Use shovel along with charcoal ash compost.Use another compost like brown and green matter such as leaves, soil, branches and bark, and fruits and vegetables.

Hi Allan,
The only thing missing from your mixture is charcoal, charcoal ash is short lived within the soil as a nutrient source.

See my earlier postings on this subject.


uriel13


The mind is like a parachute, its totally useless unless its open

[/quote]

Hi All,

Meant to post this a while ago but forgot all about it, I have edited it in the light of more recent information.

Purchased a garden shredder at the end of last year to make the task of breaking down my special charcoal and compost mix less time consuming. I did not believe that I required a heavy duty shredder, just one which would fulfil the task. It seems to be fit for purpose, as in, rendering down the mix into an easily handled and peat like tilth.

It also renders down hedge, soft wood trimmings and the like for composting, this I believe shortens the composting time when EM's are watered over each batch together with spent coffee grounds when added to the bins.

I have found that the inoculation process which my special charcoal is subjected to, makes the charcoal more amenable to shredding. By this I mean that the charcoal and charred carcasses fracture quite readily.

The forest wood used to make my charcoal is native soft wood I believe that most of it is ash, pine, birch and sycamore.

I'm just glad that my purchase does the job as I could not have afforded a more expensive shredder in any case.

The breakdown of vegetation is certainly improved by the addition of both EM's and spent coffee grounds. I sense that there is much more heat within the bins. This maybe due to the addition of the spent coffee grounds, however this not something that, as yet, I am prepared to confirm.

The bottom line is that, this experiment is about creating, or cultivating, a better soil, this is what we are attempting to achieve.

We can I believe recreate a TP type soil, not only that, but through the use of EM's, can protect our crops from disease.

The four basic ingredients a-

Charcoal, VAM's, EM's and Yeasts which seem to have a definite affinity with each other. All have different roles to play, however when brought together a very special change takes place.

I have thought about this, and why it should be that such a change takes place. I think that I am getting closer to understanding this, however to do so I must divorce myself from any and all science based logic. This logic was necessary at the start of my experiment, but the deeper I delved into the subject the more I felt that science did not really understand how Mother nature actually works.

Organic plot holders know how the soil works, if they put their minds to the task, they should be able to learn what I have learned. However I have not declared all that I know due to of the lack of input from others exploring the TP concept.

All that I will say is that simplistic thinking is the key to understanding TP, the road that you follow is best served by Mother nature's laws!

Tony seems to be achieving excellent results using Comfrey as the base liquid for his inoculation of charcoal. I am slightly flummoxed by this as comfrey, as far as I am aware is not indigenous to the Amazon delta.

It may well be that there are herbs and plants specific to climatic regions all over the world which are capable of creating a TP type soil. It would seem logical that Mother nature would endeavour to ensure that this TP type soil would be made available to all who chose to explore such a concept regardless of climatic conditions.

The micro-organisms which create TP are not, I believe temperature specific, in that they are capable of adjustment to all and any conditions. This is their sphere of influence, it is they who first existed on this planet, it was also they who created soil from the first dead vegetation on land over millions of years. This created an environment capable of sustaining so called higher life forms on this newly evolved land mass.

Flora would by now have been extensive for those life forms who were about the inhabit the land. Mother nature seems to have a specific plan by which she creates life forms. However all her creations require that micro-organisms be present in vast numbers to continually make nutrient available from the waste products and demise of her creations.

The fact that we modern humans no longer see Mother nature as the giver of life is a great problem. We modern humans think that the air which we breathe, the food which we eat and the water which we drink will always be there to sustain us.

Therein lies the problem, we think that what ever we do that these resources will always be there to sustain us, not so!!!!!

Mother nature will seek to defend her own creations at the expense of modern humans.

I'm no tree hugger, however what I have learned in the past 4 or 5 years is that we modern humans are like children playing with matches with regard to chemicals and nuclear power. It would seem that if safeguards are a problem to profit then safeguards are ignored!!!!

For all our supposed superior intelligence and free will we have become a liability, we make bad decisions which affect the eco-system.

We need to get back to Mother nature as it is she who provides us with strong immune systems capable of warding off disease.

I remember as a child eating earth to see what it tasted like, and being dared to eat a worm, this was part of growing up for me. The earth and the worm I spat out, however I ingested some the bacteria associated with both worm and earth.

Being stung by bees, wasps and nettles and bitten by horse fly, midge, gnats, ants and a host of other insects gave me a strong immune system at an early age. What's more my immune system was now primed to act upon any similar incident. Everyone in those days had some herbal or homoeopathic knowledge to deal effectively with such traumas. This knowledge seems to have fallen by the wayside, it is now antihistamines which are the preferred option. Well maybe its just me, but I don't see this as the way to give a child a stronger immune system.

I don't remember anyone dying from such stings and bites in my childhood. There was no panic, simply because I had learned a lesson not to antagonise these life forms or get to close to them as with nettles.

I am always reminded of the saying "anything which does not kill you makes you stronger", this was my parents view of such events.

In those days parents would hold a mumps, chickenpox, measles or German measles party for the local children, whereby all local children got infected at the same time. Parents would keep a check list of all the diseases which their child had succumbed to.

This I believe was beneficial to the children of my generation, in that, by the time we were 10 or 11 years old we had been exposed to all or most of the childhood diseases. This I believe gave us stronger immune systems at an early age to be able to cope with disease.

Now this is a fact that we all should take cognizance of, 95% of all life on this planet are micro-organisms!!! The other 5% is made up of insects animals and humans, This is how insignificant we modern humans are in the scheme of things. It is best that we learn this lesson before its too late, if we continually decimate micro-organism populations they are well capable of mutating into a form which would devastate the human race!!!

I don't regard myself as being particularly intelligent, however I when I get involved in something really interesting I endeavour to take it apart and then reassemble it. If it does not rebuild then the concept is either flawed or insufficient information is available to do so. This is when I trawl the internet for the necessary data to complete the task if possible.

With the TP concept it was obvious in the early stages that science was wearing blinkers. This is not a put down of science, however it is my opinion that to solve the riddles of Mother nature it is necessary to follow her path.

Simplistic thinking I am now sure, is the key, there was an inventor whose name I don't recall who stated that "If your gut instinct tells you that there is a simpler methodology, then there most probably is". This is the thinking which will unlock to door of TP.

The bottom line is, get back to Mother nature and understand how she works, cutting down vast tracts of rain forest only increases the wind speed across our planet. Trees are the means by which wind speed is controlled the more trees we cut down the greater will be the wind speed around the planet.

This is science 101, why is it that no one is speaking out about this increase in wind speed across the planet.

It is there for all to see, to my recollection it started approximately 6 or 7 years ago and has been building up ever since then.

Maybe its just me but the more trees we cut down the more storms will be created which will have a devastating effect upon our lives.

These are just my thoughts, others will disagree

Uriel

The mind is like a parachute, its totally useless unless its open

[/quote]

Hi All,

As you may remember I planted out 42 cloves of Vayo last autumn, these have now been harvested and dried.

Two of the non-inoculated cloves died off during the winter so my results are based on 19 of the healthy bulbs of both inoculated and non-inoculated cloves.

My findings are that there is almost a 35% increase in harvested weight of inoculated to non-inoculated bulbs.

Now while this may be a long way short of the 150 to 250 % envisioned it is still a major step forward.

My other crop findings were as follows :-

Shallots:- an increase of 38%.

Onions:- an increase of 30%

Dwarf French beans:- wife collected some for sister in law, this put paid to any evidence of increased growth!!!!

potatoes:- an increase of 45%, this I found to be contrary to expectations, as in, alliums are supposedly more micorrhizal orientated than potatoes. But as I have said this is a learning process, and it is what we establish in actual results that count. It should also be noted that the only manure used was chicken manure in pelleted form.

However it should be noted that a dilution of EM's was added at the time of planting, as with all my other crops.

sweet corn:- A very poor summer meant that I got nothing from my efforts!

Leeks:- the leeks are flourishing and I can see a difference in growth between the inoculated and non-inoculated plants both in height and girth. This data will obviously be available next year as they are a winter / early spring crop.

Drying beans:- a disaster, during the high winds experienced in Scotland during September my bean structure collapsed breaking most stems at ground level. The beans never recovered, however next season I will be cultivating them on my new plot which has more shelter from the wind. I did manage to salvage most pods, however they were so tangled up and broken that I could not tell which was which!!!

The plants did achieve a height of 10 feet on the inoculated plants and 8 feet on the non-inoculated plants

It is my belief that increased growth is related to the amount of inoculated charcoal and compost within the soil. The more inoculated charcoal which we add to the soil, the better will be the results of our harvests.

I see a time when all that will be required will be to spread sea weed on the soil in the autumn for the charcoal to soak up. In the spring this will be dug into the soil along with compost, EM's will breakdown this rich nutrient base into a form easily assimilated by the VAM's.

Charcoal is a bio-accumulator, as in, it has the ability to soak up great amounts of nutrition then release this nutrient to the plants via the VAM's. The more inoculated charcoal the greater the number of VAM's and the amount of nutrient uptake by VAM type crops.

This nutrient in its raw form will be further broken down by both VAM's and EM's to ensure that our crops receive higher amounts of nutrient in a form which their roots can easily assimilate.

I will be adding comfrey to next seasons inoculation mixture, the nutrient value of this herb and the vast array of trace elements which it contains is quite astounding.

I am now convinced that comfrey is worthy of inclusion into the inoculation liquid, however I will still be adding molasses due to its affinity with VAM's.

this is, and will be, an ongoing learning process, however I must be honest enough to see this addition to the inoculation liquid as being worthwhile.

It would seem that comfrey is such a case, fortunately I have no problem in accepting comfrey into the inoculation recipe.

I spent weeks delving into its nutrient advantages when used as a fertiliser and am satisfied that it will bring much worth to our experiment.

comfrey contains the following:-

Vitamins A,B,C and E.
Minerals:- Calcium, chromium, cobalt, iodine, iron, magnesium, manganese, potassium, phosphorus, selenium, sodium, tin and zinc. It also contains many trace minerals. Comfrey is also one of the richest sources of silicon in the botanic world.

Chemical Constituents of Comfrey

It is also worth noting that Tony has used a much longer saturation time for his inoculated charcoal, this may also be of relevance to the end result.

Yet I still believe that the restoration of VAM's and EM's to our soils is the key to recreating a Terra preta type soil. I say this because our soils are in very poor condition, we need to find a way out of our chemical cultivation of the soil!

This form of agriculture is not only killing life within the soil, it is seeping down into the water table to poison the water which we drink. It is also killing life within our streams and rivers, what's worse is that we are allowing this to happen!

Now the real advantage of adding inoculated charcoal is that year by year we will increase the number of VAM spores within our soil.

The VAM increase within the soil I believe is relative to the amount of inoculated charcoal added to said soil. This will cause the creation of many more VAM spores ready to infect the roots of all endo-mycorrhizal type crops. The molasses within the inoculation mixture will I believe ensure their survival.

Once we divorce ourselves from the chemical form of cultivating the soil we should see the results begin to take place. Life will return to the soil, and with it will return all the necessary mutual symbiosis which Mother nature has deemed essential to the cultivation of crops.

This is how Mother nature works at this level and it is best that we let her do so. She after all knows what works, whereas we have shown immense ignorance in our cultivation techniques!!

As I have said before it is my belief that our indigenous VAM's and EM's have been denatured or killed off due to the use of inorganic fertilisers, pesticides and weed killers. It is now down to us to redress the balance of nature within our soils.

Unfortunately things are going to get much worse on the financial front. Greece is an enormous black hole sucking up money that it can never possibly hope repay.

In a world which is apparently teetering on the brink of financial ruin we would best fend for ourselves!!!

We must think of what vegetables we need for the necessities of life. Potatoes, peas, marrow fat peas,carrot, turnip, beans, Brussels sprouts and a host of other vegetables all have their heritage varieties.

We would do well to seed save from these varieties because at the moment things are only going to get worse.

I say these things, not as a harbinger of doom, but as a wake up call, we must start cultivating heritage crops which are good croppers, store well and breed true to type.

And remember that we,I believe can increase the harvest potential of these heritage crops through the use of inoculated charcoal, VAM's, EM's.

So buying heritage seed stock is a must for those who want to keep cultivating the soil for food!

At the end of the day each of us must make decisions as to how they go forward, for me it is heritage seed stock.

Just take a look at seed garlic prices, on average up by nearly 40%, and that does not include postage and packing which is also on the increase.

These companies know that we will pay up because we have nowhere else to go. However if we get back to seed saving from heritage crops we can dispense with them!!!

We must all re-learn how to seed save from our crops to nullify increasing costs, choose heavy croppers and long keepers. Allow one or two of your crop like leeks, onions and garlic to go to seed each season for this purpose. It may even necessitate buying a small pollytunnel whereby this seed can be started as soon as seed is collected.

Tomato seed will keep for between 5 to 7 years.

Peppers and beets will keep almost as long.

Peas, beans, cabbage, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts will keep for 3 years.

Squash, cucumber and melon will keep for 5 years.

Corn, onions, leek and salsify will only keep for a year.

These time periods are based on proper storage of said seeds, and also on the manner of collection.

However this is an indicator of what can be done to reduce our reliance on seed catalogues.

Personally I would let the biggest of my crops to go to seed, thereby ensuring the vigour of the strain.

Crops which have shown increased resistance to disease or insect attack would also be seed saved.

We have so much to re-learn with regard to cultivating by Mother nature's rules, my own perception is that our ancient tribe's people knew a hell of lot more about cultivating the soil than we do in this regard.

These are the things which we will need to do, the tiny cloves from seed garlic which are normally thrown away, will be kept. These will be grown on, dried out, then re-planted out in the autumn.

These are just my thoughts others will disagree.


http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/grow...vities/A56.pdf

Why save seed?

Seed Saving Introduction - Allotment Vegetable Growing

Seed Swap what to save

http://www.cat.org.uk/membership/dow...IllegalVeg.pdf

Uriel

The mind is like a parachute, its totally useless unless its open

[/quote]


Hi All,
When thinking of seaweed I am reminded that on Shetland it is the main fertiliser that they use. The other is sheep manure, the cows are to few in number to make a realistic difference to the outcome.

They don't wash the seaweed, it just goes onto the soil and the rain does the rest and come spring it gets dug into the soil. So why should we be washing our seaweed, it makes no sense to do so!!!

Their crops are much sought after by wealthy and high class restaurants as are their sheep whose sole diet is seaweed / grass.

We need to re-think as to how we cultivate our soils, leaving a good amount of seaweed spread over our soils during the Autumn and winter will I believe have a devastating effect on the slug population. It will not I believe have an ill effect our soils, however the salt content will seep down to those slugs who reside there during the winter months.

Interestingly there are slugs and snails on Shetland, and they not killed off by salt water. They have over the centuries become immune to salt water. However our mainland slug and snail population have no such defence against sea water

Shetland is battered by sea spray all during the winter and yet they grow good crops, so sea salt is not a problem to growing good crops.

I don't know who came up with the idea of washing seaweed, but it would seem to be less than well thought out scenario. Sea salt contains every known trace element which our crops need to stay healthy.

Not only that, but these trace elements released from the salt into our soils will have a beneficial effect on the crops which we cultivate.


These are just my thoughts, others will disagree.

[/quote]

Hi All,

I have planted out 34 cloves of Bella Italino garlic,17 of which have been given inoculated charcoal compost.

The other 17 have been given normal compost, as always I use a bulb planter to ensure that the cloves receive sufficient nutrient where it matters at the roots.

The 17 cloves given the special charcoal compost were also infected with VAM's to ensure that viable VAM's would infect the roots and thereby give the garlic greater amounts of nutrition.

To boost the effect I have also added a handful of inoculated charcoal to each planting hole. This I hope will increase the number of VAM's and therefore the end yield of garlic.

This is the first time that I have cultivated this particular garlic, large cloves coming from Italy with a strong flavour. I like a garlic which bites back, it has much greater health benefits if eaten raw, once cooked it is merely an aid to digestion.

Raw garlic if rubbed onto the soles of your feet will be evident on your breath within 30 seconds, this was an ancient method of treating severe bronchitis. The patient was seated upright on the bed and the soles of the feet were plastered with mashed raw garlic and then bandaged. The plaster was changed every 4 hours this remedy saved many an ailing person from an early demise!

I have also planted out 32 cloves of Vayo in the same fashion,as with my Bella Italino cloves I first gave the soil a good drench with concentrated EM's. I then left the soil for a week, to allow the acidity of the EM's to dissipate then planted my cloves.

I have no idea what the previous allotment tenant planted out or where she planted it. So thought that drenching this soil with neat EM's would be helpful In outnumbering any harmful bacteria or fungi residual within the soil.

I like Vayo both for taste and for its keeping qualities, however German red were my favourite but sadly no longer seem to be available in the UK.

We had our first frost tonight much later than usual, our usual first frost date is mid October it was -1 deg tonight 5-11-11. You can usually tell by the state of courgettes and runner beans as they are very susceptible to frost damage. Down at the allotments it was more evident the next morning, the runner bean wigwams all had blackened foliage.

Every other shop in Glasgow is selling snow shovels in anticipation of a hard winter, do they know something I don't know, or just cashing in on the fear factor?

Uriel

The mind is like a parachute, its totally useless unless its open

Hi All,

Conditions up here wild and windy, My inoculated Bella Italiano have just shown through. No sign of growth from the non-inoculated cloves as yet, but this is in keeping with growth pattern shown last year with my Vayo cloves.

It would seem that the VAM's are already attaching themselves to the now forming roots of the inoculated cloves. As I remember from last year it was about a week earlier that I saw the first signs of growth. However since this a different garlic, I will just note the event.

We had a delivery of cattle manure from the park farm, as fortune would have it I was the only person at the allotments at the time. I was able to get 8 barrow loads of the best that was going, this involved digging past all the hay to get to the real manure.

I have covered the pile with heavy duty black plastic sheeting, and have now started a litre container of EM's.
This should be ready in 5 or 6 days, once I see the airlock plopping for a couple of days it will be time to use it.

This I will water onto the manure pile using a watering can, then re-cover the manure and weigh down with bricks and leave until spring.

This I believe will give the EM's sufficient time to work their way through the pile removing most of any nasty bacteria, fungi, hormones and the like.

I just feel safer using EM's on manure, whereby they can work their magic from November until March.

5 months of EM action on this heap will I believe reduce much of any infestation within the heap. EM's are well capable of working at temperatures of -30 deg C so don't let winter temperatures put you off using this method to cleanse manure.

These are just my thoughts, others will disagree


the mind is like a parachute its totally useless unless its open