[Terrapreta] FW: FW: Charcoal in soil

[Nikolaus Foidl]

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From: Nikolaus Foidl <nfoidl at desa.com.bo>
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 08:56:32 -0400
To: "Sean K. Barry" <sean.barry at juno.com>
Conversation: [Terrapreta] FW: Charcoal in soil
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] FW: Charcoal in soil

Dear Sean and all others!

In the wood clearing and burning as well in the normal 3 stones fire
­cooking and in the ceramics production at primitive level you have
something going on in common, you have soil, clay , silt, sand in very close
contact to organic material which is at temperature ranges from 0ver 100
degrees up to 700 or 800 degrees Celsius. There is a lot of heating,
condensing, smelting, adsorbing and partial or full carbonization going on,
as well a lot of hot gases of quite complex nature ( not only CO and H2 as
well complex organic molecules, benzol rings etc. are partially cooked into
the surrounding and accompanying soil particles forming complex soil
organics. As well every root surrounding soil is filled with plant exudates
and billions of more or less complex organic units( bacteria , fungi, amino
acids from plant exudates etc.)  All these are baked together with different
presence of oxygen, minerals, metals etc. and at different temperature
levels. 
So I don't see a simple and uniform process going on with simple and easy to
understand chemical and physical consequences. Now after this left soil with
all the ashes and char and torrefied pieces and as well baked soil organics
starts to bear life again and as usual in those biological processes its an
interactive life which will express itself. That means from bacteria up to
plant roots you have a full chain of living units working and reacting to a
very different environment and little by little you see changes going on.
Some of those changes are short time others could act or be reactive and
active as catalysts during tenth or hundreds of years.
We as well have to take in account that plants and all soil live are just an
incredible accumulation of self extracting and self executing programs which
have thousands of key conditions where sub programs are silenced and others
are reactivated. ( disease- defense reactions. Stress reactions etc.) Taking
in account that all those living species have started ( or there ancestors)
in a very different and chemically overloaded environment some 200 to 300
million years ago but still have those starting programs how to react to
that ( ancient) environment in them and then over there evolution started to
little by little adapt to the new environmental conditions adding ,
silencing, combining existing sequences of programs with new patches of
programs ( bill gates is copying nature with his program development style).
Now out of nowhere we kick the environmental conditions( in the burn zone,
ash accumulation zones, terra preta environment) back to an ancient
situation with overload of acids , ashes, organo -mineral complexes etc. As
a consequence I would not wonder, if we as well pushing the environment for
the plants and the interacting living around it to a more aggressive or very
different environment, we cause the silencing of newer and reactivation of
older programs. For the worse or for the better I don't know and in this
thinking exercise I don't care. We are all looking with terra preta to cause
something ³ better² or something more ³positive and stable², but I don't see
it that way. What we see at the moment are some consequences which are with
a high probability fitting in our reduced appreciation of ³good ³ or ³better
³ or more ³productive² but this is a very personal and subjective not a
objective approach to our environment. So we still all could be dead wrong
in our appreciation of ³ good² or ³ progress² in how we see this terra preta
and related on goings. Remember the modern environment and the modern use of
plants in monocultures and the last 100 years of attempted fixing of plant
programs are not really changing what took millions of years of adaptation
and selection. We are still acting more like hackers then like program
fixers.
Sorry to bore you with excursions into philosophics but some times we have
to re assert where we are and where we are going to so we can appreciate
more objective what we are doing.( self reflection is a needed tool and not
an esoteric crab)

With my best regards Nikolaus


On 1/11/08 4:16 AM, "Sean K. Barry" <sean.barry at juno.com> wrote:

> Hi Nikolaus,
>  
> Do you think ash content plays into converting carbon-in-soil +
> microorganisms, into fulvic and humic acids in soils?  How does get microbes
> to grow in soil?  Is charcoal carbon-in-soil (charSoil) just a structural,
> hydrology component in the soil environment?  Or, for microbes does it get
> involved with the chemistry of what the microbes are doing in the soil?  The
> pH of ash is alkaline, for sure, as well as unwashed char.  Washed char might
> be pH neutral?  Then hydrolyzed (washed?) charSoil, with mineral rich ash,
> mixed in, what happens?  Does that perhaps provide the chemical background in
> the soil for microorganisms to "create" their own "humic and fulvic acid
> environments", from the combination of mineral and carbon in the soil?
>  
> Or, does the biota create the humic and fulvic acids to deal with the alkaline
> pH in the mineral content in the soil?  I think I remember from organic
> chemistry that living system like to be able to buffer pH, neutralizing both
> strong acids up and weak bases? down to pH neutral.  Hence there things like
> bicarbonates in living tissues and mucus membranes that resist strong acids.
>  
> I need to read about humic and fulvic acids and what they are doing in soils,
> where they came from, and what they might be
> useful for.  Maybe humic and fulvic acids could be the preferred inoculents
> for amending into soil, along with charcoal?  The acids innoculants could make
> it easier for the biota to use the minerals otherwise alkaline soil mix? ...
> Because it enhances the cation exchange capacity?  Maybe acids improve an "ash
> & soil" or "charcoal & soil"  mixture to allow more minerals to be deposited
> on the site ? 
>  
> Somehow it seems creating humic and fulvic acids takes a long time, even if
> and for microbes.  I think we might pay close attention to the microbial
> interactions in the soil with their chemical "fertility" management.  Maybe
> you could find a way to put some humic acid on some of the soil in one of
> those "burn zones".  Then test if it doesn't help the soil to grow plants?
> See if doesn't add to the "soil + char + microbes + organic acid mixture, and
> give soil the extra thing it needed to fix its "organic chemical balances" and
> sustain it's "growth promoting" effects.
>  
> Could these be coming, originally from the mass injection of "biome-related"
> minerals on the local site?  The mineral ash from the fire was, after all,
> only harvested from once living biomass, with living biomass chemistries.  The
> carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen are as ubiquitous as water and living matter.
>  
> What are microbes doing with carbon-in-soil that works for them to promote
> plant growth ??!
>  
> How can you pile on a dense lay of plant necessary minerals into a soil and
> not poison it, without putting carbon into that same soil?
>  
> Good night.
>  
> Regards,
>  
> SKB
>>  



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