Amerindian Magic, Japanese Genius, and Mother Nature.

Here's a clip on Terra Preta for those who don't know about it yet, and for others like myself who can't get enough info about it. Take the ten minutes, it's worth it for any gardener to hear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-hSl59ET2A&feature=related

This is the basis of my recycled soil. My aim is to create a soil that needs very little of anything added to it. Why? I'm cheap, and I'm lazy.

I use char, ocean products, and rockdusts to amend my soil. These are the dry ingredients.

Then there's the 'living' ingredients: EM, compost, castings, compost teas, lacto bacillus brews.

Apart from EM, and tea ingredients which both go a very long way, I have stopped spending money on my garden.

Many smokers who wind up growing weed get interested in other plants and next thing you know the yards being converted to veggie patches and fruit trees are being planted all over. Such is my case, and it can get really spendy if your soil is crap. I've spent plenty on lime and gypsum and blood and bone and more trying to fix the crap compact yellow clay soil but it has been an uphill battle and costly, in labour and cash. Poor performing plants, high maintenance gardening.

Recycling isn't just about saving the planet, that's a nice bonus, but it'll also save you bucks.

So here's my cost cutting tip for starters. I'll fill in details of things as I progress into the thread.

Bludging free stuff.

If you haven't got trees to prune bludge some untreated pallets, or other form of untreated wood, there's wood to be found if you look around. Char that stuff and get it in your compost heap. If it's for a grow and you want it quick, you can smash it up fine, pour in kelp and high N fert with water for a few days, (I add EM here as it's likely anaerobic - so why not) and then mix in castings compost etc, mix and rest it for a couple weeks... it's goodness.

Bludge rock dusts from sweepings in yards at landscapers or quarries, some quarries practically give it away by the ton. Jewellers who carve rocks have a nice mix of very fine dusts. Use sense and use a dust mask, with char and rock dusts. Pulverise your own if you're feeling hard.

Compost sources are many. Cafe wastes, grocery stores, produce stores and markets, restaurants, stables etc etc, your household wastes including most paper goods and foodstuffs.

My soil like many soils is severely depleted. The addition of run of the mill garden products and compost coming from plants in depleted soil was not making much headway at all. I was paying and working for every 'organic veggie' I ate. And I'm cheap and lazy, I almost felt like giving up, in fact I did at one stage, and made a greenhouse to grow in instead...

So - "my lazy cheapass guide to DIY veggies and herbs and healing crappy soil and stuff by installment" that's what this thread'll be.

Great stuff.

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Welcome guys. This is an ongoing process, so, we're on a journey.

The secret, as you hear many folk say. Is in the compost. But, as I mentioned earleir, compost from plants that come from depleted soil lack a certain zing to them.

That's where ocean products rockdust and char come into the equation. Compost plus rockdust plus seaweed plus char = good compost. Provided the C/N ratios are reasonable, and there's plenty of places to learn how this is done.

That's my secret. Go out on a HUGE BLUDGE.

Paper scraps, coffee grounds, lawn clippings, tree prunings, weeds, clean out your fish tanks and filters, all the neighbours weeds prunings and clippings. Try to make it as big and badass as you can.

Make the biggest badass compost pile you can right smack in the middle of a piece of your depleted soil, right where you want to grow veggies.

As you make this pile put in char, rockdust and seaweed, if only liquid seaweed wet things down with it. Check it in a couple days, turn it, once, twice, let it sit and finish.

3 months later - Now, if your soil is hardpan you will have to turn it once. Dig to a spade depth and water in lacto bacillus and EM. Then cover in compost, as much as you can spare. If you muck around being stingy with compost you will probably need to turn it next year as well. Try get 6 inches compost on the soil. A soil that needs little inputs is said to be over 5% organic matter, my crappy soil's organic matter is about 0.5 % and composed of root feeding nematodes and other problematic bastards.

This compost has several vital things for bad soil. Organic matter for the microbial population, housing and added porosity, wide range of minerals for microbial diversity, and all the critters needed to start converting your rubbish soil to black gold.

This extreme composting effort pays dividends. Convert each new piece of ground to viable soil doing the same thing. Once you have covered the ground you require in loads of compost you can get around to what you'd really like to be doing in your yard, working in and admiring the gardens, and feeding you and yours.

Yes, I know, bigassed pile sound like work, not laziness. But, when you consider the effort in turning hardpan soil over each season to make it loose enough to grow tiny veg with, it's worth the initial effort many times round to turn your garden into something that you don't have to till, something that feeds you yours and the neighbours, something to be proud of.

Do a lot of contemplating, use your bong and your armchair to full advantage.

The character Tom Sawyer was a personal role model in laziness. The story in which he convinces other children that painting a fence is fun to save himself the effort of painting it... I've commisioned several jobs over the years in a similar manner. There was a gardener needed lots of compost so he made a free yard waste tipping site with size restriction on the wood, and everyone came and made a huge pile for him.

Laziness should never be confused with stupidity, laziness is smart.

You could flyer your neighbourhood and offer to take their autumn leaves away for free, provided they bag them. Give them bags each season, even. The possibilities are many. If you drive past a produce store each week it's minimal effort to exchange a couple of buckets you provide, or wheelie bins, each week. And take that home to compost. Getting them to bring it to you is always best, but minimise effort where you can.

Getting lots of good compost going fixes so many other things. It assists laziness.

No more working to buy garden products - I prefer my hard earned cash gets spent on good times (and bills). Gardening reduces the food bill, but the fertiliser and product pathway reduces the savings considerably and gives an inferior product. Loads of compost all but removes your need for garden products, and if you or yours is good in the kitchen, the food bill gets drastically reduced as well.

No more digging. Sure, you got to give the real compact stuff a turn, but adding enough compost removes the need to dig in the future. Just keep adding compost instead of ferts, and you build good soil over the untenable crap. Meanwhile microbes worms insects etc and plants roots will begin migrating into and rejuvenating the bad soil beneath.

No more weeding - ok, I lie. But a layer of thermally composted compost should contain very few viable weed seeds, and mulching with the same material drastically reduces the need to weed.

Less watering. A healthy soil holds water. So instead of holding a hose you can be holding a drink with an umbrella and a home grown cherry on a toothpick you carved out yourself while watching the neighbour sweat over his spade.

Less Tai Bo and aerobics. That's right. You won't be as fat if you're eating out of the garden all the time. Save your sweatband for doing Jimi impressions on guitar hero.

Tom Sawyer knew how to commision help and save himself effort and so do gardeners who are passionate and knowledgeable about compost. Billions of microbes and millions of critters do things to your soil that all the blurbs on the products promise but rarely deliver.

So don't sweat it, get in your armchair and swot it instead:

How do I make good thermal compost?
Where can I get loads of organic inputs?
How can I locate/make some char?
Can I source seaweed?
Where's the free rockdust at?

Answering these questions then applying the knowledge to build compost will solve a lot of problems and ultimately save you a lot of work.

haha
this is awesome, i can answer all those questions and truly relate to the way you think about compost. i sometimes let compost cure on a empty spot in my garden, only to find a hord of critters come time to spread it around.
good compost is black gold

What a wonderful thread! I absolutely love the biochar idea! Learning is always a good time + rep Mr Fista!

Thanks for teaching me the word "bludging".

ure, you got to give the real compact stuff a turn, but adding enough compost removes the need to dig in the future. Just keep adding compost instead of ferts, and you build good soil over the untenable crap

Click to expand...

I wanted to suggest an alternative to tilling or only building up, which is using native annual weeds to bust up soil. Then you mow it down, leaving the roots. Tilling leaves a hardpan beneath the turned material. There is a device that aerates soil by taking plugs out rather than using spikes. You want to avoid creating airspace in one place by compacting another.

The secret, as you hear many folk say. Is in the compost. But, as I mentioned earleir, compost from plants that come from depleted soil lack a certain zing to them.

Click to expand...

This really depends on the plant. Especially in clay, there are tons of nutrients. In most cases, plants with very deep roots, even in poor soil, will be chock full of good stuff. Squash, alfalfa, burdock, etc... Many plants can be used as "mothers". They set down roots, and your crop plant can follow it.

This book, which Jaykush turned me on to, gives a great explanation. It will make you even lazier.

Hello again! I don't mean to disrupt the flow of this thread but to add to it and disseminate some good information. Since first reading this thread (yesterday morning) I've stumbled upon some really neat and easy ways to do bio char and have also found a page which describes how to make "terra preta" (literally “black earth” in Portuguese,) from bio-char.

As I understand it the difference between terra preta and bio char is simply this; Bio-char is basically stand alone charcoal where terra preta is the same charcoal infused with other organic materials such as "nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), calcium (Ca), zinc (Zn), manganese (Mn)..." plus any array of other minerals and organisms (wikipedia.)

I'll go ahead and list some easy steps to make some bio-char (a.k.a.- charcoal) which almost anyone can do. After that is one method to further your bio-char into terra preta. Most of this information comes by way of www.instructables.com (check it out, it's a VERY informative and highly practical site)with a little help from the wiki-pedia. I should say that I have yet to try this myself but I would think we can trust that these techniques do work and well.



Easy as pie bio-char.
(adapted and simplified from here; http://www.instructables.com/id/Making_Your_Own_Charcoal/ )


(1) Collect your raw material. This can be wood, paper or your garden weeds, almost anything of organic nature.

(2) Make a fire pit or use a pre-manufactured solution such as a metal drum.

(3) Burn your material until you see a bed of coals.

(4) Remove the coals with a shovel and simply set them on any relatively smooth, non-combustible surface.

(5) Cover the coals with something like a grill cover (vents closed) and wait 1 hour or more then let the charcoal cool down.

(6) Gather your charcoal.

(7) Reduce the size of the charcoal to that of a peanut or smaller.

Tada! Bio-char, easy as pie.





Bio-char to terra preta.
(adapted and simplified from here; http://www.instructables.com/id/Mak..._Preta/step5/Making-Biochar-into-Terra-Preta/ )


(1) Put your bio-char into any non-leaching, sturdy container

(2) To your bio-char add compost, leaf mold, LAB serum, kelp etc. then vigorously mix. Anything which is good for the earth will do. I guess the ancients also used broken clay pottery (reputed to trap toxins,) but that is optional.

(3) Spread the mix around on your soil. Try and see if you can recondition an area where nothing will grow.

Tada! Terra Preta!


Here's a set of pictures from a wiki article on terra preta. The left is a shot without terra preta and the right IS terra preta!;





For those of you who would like to do the bio-char on your home grill; http://www.instructables.com/id/Capture-CO2-with-Lawn-Trimmings/



* All information in this post comes to us from either the Wiki-Pedia and/or Instructables.com

"you may not vote on any more threads today" lol


nice post spaceghost. be sure to check out the TP thread in the main forum.

mad librettist said:

"you may not vote on any more threads today" lol


nice post spaceghost. be sure to check out the TP thread in the main forum.

Click to expand...

Aww, thanks bro. You're kind I hope everyone else digs it too!

Very nice contributions spaceghost, thank you.

ML - yeah the weeds are great if you want to grow weeds and have years to wait for them to do their thing. Some of my section is native regrowth, some of it I want food from, and I want it in the immediate future.

As for clay being loaded with nutrients -errrr no. That's a generalised statement that doesn't apply to my situation at all.

The amerindians were blessed with char because their clay was total crap for growing food in too.

MrFista said:

ML - yeah the weeds are great if you want to grow weeds and have years to wait for them to do their thing. Some of my section is native regrowth, some of it I want food from, and I want it in the immediate future.

As for clay being loaded with nutrients -errrr no. That's a generalised statement that doesn't apply to my situation at all.

The amerindians were blessed with char because their clay was total crap for growing food in too.

Click to expand...

what makes you so sure of the time frame? or that it's about just sitting around and waiting for them to do their thing. You have to weed the weeds, if you will, and keep them under control. They certainly will do better for you than tilling. By better, I mean they will do you good, instead of screwing you. You want to check out this book jay turned me on to? Much like corn and beans and squash help each other (right away, not just over time), weeds can help your crops by growing right alongside them. They can help with water consumption, by clearing a path for the weaker food crop roots, acting as a catch crop, giving refuge to predators and their larvae, and I'm sure other things.

I'm a bit crazy for weeds, because I think back and realize i've seen them do their work.

It's true, I should have said "clay holds nutrients". In my neck of the woods, clay pretty much means nutrients. That doesn't mean it's easy to deal with. And that doesn't mean the plants can get at those nutrients until you get a lot of organic matter in play. But it seems to me you can put organic matter in fastest by putting roots everywhere and adding on top.

The amerindians who came up with biochar had nutrients all around them, just not under their feet. In some areas the aluminum levels in the soil are phytotoxic. Everything else, and the carbon, has been taken up into the ridiculously complex biomass above the surface. Life moves to complexity absent some cataclysm. That's the opposite of entropy I guess.

Anyway, I'm not sure comparing the ecosystem in brazil to the garden in my yard or yours is all that helpful.

Agreed - life moves away from entropy - you'd think...

It is more like - life is a transitional phase of materials moving towards entropy. We build things up yes, but to do that we are breaking down many other things. As we grow it takes ten steaks to build one steak's worth of biomass. So the entropy is continued despite life. Plants take base materials and create complexity, then the primary consumers reduce this complexity by 90%, then the next trophic level reduce the remaining 10% by 90% etc. Life is a temporary state holding some biomass in complex states, but not for long.

Edit: I'm still kickin', and I still love reading your posts MrFista

Entropy is difficult to get your head around when you consider life. It really does appear we are thwarting the rules of the universe, however, in a geological time frame life is merely a transitional blip.

...

Nice read,thanks.

the easiest way to break ground is by planting potatoes. dig a medium hole ,fill with compost and plant a tuber. six months later and after digging up yer potatoes the ground will now be in a better health. growing a legume crop that adds nitrogen to the soil can be broadcast between the potato stands. there are many quick ground covering plants, that help break up the clay, provide humus and habitat for worms. gardening is an art, and the plant species lists the palette. research and consideration are invaluable.
peace be with you all.

Now that I've made a twat of myself (again), it's time to move on and continue the pursuit of things organic.

The concept of 'weeds' is entirely correct. I was completely and utterly wrong.

I am also now using deep rooted weeds to good effect letting them flourish in some areas to provide mulch for others.

Dock, dandelions, sow thistle and many similar looking relatives throwing deep tap roots into hardpan clay soil and producing lush green foliage which I distribute further.

Over a longer time frame this is a great way to build soil as the existing soil with low organic matter is healing with very little assistance (some mowing). To rephrase, although it is a time consuming process, it practically works by itself and can be incorporated into a garden system easily. It's how you see weeds really...

One weed, which I have failed to properly identify, lays down mulch by itself without the need for my grazing intervention. It does this by growing a solid circular mat of leaves (very close together) which block all light beneath killing problematic grasses. At the same time all it's lower growth undergoes senescence and abscission (leaves fall off) adding to the mulch. Worms turn up and flourish under these 'weeds'.

Back to those big compost piles, and char and stuff.

I've amended my ways, I am even lazier now. I'll go roll a blunt then rave about it a bit.