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  • From: Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] soil fertility continuing ed
  • Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2011 12:37:05 -0400


On Mar 21, 2011, at 12:07 PM, William H Shoemaker wrote:

So I wonder if we really need, or benefit from biochar in the temperate
zone? I suspect it's a great technique in the tropics but I'm a little
skeptical about it in the area most of us grow our crops in.

Thanks, Bill. I've been wondering about this myself. I really would like to see some hard information about effects of biochar in various temperate zone soils, including specifically in soils with a fair amount of clay.

I think there's a tendency on the part of some people to look for a "magic bullet" that can be applied to all situations. I'm suspicious of the "remineralization" people for this reason: the people pushing this who I've spoken to at conferences usually seem to want to sell the same product to everyone, without any recommendations for checking first whether the soil and soil life in the particular field will actually benefit from it, or might in some cases even be harmed by it.

None of this is to say that such techniques can't be very useful for some -- only that we shouldn't assume that a soil improvement material useful in one field is necessarily useful in all, any more than we should assume that a tomato with great flavor and production grown in one location will automatically taste that great and do that well grown anywhere on the planet. Other people's successes are useful information, because they give us good places to start looking: but they're not necessarily the solution to our own specific situations.


-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale







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