[Terrapreta] Charcoal in soil

[Richard Haard]

Hello Nikolaus - I was wondering how you were polymerizing your urea  
additive.


On Feb 9, 2008, at 12:10 PM, Nikolaus Foidl wrote:

> formalin you can reduce the volume of the fertilizer ( nitrogen  
> polymer) by some 99% . You don't have to transport water over 70 km  
> instead you transport 1% of the whole as a water insoluble solid  
> ( polymer crystals with a high N content)


I wonder if formalin use to extract organic nitrogen from waste and  
terra preta are not cross compatible concepts. We need to encourage  
biological activity yet with formalin, a commonly used biocide,  
denatures  proteins into forms that cannot be utilized by microbes.

 From Wikipedia  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formaldehyde>

Formaldehyde preserves or fixes tissue or cells by irreversibly cross- 
linking primary amino groups in proteins with other nearby nitrogen  
atoms in protein or DNA through a -CH2- linkage.

Perhaps this is an issue to consider when interpreting your results of  
charcoal additives in soils.

Also corn yields

200 bu of corn @ 56 lb/bu = 11200 lbs , average yields in Iowa 2006 is  
166 bu/acre = 9,296 lb = 22,961 lb/ha = 10,436 kg/ ha .

Agreed then yield of 2000 kg per ha is considerably less in Steiners  
research than intensive farming with maximum fertilizer input.   
Comparing Steiners research to intensive agriculture yields may not be  
comparing apples to apples. His work was on a randomized block study  
where additives were used only once in the entire experiment duration  
and comparision to other treatments not all corn farming is the  
purpose of this experiment.

Rich H


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