Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Pego Rice <firekeeper38@yahoo.com>]

Hi Ken

 

I'm puzzled that this is still escaping some of us.  At least here where we've run it down so much that we're about even with current research.

 

Char is not an unnatural event in soil. Everywhere there is organic matter and a dry spell there is fire.  Various cultures have recognized that this will help sustain the health of an area, reducing pests and blights and adding elements to the soil matrix.  In the Northeastern forest peoples controlled fires were a regular event to clear out undergrowth and pests.  In the low activity soils of the Brazilian basin the people noticed that the Char bits anchored fertility into soils that would ordinarily GIGO it, so they built charcoal burns and painstakingly crushed and refined the Char, then probably threw it into a closed off fish-weir with fish-muck, urea, manure and whatever else they liked to use to bio-charge the soil.  This step made sure that the char did all it's absorbing before going into soil to do it's next 2 steps of matrixing and releasing productive soil elements.

 

In doing this, they concentrated a thousand years or more of fire and maturing soil structure into a few seasons and with a lot less waste of organic matter than the "mother nature" version which would have produced mostly ash.

 

Yours, Pego

<<Why burn up organic matter that the soil needs.? That is what nature would do with it.>
Ken>>