Alfalfa, compost and barn manure are great I just wish I had more of it, we live very remotely so when I bring in fertilizer I try to bring in some powerful nutrients. I find composted chicken manure does do a little soil conditioning but certainly our soil has improved the most since we have had horse and cow manure it does really help bind the nutrients as you say. The cover crops are great too and our soil certainly holds nutrients better now than it used to. I am also learning more about terra petra and soft rock phosphate. I also occasionally get some peat from a local peat bog and use the alfalfa when we don't feed it to our animals. Homesteading is an ongoing process with always more to learn, I appreciate your knowledge and feed back, do you know much about terra petra or where to find some good info?
Keep it going - Keep it growing!
Dave
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Farmer Dave
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The Helpful Gardener
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Yeah I have done a good bit of research on terra preta and it's modern counterpart, biochar, and think there are certainly some things that need exploring there.
Keeping this topical, if you were to utilize the high CEC of a biochar (terra preta was based on charcoal technology as well) to capture the inherent nutrition of the urea in the chicken manure, you could reduce the volatility (that ammonia smell coming off urea or chicken manure is nitrogen just gassing off) and solubility of the manure source.
Lots of folks looking at biochar nowadays; some for, some against. Will Brinton at Woods End Labs has done some experiments that suggest it can be detrimental to fertility in early stages, but I am not sure what his later findings are. I suspect that he was using an uninoculated charcoal, which is NOT a biochar, but simply charcoal. The huge CEC inherent there could concievably lock nutrition, but if inoculated with a high N source like urea (read chicken poop), that would be taken out of play, in my mind anyway... without the addition of biology, it's just char...
I think we are usually getting off base the more we step away from natural models. That said, fire has been a natural fertility builder in many soils since time began; CEC increases are surely about carbon content, and charcoal provides a carbon source for hundreds, even thousands of years, while humus might last thirty. It is certainly worthy of further independent study from those without axes to grind...
HG
Keeping this topical, if you were to utilize the high CEC of a biochar (terra preta was based on charcoal technology as well) to capture the inherent nutrition of the urea in the chicken manure, you could reduce the volatility (that ammonia smell coming off urea or chicken manure is nitrogen just gassing off) and solubility of the manure source.
Lots of folks looking at biochar nowadays; some for, some against. Will Brinton at Woods End Labs has done some experiments that suggest it can be detrimental to fertility in early stages, but I am not sure what his later findings are. I suspect that he was using an uninoculated charcoal, which is NOT a biochar, but simply charcoal. The huge CEC inherent there could concievably lock nutrition, but if inoculated with a high N source like urea (read chicken poop), that would be taken out of play, in my mind anyway... without the addition of biology, it's just char...
I think we are usually getting off base the more we step away from natural models. That said, fire has been a natural fertility builder in many soils since time began; CEC increases are surely about carbon content, and charcoal provides a carbon source for hundreds, even thousands of years, while humus might last thirty. It is certainly worthy of further independent study from those without axes to grind...
HG
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Farmer Dave
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