[Terrapreta] Terra Preta and small gardens.

[Greg and April]

If you have room, get some rabbits, they are great at building the worm population, when you don't have room for any other livestock.

You can also feed them on the extra leaf growth.


Greg H.


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Randy Black 
  To: Terrapreta at bioenergylists.org 
  Sent: Monday, June 23, 2008 11:01
  Subject: [Terrapreta] Terra Preta and small gardens.


        Julian, 

         

        I am in my second year of a Terra Preta garden in raised beds. I started with almost pure clay soil that was almost completely sterile and added charcoal and biochar. My first year things did ok but not exceptional except for tomatoes which did well. I added a lot of organic material last fall including last year’s compost and lots of dead leaves. This year my garden is doing great and producing sugar snap peas, peas, lettuce, spinach, yellow squash, and broccoli. The difference is tremendous.

         

        Also last year when I started I had no worms in the entire garden but this year I have 5-8 in almost every shovelful! I can also see the difference in how the dirt looks and works. Still have lots of clay but I am getting more dark color and variety of microbial life, slugs, and other crawly things.

         

        As far as fertilizing last year I did a lot of Miracle Grow in the water and did that only twice this spring (when I panicked and thought I needed it), but none in the last month and everything is still doing well.

         

        From all my reading I got that it takes 3-5 years to establish a good Terra Preta garden but I think with adding organic matter (and according to my reading it doesn’t matter what kind more or less), it might not take so long.

         

        All my information is anecdotal and it might be that just adding organic matter would have done the same thing but I think not. One reason for this is that when I have been harvesting my lettuce and spinach I have had so much that I just pull it out by the roots to thin the beds. I notice that often the roots have grown into some of the larger pieces of charcoal and as I pull the plants up I get the charcoal hanging off the ends. I don’t think that would happen unless the roots were getting nutrients out of the charcoal. 

         

        One other thing that I did that maybe a good Terra Preta Practice is that after last years harvest I piled all my grass clippings, leaves, compost, and the rest of my charcoal (not much), in a layer about two feet think on my garden. I let it set till this spring (it all sank down to about 6 inches), and then raked it off to the side as it had not sufficiently decomposed to garden. I thought I would try and garden this pile also and am getting good results. This pile I will work into the soil in the fall as I am reworking my beds location to get more sunlight. 

         

        Also right now my garden only gets about 4-5 hours of sunlight as it is by the house and shaded most of the day by the neighbors trees. I am still getting good production even with this minimal sunlight. 

         

        I am a true believer in the claims that most people make about Terra Preta and its enhanced crop production. I also believe that charcoal may make the best soil amendment based on my experiment with my clay soil (acts like sand for aeration and the organic matter and the microbial action makes silt like conditions). 

         

        My only concern (and this may prove to be groundless time will tell), is the increased plant leaf growth may make too much growth and crowd out other plants. Right now my broccoli is 2 and ½ feet tall and taking over lots of space.

         

        Randy Black

         


       




------------------------------------------------------------------------------


  _______________________________________________
  Terrapreta mailing list
  Terrapreta at bioenergylists.org
  http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/biochar/
  http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org
  http://info.bioenergylists.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /attachments/20080623/a2dc76b0/attachment.html