Posted on 05/26/2022 7:57:51 PM PDT by Jonty30
It might seem counterintuitive, but tropical forest soils are, almost universally, terrible for farming. That’s due primarily to the insanely dense amount of life in these environments: In less alive forests, dead plant and animal matter has time to decompose and leach its nutrients into the soil. But in the tropical forest, huge numbers of insects, fungi, and bacteria devour any decomposing matter before it has a chance to enrich the soil.
But people around the world live in tropical forests, and have had to figure out some way to make the soil actually productive. (The effects of the destruction of these forests on the eco-system notwithstanding.) One of the oldest techniques, long documented in the Amazon rainforest, is what’s known as “black earths” or “terra preta.” For hundreds of years, rainforest farmers have figured out that you can enrich soil with biochar: charcoal, basically. Wet vegetation is burned, producing little bits of charcoal, which are ground into the soil. Eventually, this creates an incredibly rich, fertile soil.
(Excerpt) Read more at modernfarmer.com ...
nuttin’ better than green boiled peanuts and some nitrogen on the side? What’s not to love... :)
Oh, yeah? Where does the nitrogen go?
Regards,
Then wouldn't they also "poop" nitrogen? Where does the nitrogen "eaten" by anaerobes go?
Or does it just "disappear?"
Regards,
Otherwise known as “slash and burn” agriculture. The American Indians did it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash-and-burn
It depends on the ability to move on and burn more area when the land you already burned gets depleted.
The charcoal has to be charged with moisture, nutrients and good bacteria (like composted manure) to be effective (and to truly be BIOchar). Otherwise, the charcoal will absorb moisture and nutrients for a year or two until it begins making the soil more productive. MANY videos on this subject on YouTube.
Doing my own bit of YouTube video research, it appears that leavings fields fallow is also important in making it work.
I have been throwing the soot from my fireplace into my backyard for years given the knowledge that it has some carbon content and thus good for the soil. The slash and char is a slight change to that view and now makes me realize the unburnt chunks I also throw back there are even better.
Thanks for posting.
You could also rototill it into your soil once in a while, just to turn the dirt
Bkmk
Oh a 700yr old “weird trick” huh?
Bkmk
I am no farmer, but I recall learning this when I was a kid. At least seeing it in documentaries.
I guess we keep discovering the same thing over the years.
Up here, the shitwagons are a rollin....
We have lots of dairy farms, a company pays the farmer to come in and pump out the liquified shit, then another farmer pays him to spread it on the crops...
Thanks for the ping! Good information here.
We are BLESSED to live in ‘The Driftless’ corner of SW Wisconsin - the glaciers missed us, so while we have hills and a good number of rocks, we also have great soil.
My secrets to great soil? Composted Mule Manure, compost from our household veggie and lawn scraps, and lots and lots of straw piled on top of garden beds for weed control, moisture retention and aesthetics. It breaks down beautifully, and I just pile more on top each spring season after planting.
I don’t do any tilling in my raised beds - too many earthworms in there and lots of good microbes and such. They know what to do on their own.
That said, Beau does till our big garden where we plant sweet corn, rows of flowers for pollinators, potatoes and winter keeping squashes. That area, too, is covered in straw for the reasons stated above. He only adds manure where I direct each year as those crops are rotated, so the potatoes don’t get too much nitrogen.
When I was a kid they would burn off the sugar cane fields at the end of the season. It was a quite a sight to see when driving past miles of burning fields at night.
I seem to recall that while people had figured out most of the ingredients for making terra preta, they could not make it work as the original. The original never needs refreshing even with continual use every year.
We composted cow manure from the barn, and we also built our chicken coop right in the middle of our garden (on the edge), and fenced in the whole garden, with a fence going down the middle. One year, the chickens use one half of it, and we garden on the other, the next year, we switch sides.
Had some of the best crops I've ever seen, with very few bugs.
Are they suggesting people with a home garden go out and get a bag of charcoal, like used for the barbecue, grind it up and mix it in the soil???
The natural lump charcoal is more along the lines of what they are talking about.
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