year projects. They even have up to $10,000 grower and graduate 
  student grants for demonstrations and just good ideas. 

The thing about 
  terra preta research, it wouldn't seem that any one would be threatened. Until 
  they became trendy we had a terrible time getting funding for anything 
  "organic" because some private university funders (read chemical companies) 
  did everything they could to stop them. But , it seems TP has something for 
  everyone. I mean, even if it lowered the per acre use of chemicals for 
  conventional farmers, it would still probably make agriculture as a whole, 
  grow. It might even make up for the loss of the obscene subsidies large 
  American farmers get (at least I hope they lose 
  them).

Jim


 
    
 
  
  
  

  Be a better pen pal. Text or chat with friends inside 
  Yahoo! Mail. See 
  how.

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