Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Pego Rice <firekeeper38@yahoo.com>]

I think Rick already mentioned that he had bee using that fertilizer already.  Rick and I must be reading the same articles, concluding that traditional practices included "activating" the charcoal with a starter load of fertilizers. I thing that those people may have used urine and fish emulsion amongst other things.   That makes the char a sort of slow-release reservoir, continually self-reloading.  The region that those people, in South America were dealing with had little topsoils and rain that tended to slush any nutrients away. 

 

Put into soil w/out that 1st step will cause a couple of years of draw-down of nutrients as the charcoal sucks it in.  That would be unforgivable for those communities trying to raise their families in the new regions.  They would be starving their crops and subsequently their families.  Bio-char is plainly not needed in most circumstance, but there is a real niche for it, or those people would not have troubled.

 

Yours, Pego

 

<<  This being a liquid fertilizer I commonly use. I am now into the last month of the third year and the yields thus far have exceeded my wildest expectations. I am growing the garden I had wished for. Simply put the ground/sand has come alive. Inoculate the charcoal prior to amendment to the soil.>Rick>>