Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >Have any of you read anything on the internet about "terra preta" soils ?

'Terra preta' is of course Portuguese for 'black earth' and the super fertile 
areas in the Amazon basin where it occurs the black has been identified as 
charcoal.  Using typical agribusiness thinking, gardeners here rushed to dump 
powdered charcoal on their gardens in hopes of producing terra preta.  Turns 
out, it seems, that the charcoal is incidental.  The archeology of the 
patches 
show that they were intensively gardened continuously for 3000 years and 
that's 
why they are permanently fertile.   Soooo ... in just a mere 3000 years, you 
too can have terra preta.

The soil here is inhospitable yellow and blue clay.  It is a good pottery 
clay, but it is hostile to tillage.  Red clay is an asset, but not yellow or 
blue 
clay.  It still grew a thick fescue sod, which didn't help matters either.  
Now, 20 years later, the garden beds resemble coffee grounds.  Time lapse 
photography of the gardens would show a continuous parade of organic material 
all 
that time.  

Good start.  Check back in 100 years, ought to be about mimimally broken in 
by that time.


James