Biochar

Billy · 2009-04-11T17:33:19+00:00

Increase the fertility of your garden for FREE.Make Biochar ? this Ancient Technique Will Improve Your SoilBy Barbara PleasantLast year, I committed one of the great sins of gardening: I let weeds go to seed. Cleaning up in fall, I faced down a ton of seed-bearing foxtail, burdock and crabgrass. Sure, I could compost it hot to steam the weed seeds to death, but instead I decided to try something different. I dug a ditch, added the weeds and lots of woody prunings, and burned it into biochar, thus practicing a ³new² soil-building technique that¹s at least 3,000 years old.What¹s biochar? Basically, it¹s organic matter that is burned slowly, with a restricted flow of oxygen, and then the fire is stopped when the material reaches the charcoal stage. Unlike tiny tidbits of ash, coarse lumps of charcoal are full of crevices and holes, which help them serve as life rafts to soil microorganisms. The carbon compounds in charcoal form loose chemical bonds with soluble plant nutrients so they are not as readily washed away by rain and irrigation. Biochar alone added to poor soil has little benefit to plants, but when used in combination with compost and organic fertilizers, it can dramatically improve plant growth while helping retain nutrients in the soil.Amazonian Dark EarthsThe idea of biochar comes from the Amazonian rain forests of Brazil, where a civilization thrived for 2,000 years, from about 500 B.C. until Spanish and Portuguese explorers introduced devastating European diseases in the mid-1500s. Using only their hands, sticks and stone axes, Amazonian tribes grew cassava, corn and numerous tree fruits in soil made rich with compost, mulch and smoldered plant matter.Amazingly, these ³dark earths² persist today as a testament to an ancient soil-building method you can use in your garden. Scientists disagree on whether the soils were created on purpose, in order to grow more food, or if they were an accidental byproduct of the biochar and compost generated in...

Apr 11, 2009 21 Replies

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Dioclese 17 years ago

peoples use what this person (Mann) calls a slash and burn technique that equivocates to present "slash and burn" techniques.. Same term meaning different things in different time periods. In fact, I call it convenient conventionism for ease of understanding by scholars and others that have no usatory knowledge (common sense developed by actual use and associative knowledge of same in the past). So, the way I look at it, there is no basis for the argument you propose. But, I'm not a smart as you, Billy...

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Billy 17 years ago

I'm inclined to agree with you. Amazonians started slashing and burning about five hundred years ago as a way to escape their cities which had become incubators for European diseases. Slash and burning doesn't allow one to stay in the same area too long because the soil rapidly loses the nutrients that it has because of the laterite soil. The "terra preta" comes from a stable culture that doesn't migrate, doesn't slash and burn, but slowly added the charcoal into the soil and created orchards. Slash and burn vs. slash and char. This isn't fun any more. I quit.

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