Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[richard green <greenrw71@hotmail.com>]

Ive had a few thoughts along those lines. I believe the natives may have used charcoal for cooking, less smoke.. I also think they might have used chamber pots inside their dwellings for collection of night soils, covering the deposites with crushed charcoal and ash reduces smell. The pots were taken to the garden occassionally breaking a pot or two when emptying which would account for the clay pottery fragments in the terra prete. Pure speculation on my part. However I am less than a mile from the Gulf of Mexico my soil is sand, the sun and the rains leach nutrients quickly indeed. My results from addition of the innoculated charcoal have been great. I am not convinced that it would help every type soil. However if organic matter is diverted from landfills and converted into char, and the char utilized by farmers? Why not.  

Rick

 

---

Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2010 11:12:07 -0800
From: firekeeper38@yahoo.com
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [Livingontheland] Bio-Char learning curve

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>>

_______________________________________________ Livingontheland mailing list Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland