[Terrapreta] (no subject)

[Richard Haard]

From: Jim Joyner <jimstoytn at yahoo.com>
Date: November 24, 2007 10:04:17 AM PST
To: terrapreta at bioenergylists.org
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] FIeld and Nursery Trials

Jim - Are you the fellow with whom I had a telephone conversation  
several months ago from midwest?? I'm not on the reading list at the  
moment and Larry sent your narrative to me.

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.

Conversations with Christoph Steiner and a researcher in Australia.  
Steiner was critical of the rate I first proposed and suggested less,  
and I drew back my rate to within the normal range of organic matter  
in our sandy loam soil (4-10%). If I was able to find a positive  
effect then I would work back to lower rates in followup treatments.

It is interesting that the second round of soil analysis have showed  
higher organic matter (not consistently though), in charcoal treated  
soil (with higher OM generally in every sample including controls).  
This could be an artifact of the soil analysis method, a sampling  
problem, or some sort of biological effect. Soil nitrate in all 28  
samples tested this fall ranged between 0 to 1 ppm or essentially  
zero. This means to me that this limiting element is tied up at the  
moment as more complex forms or as living biomass -- or is gone.  In  
late spring, May or so, after the soil has warmed up I will repeat  
the analysis, ($336.00 at UMass), to see what has happened to OM and  
nitrogen going into the next growing season.


It still looks like there response was positive.

Careful, Looking at the pictures of the Loncera involucrata I see  
subtile above ground differences associated with charcoal 1 - the  
treatment set shown. On the other 2 crops tested (swiss chard and  
Aster subspicatus) I could detect no consistent above ground  
differences within the same treatment blocks linked to charcoal. More  
later.

Rich H



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