Terra Preta - Dark Soil - Experiment

[montanaorganics]

Thanks SS!

MJ
Oh no, I stopped to try and save an abandoned kitty on the side of the road just the other day! I think im infected oh no!

Hehe nah, I threw all the poop and the top foot of soil out into the road. Since moving in our three dogs and our big mean mr. kitty do a good job of keeping almost all of the kitties out, one who is brave enough dont poop in my yard either so its all good. Besides I got most of those symptoms already hehe, antisocial, animal lover.. dont know about the bad choices deal.

Kaneh
Hehe maybe we need an angry wives forum. Ah well she takes in some of my babbling and knows more than most my local buddies. Nah havent done a stove or anything, checked out their free instructions but lots of math and I hate math and measuring... I was gonna try to do some char today but its a little too windy... too bad too because the temp is above freezing, I think, and it was a good opportunity. Ah well come march I'll definitely get some going.

As for the lacto teas I have not done any yet, and actually its one of those things I have read very little about. So what will it offer me above or over my ACT? Obviously it will result in anaerobic bacteria versus aerobic, but what is the anaerobic benefit? Only thing obvious to me is that they would be entirely different cultures than I have been using. Sounds damn stinky though hehe.

I have minimal internet access since my stupid phone wont let me post I only get to post every few days or so, so talk ya all in a few

 

[goldking]

Artic Char

Artic Char

Howdy folks, a month+ ago a friend turned me onto this thread, since then i have gone Legally Blind +- reading everything about TP i can find on line.

i also bought several 11litre/12lb bags of BioChar from Ebay, which i am mixing in a kiddie pool with ProMix HP and bat and bird poop and composted worm crap etc.....

its a whole new organic way for me....i also bought some Hill Billy?Cowboy charcoal at Lowes Hdware.....i dump it out in a bucket and remove all the large pieces

and i throw away the incomplete burnt pieces of tonque and groove plywood (toxic) :-(

the lg pieces (bigger then marbles) i put in a HD bag made from old Levi pant legs tied shut on the ends and on a cement floor i pound it to crumbs with a old 327 chevy cylinder head ( so whos the Hill Billy here lol) any large pieces left i put in the bottoms of my flower pots in place of stones etc. my friends drives his car back and forth over his rebagged charcoal

its to early to know any difference in my grow, but i feel good about it..

I DO HAVE one question about every thing i have read and seen in the many many pixs of the ancient TP fields. in not one pix have i seen a single plant root sticking out of the ancient TP, all the normal soil and plant life that has built up on top of the TP beds over the centurys is full of protruding roots. ?????????

great thread folks, keep up the good work. Goldking

 

[montanaorganics]

Dang goldking a V8 cylinder head? You must have forearms big as my calves to do that, crazy man hehe.

As for the root question, likely? that the microlife moves ahead so fast all such roots have decomposed.??

 

[xmobotx]

well, that cylinder head would probably break up some unfired pottery just fine as well

 

[goldking]

Yo Montana my arms are not bigger then my calves, as a matter of fact they are still sore.. but i was smart enough Not to try it with a 427/454 cylinder head.

about the roots, i,m sure they would have to be dead before decomposeing in a fresh dug site.. i am just curious.

xmobotx, yes a 40lb chunk of iron will crush pottery, fired or not, but IMO which along with $3.49 would only buy you 1 gal of unleaded here, doesn,t even understand why anyone thinks the pottery in the TP was a growing aid left there on purpose.

everything written on TP and those responsible for it says they had no Stones from the rivers or no rock from the hills, so the only artifacts that remained after the centurys is Pottery shards and some bone.

really, no one would go to all the trouble of makeing pots and ornately decorating many of them just to use for fertilizer......and since these folks were fairly civilized they obviously were just keeping their living areas clean, and just threw the broken ceramics in the trash with everything else they burned

Hell man, in a 1000 yrs or so if some aliens landed here and dug up our dumps, the only think they would find is rich dark earth and broken glass and pottery/ceramics...i wonder if they would think the stuff was made for farming too hehehe

but that only MO, which ain,t worth much..

BUTT, i did see one pic where one area was full of large flat slabs of fired clay, all laying horizontal and overlaying each other with only a few inchs of soil between them . in a manner that would impair root growth, and does not look like anything i,ve ever seen as far as ancient clay artifacts go..but i can,t find the site again :-(

it was only 1 pix of a zillion-+ though???

maybe they are ancient pages of a News Paper???

stay warm GK

 

[xmobotx]

yes, I'd be 1st too agree - it's most likely just coincidental that the garbage is in the vicinity of the improved soil regions

But, it factors into the ancient equation basically

its not unreasonable to assume that the pottery shards help w/ drainage, habitat for microbes, and a resource for the minerals they are composed of

the charcoal appears to have been intentional - the pottery a fortunate accident

 

[goldking]

Garbage

Garbage

Yo folks, you have to remember the pottery is made from the same Lifeless dead clay the whole county is made of, thats why they had to make it into TP to substain crops.

you take something that is basicly worthless and bake it you killed all the life in it, microbes, bacteria, insects, organics etc, and since the pottery can lay in the wet earth for a 1000yrs with out decomposeing, it surely can not feed a plant. no more then a broken beer bottle can.

and since the TP fields are the same dead clay mixed with Biochar and compost, if there was any Miracle Grow propertys to the clay, there would be no reason to make any in to pottery and bake it , then mix it in the TP fields as a nute because the TP beds are 99.+% clay allready.

and yes pottery can help with drainage, but under the layers of TP is bottomless clay, so where would it drain to??? and the TP is not resting on layers of Pottery anyway, its just garbage that was dumped there and got plowed around, mixing it in.

so anyone wanting to use pottery shards for nutes, you will be a 1000 Xs better off just using the raw clay (dusted) and mixed in you TP, and just put a layer of shards, stones etc in the bottom of your containers

this is all just my Oppinion, based on reality and common sense, which allways gets me in to trouble. LOL

i added some Rare Earth and Azomite clay powder to my TP mix, it is water soluble and beneficial to the plants (unlike baked clay)and i use the chunks of Red Neck Charcoal that escaped my pounding with the 327 chevy cylinder head as drainage in the bottom of my containers.

i will recycle all my new TP soil, first dried and screened and the lumps of char will be crushed the second time around.

stay warm +Happy Holidays GK

 

[jaykush]

fired clay is a porous material like charcoal, clay that is not fired is far from it. that alone is a benefit above normal clay.

you also have to realize almost no one is starting with a clay based soil ( except me ) and almost no one is using the TP mixes outside in the ground. so the same rules do not apply. add too much clay to your soil mix in pots and it will end up bad for your plants( not enough air, less drainage, etc...), add too much broken pottery on the other hand and you will not be in the same situation. i know i have done mixes with 5% pottery and 80% pottery. i dont think anyone is adding pottery to there soil to give the plants "nutrients" either.

not all clay is created equal as you may know, azomite is much richer than my local clay. but i cant plant shit in pure azomite.

 

[goldking]

Garbage

Garbage

Hey Jay, i was referring to the Ancients and their TP, and how the idea they made pottery and added it as a benificial is not rational at all...its just trash, and since they probably cooked their 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of pieces of clay ware over the centurys in their BioChar fires, the rejects would add to the fields, again only as trash.

one field found is 1/2 mile x 2 miles( or was it 5m?) the pottery in it could not even be 0.000001 PPM..so does that explain how good a growing medium the TP is?? Not at all..

and i,m sure no one here (21st century) would use any quanity of clay in their potting mix, at least not in any lg moist lumps, a little clay dust would only be a natural ingredient for trace eliments etc like a small handfull of rare earth or azomite in a lg kiddie pool full of their mix, growing in straight azomite would be rather silly. like growing in 80% pottery shards, unless it was used as a inert medium in a hydro system.. but that would have nothing to due with TP, so its not relevant in this thread IMO

anyway i was just joining in here to add my .02$ worth and i allready unsettled some one with my grip on reality

so for anyone out there that thinks the ancients added Baked Clay to their Clay soil as a benificial, remember this, you could add glass marbles to your mix too, for the benificial Silicons, but you would have to wait 20,000yrs for them to decompose, and i think your herb would be over ripe by then.

but thats just MO.

stay warm GK Happy New Year.

 

[jaykush]

oh ok i gotcha better now, i do agree with you. it just seemed like you were bashin the pottery aspect. and have thought of the ancient TP as sort of a trash dump. just the way i see our dumps becoming rich fertile soil in say 50-100 thousand years.

but we may never know why they put it in there for real.

ps: the plants that grew in the 80% pottery mix did real well. drained well yet still held water real good.

 

[Kaneh]

GK:

I think you're wrong with clay pottery, specially when comparing it to glass. They act in very different way when buried in ground.
Glass doesn't absorb water and doesn't have anyking of reaction in the ground. Old baked clay has open composition and is very absorbent, like a sponge!

If biochar can do some magick, so can baked clay! IMHO

 

[jaykush]

where did i mention its like glass?

i said fired clay is porous. just like char.

 

[xmobotx]

where did i mention its like glass?

i said fired clay is porous. just like char.

i think he's referring to goldking

so for anyone out there that thinks the ancients added Baked Clay to their Clay soil as a benificial, remember this, you could add glass marbles to your mix too, for the benificial Silicons, but you would have to wait 20,000yrs for them to decompose, and i think your herb would be over ripe by then.

Anyway - im thinking like GK that the clay is incidental to the ancients situation/as opposed to added intentionally

nonetheless, i remain firm in my convictions that it can be beneficial to the mixture

even if itz housing microbiology

speaking of which: i noticed that the plant grown w/ the terra preta mix and compost had some notable characteristics

this reinforces my thinking that the key to terra preta's mysteries lies in the microbiology

My plans are to age mixture (as any organic garden improves over time) and experiment down the road w/ compost based mixes involving the charcoal (mainly) but also broken shards of unfired pottery (probably not much tho)

 

[Kaneh]

where did i mention its like glass?

i said fired clay is porous. just like char.

I was talking to GoldKing (=GK)!

 

[Kaneh]

i think he's referring to goldking

TRUE!

Anyway - im thinking like GK that the clay is incidental to the ancients situation/as opposed to added intentionally

I don't follow this logic: char is put there for purpose and pottery by accident! What is the idea behind this logic?

What if those places with TP are old pottery factories?
With ancient clay baking technology there must be tons of broken pots when burning the oven. Ain't char and pieces of pottery what would be left behind? Maybe after doing this for centuries they noticed that where pottery has been burned, everything grows well...

heh, I don't know if this logic is any better, LOL. ...Merry christmas everyone! t

 

[B.C.]

Wow!

Wow!

What a thread this turned out to be! Hell yeah, great stuff yall!

Happy Holidays! BC

 

[maryjohn]

This is cool shit guys.

 

[goldking]

garbage

garbage

Morning folks, i happy to see my ??? grip on reality didn,t piss anyone off this time, it only seemed to add additional topic of conversation..

my thoughts were that because some folks were concerned about aquireing pottery or even makeing it to add to their TP mix, it might have been a waste of resources(time and money) thinking it promotes growth??

and to get something to use in the bottoms of flower pots only to promote drainage is simple and cheap/free. so why stress over something that mignt not add to the Biochar/compost effects.

that was my thought?

the Marble comment was a joke, glass will decompose eventually i,ve read..but who has the time to wait..and most of the TP fields don,t even have broken pottery in them.

anyway, my bud-dy
who turned me onto this site is really excited about BioChar/TP , and wants me to help him build a big enough Biochar kiln to add a ton of it to his familys 60'x100' home garden and to maybe market some char to other rural types and Old Hippies etc.

so with the promise of free veggies and much respect the rest of my life i agreed to do the fabrication this spring, so last night we inventoried what we have to work with (salvage,free, or from junk pile in the back yard)

a old 150gal metal fuel tank that was bought to haul water while a well was being drilled.

all the metal pipe and angle iron and steel plate we need.

a endless supply of commerical woodcutters leftovers, birch and spruce tree branches and tree tops and brush. 4" or smaller dia,

manures and chicken litter , all we can haul. yuk

some old boat trailer tires and axles, for the char kiln frame so it can be towed to the wood piles, garden sites.

a old electric cement mixer to crush the charcoal in using big stones or old car parts LOL

we are not adding any pottery or other sharp objects , all the soil the char will be mixed in has plenty of minerals allready IMO

manOman i,m not sure what i got myself into, after all i allready have the 30lbs of biochar i need.

as of now, i,m thinking about useing a bottom 1/4 of a 50gal barrel attached to the bottom of the water tank as a cooker, the heat and flame traveling up thru the wood by the many small holes i will put in the bottom of the tank will keep the slow roast/bake going

and i,ll makeing a detachable lid on the tank with small vent holes with a damper to only permit a controlled slow burn.

the tank will pivot on the pipe that will be welded thru the center, that rotates in the metal frame work on wheels.so it can me tipped to empty, maybe I,ll even make a lid with a heavy steel mesh screen so we can sift the char as it is unloaded.

s--t, i,m getting tired just thinking about it. and i don,t even eat veggies unless their on a pizza. #

# because our ancestors lived on organic grown veggies and their average life span was between 25 and 40yr. (just jokeing) i think?

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New year GK

I,m lucky i have months to fiqure this project out.

 

[xmobotx]

I don't follow this logic: char is put there for purpose and pottery by accident! What is the idea behind this logic?

these things are apparent mysteries - but in general, the different research I have read seems to concurrently express that the charcoal is residue from preparing the site. whether accidental? -or they may have figured it out and started doing it purposely.

one way or another, at some point, the charcoal was an inadvertant or accidentl addition as well

What if those places with TP are old pottery factories?
With ancient clay baking technology there must be tons of broken pots when burning the oven. Ain't char and pieces of pottery what would be left behind? Maybe after doing this for centuries they noticed that where pottery has been burned, everything grows well...

and why not - maybe so

Anyway, who cares what people think/say - charcoal and pottery are present in the sites where the biochar/terra preta has been studied

there will be those who say w/o pottery itz not really TP -the issue being there's a reason to think it has a minor place in the mix

doesn't hurt either way? why not put some in? -if only for authenticity's sake?

 

[MrFista]

Pottery theory...

Charcoal was put into clay chamber pots of high society as it was found to reduce smells. This char is reuseable for some time (yes someone tested it hehe) then it would have been discarded. The pots themselves would have a 'lifespan' before they were considered a bit off as well. Then they'd get discarded with the char, probably buried to stop smells. The weeds on these plots would have outstripped their neighbours handily. Wouldn't take much to put two and two together about the benefits of char from there.

I grow in clay soil too Jay. Hardpan yellow clay. Char and organic matter really helps it along.