[Terrapreta] Request for help for new Nottingham Bio-char Group

[chris braun]

Dear Brian,

Maybe you can find useful information here:
http://terracarbona.com/
(See also my corresponding recent posting to the Terrapreta list:
http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/terracarbona)

Especially the Field Trials Portal may give you advice and contacts to
help you for the plot trials. We are particularly working on the
tutorial which will be enhanced soon.

The Charcoalab Project can help you for the pot trials. See for
instance the "Charcoallab instructions" for a small tutorial:
http://bionecho.org/charcoalab/teachers.php

We are very interested in your group so please keep us informed ! And
if you have any question we will do our best to help you.

Sincerely yours,
Chris



On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 10:59 AM, Brian davey <brian.davey at cooptel.net> wrote:
> There is a group in Nottingham(shire) that has become interested in bio-char
>  and could do with some  advice and support from the scientists so that we do
>  not re-invent the wheel, do what others have already tried. Our aim in the
>  coming year is to do some small scale plot and pot trials  with bio-char so
>  see for ourselves what the effect on plant growth is. The sowing seasons is
>  rapidly approaching but so far our attempts to make contact with academics
>  who could give up the cutting edge advice haven't come to much. So this is an
>  appeal for help and assistance via the terra preta e mail list - either e
>  mail advice or, better still, someone who lives near enough, to get involved.
>
>  To say a bit more about our group. We are a number of individuals from a
>  variety of backgrounds - particularly gardening. We have also made contact
>  with a traditional charcoal maker and the Notts Wildlife Trust, has expressed
>  an interest in the issue and they make charcoal in a traditional way too. We
>  have also contacts with the Henry Doubleday Research Association who have
>  expressed an initial interest and, if they could find funding might be able
>  to do research, including with their network of members and supporters.
>  Further to that we have an interested contact  with a worker for the
>  Federation of Community Gardens and City Farms. Several of us have been
>  associated with a project called Ecoworks - which has 20 allotments gardens
>  in St Anns in Nottingham and runs organic horticultural training and supplies
>  restaurants and a box scheme. Ecoworks has just got a contract to cut hedges
>  on the allotments and it had occurred to us that the cuttings could be
>  charred. Several of us are also in Transition Nottingham and are linked with
>  Transition Bristol where there are gardeners interested in bio-char.
>
>  So we are well connected and have potential - what we do not have, is detailed
>  scientific advice on how to proceed. We would like to do small scale pot
>  trials and also we have identified a small area on the Ecoworks FRESH garden
>  for trials. However our latest readings suggest that it may be more
>  complicated than crushing up charcoal and putting it in the soil and sowing
>  seeds in the mixture. The literature and people we know associated with Danny
>  Day are saying we need to use low temperature char. Then there are issues too
>  - like what kind of biomass to use to make the char.
>
>  In the terra preta listing I saw the reference to the Scientific American
>  article from May of last year which says:
>
>  "In addition, scientists are finding it hard to replicate the original terra
>  preta soils. "The secret of the terra preta is not only applying charcoal and
>  chicken manure—there must be something else," says Bruno Glaser, a soil
>  scientist at Bayreuth University in Germany. Field trials in Amazonia using
>  charcoal with compost or chicken manure find that crop yields decline after
>  the third or fourth harvest. "If you use terra preta you have sustaining
>  yields more or less constantly year after year," he says.
>
>  http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=5670236C-E7F2-99DF-3E2163B9FB144E40&page=2
>
>  So its obviously more complicated and we need advice - like how much char
>  should be use? From what biomass? What plants are best used as a trial - in
>  the plot we have in mind using brassicas would be the next plants in the
>  rotation....What should we mix the bio-char with? How do we get low
>  temperature bio-char? Is it worthwhile doing initial experiments using char
>  made in traditional ways or must it be in higher tech pyrolisis equipment? If
>  it needs to be then how do we procede?
>
>  As I have said - if we can construct some experiments then they might be taken
>  up by other organisations like Henry Doubleday and the Federation of City
>  Farms and Urban Gardens - we might get some funding to do this and we might
>  be able to spread this to many amateur, community and small scale
>  horticultural gardeners but can someone point us in the right direction on
>  the practicalities please.
>
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