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Old 15-12-2009, 05:50 AM
uriel13 uriel13 is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Sep 2009
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Hi All,
Given that this post has received a good number of viewings I will now take the topic a stage further.

The ancient native peoples of the Amazon delta created a self sustaining soil known today as Terra Preta.

This soil is as fertile today as it was when created approximately 3 to 5 thousand years ago. It appears to have the ability to self regenerate without the use of fertilisers, which is an astounding revealation. The arrival of the conquestadors decimated the local population through their being infected with deseases to which their bodies had no defense against.

Most of this soil remained uncultivated for a further 1500 years and yet it is still as fertile today as it was when created by these native tribes people.

I have been researching this soil for the past 3 years and am now ready to initiate my own experiments in the hope that I can find a way to re-create this soil.

The most important thing that I found out was that these ancient people not only added charcoal to their vegetable waste pits. They charcoaled animal and fish carcases in their beehive clay kilns and added them to their vegetable waste pits.

It is my belief that this is part of the secret to the re-creation of a Terra Preta type soil.

Their clay kilns allowed them to control the internal temperature by dousing the exterior of the kiln with water. This introduced steam to the interior by which means they were able to induce a lower temperature burn.

A low temperature burn ensures that the bio-oil condesates of the wood do not evaporate as they are an essential food source for Arbuscular Mycorrhizal fungi.

High temperature burns evaporate these bio-condensates which if collected via a tube passed through a cold water retort produce the product known as charcoal vinegar.

The charcoal from a high temperature burn is therefore devoid of the necessary bio-condensates to initiate the Terra Preta reaction. I discovered this fact quite by chance from a site by Finnish researcher Janna Pitkien.

He said that the lowest temperature at which charcoal could be created was 120 deg C or 248 deg F .Given that this is so then this points to the the creation of their special charcaoal at low temperature.

Now to the actual recreation of Terra preta, it will not be easy to recreate Terra Preta in a zone 7 to 8 environment. The winter will cause the associated Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi to go into dormancy. This will be a learning curve in so far as no one has to my knowledge tried to recreate Terra Preta in this enviornment.

The process should be started in early April when the soil is warming, a 4” layer of charcoal is deposited at the bottom of a large plastic compost bin. Be sure to lay 3 layers of black plastic Bags at the bottom of the bin this will keep winter cold and weeds out of the process. To this is added approximately 5” of vegetable waste in the form of banana skins, potato peel, fruit no Brassica should be added as they are non-mycorrhizal .

To this should be added plenty of grass mowings as they will generate the heat necessary to get the process working the first thing that will happen is that the charcoal will soak up the nutrients of the breakdown of the fruit and vegetble waste. Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi will then feed on the nutrients of the breakdown in the presence of charcoal. After 10 days has elapsed you begin the process again. When full add a sheet of black plsatic to the top of the pile and over winter.

The product can be either trenched or worked into the soil .

I hope this information gives you the impetus to start experimenting, remember that “The Mind Is Like a parachute it is totally useless unless ti is open”

uriel13