[Terrapreta] Fwd: Praire is natures way of making terra preta.

[code suidae]

On 9/1/07, joe ferguson <jferguson at nc.rr.com> wrote:
>      I recall from somewhere in my ancient education that many areas of the
> US Midwest have deep loess soils accreted from windblown particles eroded
> from the mountains to the west (upwind.)

I'm in Omaha, and I believe that the soil I'm working in is loess. The
builder razed the lot my house is built on, then dropped thin sod on
top to create a yard. For this year I simply uncovered about 60 square
feet of the soil, loosened it up to about 8 inches, terraced it to
hold the rain and then planted. There is essentially no organic matter
in the soil and not much sand. As part of a cob-making project I did a
water separation test to determine relative proportions of sand, clay
and slit. As near as I can tell it's 1 part sand and 3 parts silt.

The plants do OK in it (except carrots, which are large, but fat with
many roots), but for next year I'll be adding plenty of compost and
char in an attempt to make it better.

--
"Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know." -
M. King Hubbert