permaculture

[Thomas Paul Jahn <thomaspauljahn@gmail.com>]

Dieter, I actually came to think that *you* - in particular - should try
biochar on your property in Portugal. You have repeatedly said that water
shortage is your main challenge.
Irrespective of your critism to biochar as a solution, or rather in line
with your healthy scepticism, I think you should give it a try on a very
small plot. I could imagine that this would kick-start your vegetation and
in the end lead to much more humus production than before.

It is not my ambition to find a solution for Florida or any other big
project. Big project such as geoengeneering destroy local efforts.
I want to encourage people to experiment themselves. 'Research' will always
only suggest package solutions. And they are never ideal for more than one
particular situation.

In particular with biochar, we cannot wait and rely on others research. We
gotta experiment ourselves.

thanks for the link to "die schwimmenden Gärten"

Thomas





2011/11/19 Dieter Brand <diebrand@yahoo.com>

> Cory,
>
> Perhaps you are right that biochar is a good choice a place like Florida –
> especially on sandy soils.  I have no experience with that.  I do share
> your problem of high temperatures, but in my semi-arid climate, I don’t
> have the advantage of the huge amounts of biomass that can be produced in
> the humid tropics.  I think whether or not one uses biochar, in a climate
> like yours one should in any case let nature produce as much biomass as
> possible and return it to the soil without tilling by “slash and drop” as
> in the frijol tapado.  The export of European farming methods including
> deep plowing is in large part responsible for the destruction of tropical
> soils and loss of SOM.
>
> Raoul and Annie Francé, two biologists who investigated soils worldwide
> for over 40 years in the first half of the last century and who first came
> up with the concept of Edaphon for the community of all soil organisms,
> considered that the most fertile soils are to be found in the humid
> tropics.  On page 96 of her final work entitled “A last chance for a future
> without penury” she describes swimming gardens maintained by natives in
> different parts of Latin America.  I post a copy of the German original
> below because I don’t have the time to translate the whole.  She calls
> these swimming gardens “detritus islands” of several meters in depth that
> where constantly replenished with all kinds of organic materials including
> Guano and fish.  She said that this organic detritus would burn in the
> scorching sun to produce “ideal humus” which the natives had known to make
> since ancient times.  The gardens where moored in lakes, rivers or other
> bodies
>  of water by poles and cultivated from boats since the ground wasn’t firm
> enough to stand on.   She also describes how these swimming gardens would
> produce one crop after the other of giant corn or vegetables without any
> harvest loss whatsoever.
>
> I wouldn’t be surprised if this is exactly how tera preta was formed in
> the Amazon region.
>
> Dieter
>
> Das Wunderbarste an ähnlich seit Urzeiten ausgenützter Verlandung sind die
> Schwimmenden Gärten in Mexiko. Es gab sie früher, ehe der Barbar Pizarro
> in das wohlgeordnete Staatswesen der Inkas einbrach, überall im Land, vor
> allem am Titicacasee. Heute sieht man sie nur noch in Xochimilko. Sie
> schwimmen buchstäblich auf dem stillen Wasser der Kanäle. Es sind
> meterhohe Detrituseilande, die immer wieder neu aufgeschüttet und zuweilen
> von hohen Pfählen festgehalten werden. In der brütenden Sonne erhitzt sich
> der aus Sinkstoffen abgesetzte Schlamm, der landesüblich nur mit
> ruderförmigen
> Spaten bearbeitet wird. Eine unvorstellbare, unschilderbare Lebensfülle
> wimmelt in dem feuchten, warmen Grund. Es ist ein Idealhumus,
> den, man weiß nicht wann, die Indianer sich so geschaffen haben und den
> auch Ureinwohner von Peru, noch weit früher als die Inkas, herzustellen
> verstanden. Bei ihnen werden solche schwimmenden Gärten an den kurzen
> Küstenflüssen angelegt, und die Frauen, denen diese Arbeit obliegt, fahren
> in
> Kähnen zu ihnen hinaus und säen und ernten oft nur vom Kahn aus, da der
> Schlammboden nicht fest genug ist, daß man ihn betreten kann. Obendrein
> wird der Grund noch mit sorgfältig gesammeltem Guano gedüngt, außerdem
> mit Fischen. (Diese letztere Sitte ist den meisten Indianerstämmen gemein.)
> Riesig schießt der Mais mit halbmeterlangen Kolben auf, Bohnen, Gemüse,
> Früchte aller Art, die farbenprächtigsten Blumen, alle Faserpflanzen,
> Baumwolle, Nesseln, als Einfassung oft Agaven — alles gedeiht in
> unbeschreiblicher
> Üppigkeit. Die Jahreszeit spielt keine Rolle. Unablässig wird
> gesät und geerntet. Mißernten sind unbekannt. Unabhängig vom Regen des
> Himmels befruchtet das Wasser von unten den Detritus, der sich in uner
> meßlichem Überfluß durch die Pflanzenabfälle von oben stets neu bildet und
> nur vom seichten Grund heraufgeholt zu werden braucht.
>
>
> --- On Fri, 11/18/11, Cory Brennan <cory8570@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Biochar is not indicated for every
> > climate and soil and is not a cure all.  I don't see any
> > need for it in clay soils, personally.  It works in the
> > Amazon and it can work in places like Florida, with sandy
> > soils almost devoid of organic material (because it washes
> > right thru the soils, or bakes off in the sun, etc). Note
> > that "terra preta" is a combination of organic materials,
> > minerals and biochar, and they all work together to create
> > the end results.The jury is still out, research is still
> > being done, but biochar could end up being very useful for
> > stabilizing soils in Florida. One can argue that we could
> > just plant plants that grow well in sand, and that is true,
> > we could, and some people do. Understand that in much of
> > Florida, especially near the coasts, the "soil" is actually
> > beach sand, with almost nothing else there where it has been
> > disturbed at all.   We are having good results with gardens
> > by adding copious amounts of organic material that is
> >  well protected from run off and sunburn.  But if biochar
> > can be sustainably produced (which it can, from fast growing
> > woody plants rather than trees, and proper pyrolysis), it
> > very well could be an important aspect to soil building.
> >
> > Cory
>
> _______________________________________________
> permaculture mailing list
> permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> Subscribe, unsubscribe, change your user configuration or find out more
> about this list here:
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture
> Garden Hand Tool Sourcelist and Biointensive Gardening Guide
> http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/documents/gardening-hand-tools.faq
> permaculture forums http://www.permies.com/permaculture-forums
> Market Farming Mailing List
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/marketfarming
>
>


-- 
<http://jordforbindelse.wordpress.com/>