[Terrapreta] Terra Preta and small gardens.

[Michael Bailes]

Fascinating to hear of your fist hand experiences Randy
Great to hear you comments on shade; it gives me hope for my shady garden
(Although anything edible the Possum usually gets first!)
interesting that your fertiliser use has droped markedly, yet you are
getting better results.
perhaps the char is soaking up the Miracle Grow. while mostly organic I do
use Miracle Grow as I find it very effective.
Stephen Joseph is always very proud of his huge root systems on his veggies,
which he attributes to charcoal.
I wonder if you added some pottery pieces, zeolite (or gypsum?) to your
soil, this would help "break up" the clay?
Michael

2008/6/24 Randy Black <terrapretablack at yahoo.com>:

> 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.
>
>
>
> 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.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 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
>



-- 
Michael the Archangel
"Politicians will never solve The Problem;
because they don't realise they are The Problem.".
-Robert ( Bob ) Parsons 1995
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /attachments/20080624/2a95ed42/attachment.html