[Terrapreta] Composting with Char

[Larry Williams]

Kevin-------You might consider two other regimes along with your  
suggestion below.

With your regime numbered as #1,

Regime #2 - bury some fresh charcoal in a forest soil using Erick's  
"mellowing" idea. I would suggest since this is spring in Washington  
State that the fresh charcoal be in the soil till early or late fall.  
I suspect that the biological activity will diminish considerably by  
deep winter, that is, what would the warmth of an early fall show?  
Scrape the charcoal, at some point, to see if it is dry or wet,

Regime #3 - place some fresh charcoal on a forest soil or on some  
rotten logs/wood and let it be exposed to the weather, notably clean  
rainwater rather than chlorinated or fluorinated tap water, and then,  
on occasion (4X), supply some urine. The fungus from the forest soil  
or the rotten wood should show up on the bottom pieces of the pile in  
due course. There was a very rich organic smell when the pile was  
moved to the swiss chard site.

In several different situations where I use charcoal and urine that  
smell was not present. I haven't figured that out yet.

Also note the size and quantity of charcoal used in each case. Do  
observe for any loss of charcoal that is buried in the compost. I  
didn't stake by swiss chard test and then tried to locate the buried  
charcoal a year after the pictures were taken and "the stuff moved".  
Well, maybe it didn't move and there were some other plants adjacent  
to my search area that I will up soon, but I didn't find the large  
pieces of charcoal where I expected it to be. The trailer in the  
background in one of the four pictures has been moved and last years  
veggies were removed last fall.

Have fun-------Larry




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On Mar 30, 2008, at 6:22 PM, Kevin Chisholm wrote:

> I would like to try some experiments of composting with char. Note  
> that this is not simply mixing compost with char, but rather adding  
> char to kitchen scraps and turning them periodically to aerate.
>
> Char will be low temperature char, sized to 100% -4 MM. I  
> tentatively propose to run with about 1 part char to three parts  
> compostable waste, by volume,  from the kitchen sourced compostables.
>
> Would anyone have suggestions on minimum or maximum amounts of  
> char? Or, any suggestions for other additives?
>
> Dr. Karve's process of composting "in place" seems to make the  
> greatest sense. Would it inherently be better to compost with a  
> soil addition to the char and vegetative matter?
>
> What about the following "recipe:
> 1 volume of charcoal
> 1 volume of soil
> 3 volumes of compostable vegetative material.
>
> When finished, this should be roughly 1 part charcoal, 1 part soil,  
> and 1 part compost. This could be added to the soil by tilling in  
> to the soil, or, by being spread on the surface, if "no-till  
> agriculture" was employed.
>
> Any other comments or suggestions?
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Kevin
>
>

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