[Terrapreta] Terra Preta and small gardens.

[David Yarrow]

hello randy,

congratulations on your garden.  few things satisfy more than the look and taste of fresh, healthy, home-grown food.  i can eat one juicy, tasty leaf off my bok choy or lettuce, and feel more satisfaction and nourishment than a whole plate of store-bought produce.  

and thanks for taking time to tell us your story.  it is always a thrill to hear of a new successful exploration into biological maintenance of fertile soil.  i find one such "anecdote" more inspiring (and digestible) than half a dozen data-dense science research reports -- not that i am adverse toward data or science.  i am impressed by the insights and observations embedded in your brief report.

regarding your leaf cover last winter: it is always best to keep your soil covered -- for several reasons:
keeps soil warmer in winter to increase microbial and insect activity;
keeps soil cooler in summer to increase biological activity;
keeps soil moister in summer and prevents drying out, baking & crusting;
smothers weeds;
lightens soil structure so soil can breathe;
weeds & produce easily pull out by their roots;
provides a steady supply of nutrients leaching from decaying biomass;
and more.

actually, nature does not like bare soil, and will do whatever possible to cover any naked ground.  in the northeast US, mustard serves this function; it's seeds sit in soil for decades, waiting until the ground is plowed or tilled.  as soon as mustard seeds are exposed to sunlight and air, they rapidly germinate and grow, shading soil and improving conditions so other seeds can germinate and their seedlings get safely established.  every spring as i drive around, i can spot newly plowed fields from far away by the golden glow of mustard blossoms.

however, next spring, don't rake leaves off your garden.  leave them on the surface as a winter blanket.  in the spring, either just pull back enough leaves to transplant, or plant right amid this mulch, or spread a thin layer of soil or compost on the mulch and plant or transplant into that -- seedling roots easily spread through this light mulch and proliferate rapidly.  if you sprinkle sea minerals (spring) and rock dusts (autumn) on your layer, roots find most of what they need right in this mulch layer.

i use a more developed method with several layers of various materials: sticks & twigs, leaves, straw, old hay, grass clippings, kitchen garbage, manure, compost, rock powders -- and this year, charcoal.  each layer is one to 6 inches thick; ideally, the total is 18 to 24 inches.  i rarely dig or till even hard soils; i let water, insects, microbes, and earthworms carry nutrients down into the soil, and lighten up and aerate it.  some folks refer to this as "lasagna gardening," or "sheet composting," altho in third world cultures, it's simply called "garbage heap gardening."  i first saw this method in the rural phillippines, then re-discovered it in 1991:
www.championtrees.org/topsoil/topsoil.htm

you can be sure indigenous amazon tribes used this traditional and natural style of gardening to make terra preta.  this year, i bought a backpack sprayer, and i also spray the mulch surfaces and plants with a solution of sea minerals and microbial inoculants to accelerate the biological activities.

your observation that plants grow well with only partial sun is more significant than you may suspect.  most crops will grow and yield quite well without a full day of sunshine -- if they grow in fully fertile soil.  as soil fertility declines, longer hours of sunshine become more critical and essential.  

my guess is the amazon tribes didn't clearcut large areas of amazon forest, practicing their own version of slash-n-burn.  rather, they found it sufficient to selectively remove most -- but not all -- trees, leaving a few with value for food, fiber, flowers, or medicine.  for example, one tree hosts a certain migrating bird that eats insects that cause a certain disease, so this tree species was always left to grow around any settlement.  at any rate, their homes, gardens and pathways were partially shaded by a few remaining trees.

trees were removed -- not by clearcut -- but girdling, then allowed to die and slowly decay standing in place.  in forestry, standing dead trees are "snags," and always peppered with holes from birds feeding on insects in decaying wood.  some holes are large nesting cavities; i've seen huge snags in ancient forests with dozens of nesting holes -- an avian apartment high rise.

my deeper point here is that the tree may be dead, but it's standing skeleton is still densely packed with life -- now in the form of fungal and bacterial biomass, larger microscopic lifeforms, insects...  and then there is all the energy still in that undigested cellulose and other carbohydrate and hydrocarbon molecules.

similarly, soil -- if it is fully fertile and enlivened -- has tremendous quantities of biomass, bioenergy and bio-intelligence stored within it as complex biological communities, networks and webs.  these dense, complex, living systems take time to assemble and organize themselves.  but once these dense networks are in place, any seed planted in it is greeted by billion and billions of microbial nursemaids ready to feed the infant plant.  thus, this sort of biologically enhanced soil can rapidly grow huge plants

learning how to encourage, enhance and manage this living community is the greater challnge in this journey back to the terra preta of eden.  learning to make charcoal is simple and easy compared to working with this ecological complexity of soil.  so, keep your soil covered and shaded, or your will just have a sluggish confusion of steamed and baked biomass.......

for a green & peaceful planet,
David Yarrow
Turtle EyeLand Sanctuary
44 Gilligan Rd, East Greenbush, NY 12061
www.championtrees.org
www.OnondagaLakePeaceFestival.org
www.farmandfood.org
www.SeaAgri.com
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Randy Black 
  To: Terrapreta at bioenergylists.org 
  Sent: Monday, June 23, 2008 1:01 PM
  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/20080624/0b734b2f/attachment.html