[Terrapreta] Terrapreta on the Australian ABC

[rukurt at westnet.com.au]

Hi folkes,

While moving from Queensland to Tasmania I've been living without the 
usual modern conviniences--- no TV for instance. My daughter sent me a 
URL for the Australian ABC gardening show, "Gardening Australia". The 
show is run by Peter Cundall a very popular gardening guru here in Oz. 
Unfortunately I've lost the full thing my daughter sent me, but here is 
a quote from the website:

<quote>
PETER CUNDALL: When you think about it, gardening is nothing more than a 
series of experiments - we have great successes and the occasional 
failures and that's how we learn about these things. Later on I'm going 
to be showing you an ancient method of retaining an increasing soil 
fertility using charcoal. That's one of the experiments. But that's what 
this whole program's all about; it's about growing things and growing 
them properly. Let's just do it.

This week it's the mysteries of propagation by layering, revealed by 
Jane, and she knows all the techniques. And Jerry goes right up to 
Cairns, to enter the magical world of tropical butterflies.

You must be wondering what on earth I'm up to. Well, I'm pulverising 
something and the stuff I'm pulverising is this here; it's nothing more 
than charcoal. I got this off an old wood heap. Right? Why am I 
pulverising it? Because I'm going to use it as a base for a fertiliser. 
There it is. It's black and it's gritty-looking and it's still a bit 
lumpy. There it is there. Right? So what do you do with this. Well, 
charcoal alone is not a fertiliser but it's highly absorbent, so I'm 
going to put a fertiliser in it, and this is an ancient method. Here's 
about, what, about three litres of water. Into that goes no more than 
about half a cup, at the very most, of fish emulsion, the same amount of 
seaweed concentrate - that contains a lovely balance of trace elements - 
and some of this stuff here. These are trace elements, they're soluble, 
and about four teaspoonfuls in there like that. See? And now to mix them 
up.

They dissolve quite marvellously and, look, straight on top of the 
charcoal like that, to give it a good soaking. It's good if this was 
soaking overnight, by the way. There it is. Right? I'll take this thing 
off, so it can pour better. There you are. Right in there like that. 
That will soak in there beautifully. Now - it's just like baking a cake, 
isn't it? Into that goes, basically, the same amount of ordinary river 
sand. See it there? Mix it up a little bit. And there's something else - 
ordinary soil, it can be potting soil or any good soil, straight in 
there. So you've got this kind of a mixture of the charcoal that's 
impregnated with the fertiliser and the soil and the sand. Right? The 
whole lot together. Now look how I'm going to use it.

I'm going to plant some tomatoes here. I'll put this mixture right in 
the middle there, where I'm going to plant a tomato plant. There it is 
there. A good dollop. Watch this. Mix it in with the soil. Right? What 
kind of a tomato? This is Moneymaker. I'm going to put this one in here, 
like that. See how it goes in? See how I handle it too, without touching 
the stem, right in there like that, nice and deeply and nice and firm 
too, with all that charcoal stuff all the way round.

Now, this is an experiment. I'm going to put another one in, another 
Moneymaker, over here, but this time without any charcoal at all, just 
to see what happens. And what I want you to do is try the same in your 
own garden and let us know. And if you want the recipe you'll find that 
on our website. There it is, the two of them together. I'll put this 
sheath around like that, to protect it, and another one there.
</quote>

The show is very popular, I normally try not to miss it. I'll report any 
results he puts out on the air.
###############

We're moving into our new place, in Paradise Tasmania on Friday. 12 
acres, nice house, then the TP experiments will restart, this time with 
real seasons--- it's Spring at present, will have to exdigitate to get a 
few crops in and maybe get something harvested. Allegedly our summers 
last for at least 3 days :)--- well, maybe a couple of weeks. We had 
snow a month ago.

tatas all,

Kurt