Intelligent and amazing explanation thru visuals ! Thanks a lot!
@mrgrnjns1111
2 жыл бұрын
I think the biggest contribution the pottery shards played was increasing Cation-exchange in the soil....
@ireneklauber4008
3 жыл бұрын
The pottery was from broken chamber pots. Human waste was covered with ash and emptied outside the town.
@Hakkeholt
3 жыл бұрын
They did that all over the world, but not with tons of charcoal as in terra preta.
@Hakkeholt
3 жыл бұрын
@Hunchoz x interesting, I use rock dust and carbon-clay in cow feed, so we are imitating the same slowly, pottery I have no idea how to imitate that. Also plants like clover can help fertilize soil a lot.
@timothyblazer1749
2 жыл бұрын
That doesn't explain the great Britain sized patch of terra preta. 😄
@lu5445
Жыл бұрын
@@timothyblazer1749 it does if you consider that millions of people populated that area.
@timothyblazer1749
Жыл бұрын
@@lu5445 no, it doesn't. The proposition is that it formed naturally out of middens. I'm saying it may have been discovered that way, but was managed and enhanced by the population. Also, the idea that millions of people lived there is recent. Part of history that has been being tried to be covered up because the Spainards, under the auspices of The Church, slaughtered most of them. The smallpox excuse is being used to divert blame...what really happened, as evidenced from primary sources, is mining using mercury to get gold out of ore. That killed...millions of them, as the Spaniards didn't even bother feeding the miners. They just kept them in vast pens, and went out into the Bush and captured more when those ran out.
@billcook7285
Жыл бұрын
🤔 I wonder if pieces of broken red brick would have the same effect? I started doing biochar last year. I'm a container gardener and I'm wondering what effect biochar will have in my container garden.
@716Flat4
Жыл бұрын
any kind of extremely porous (micro-porous) material will work. baked clay is good. They make similar materials like hydroton for hydroponics. I suspect that real terra preta involves a specific mixture of specific species of plants and animals. Bone, clay and biochar heavy. The only way to ensure realistic success is diversity of organic materials naturally high in NPK, calcium and magnesium. I suspect that leaving some un-charred, partially charred and nearly fully burnt crisp would ensure that you have the correct state of char that original Amazonians used. So many things to consider. It is possible that even after making these pits, often at least 9 feet deep, that they continued a process before it could be used. Perhaps sticking reeds in at different depths, or making those filled pits actual fire sites for a season or two before leaving it...god knows. What I am absolutely certain of is that it is far more likely to achieve success by doing everything you can think of to varrying degrees and including as much diverse organic material as you can possibly source.
@billcook7285
Жыл бұрын
@@716Flat4 I've been working on my compost a lot this week. I have a lot of grass clippings and I've been burning wood for charcoal. I've been running all that through a wood chipper. I'm adding crushed oyster shell for calcium. I will be putting in other things like cottonseed meal and alfalfa pellets later. What would you recommend using for magnesium and phosphorus?
@716Flat4
Жыл бұрын
@@billcook7285 egg shells and bones. old green veggies, fish anything and banana peels tend to be high in those ingredients. It might be worth it to contact a local butcher or farmer and inquire about getting all the "useless leftovers" like hooves and bones, beaks and feet etc. Real terra preta was littered with bones and for all we know throwing entire intestines in the mix might be helpful considering the wealth of bacteria there. I am so stoked to start this project on my friends land and intend to do the same on my own when we buy a home next fall. Having land is a MUST for me specifically for things like this. Thankfully my friend is native and has a jaw dropping large piece of land his family just inherited. we gonna practice there, he gets free labor and I get to learn from his mistakes and successes lol.
@PierreDuhamel-lj1vb
Жыл бұрын
whatever use of clay they made, Amazonian Hummingbirds civilisation(native name) has generated less trash per thousand years then we do per minute...Terra Pretta is the daily prayer of respectfull people to Motherearth...
@sdm9019
3 жыл бұрын
Rocks do the same thing but we take out rocks from our gardens.
@slizzardman
2 жыл бұрын
I mean, it depends on the type of rock AND the size of the pieces/fragments... the difference in relative porosity of a rock makes an enormous difference in water movement as well as water-holding capacity of the stone, and there is a lot to be said for water being held between contact points of stones, and there's always more surface area in contact for any total mass or volume of smaller pieces vs larger pieces. Smaller pieces will absorb/trap, but also release/lose, water faster due to the rock surface area, but this is counterbalanced by the effect of contact points retaining water as well. Roots will be able to weave through and drain these more quickly, which may not be the desired effect in all situations. Larger pieces will take longer to "fill up" and will take longer to "drain out" which can be a big advantage in places where you get days or weeks of rain followed by weeks or months of drought. Porous rocks like sandstone or limestone certainly work really well, because they're ~30% and 20% porous (Pumice is the highest at 50ish% porosity but is quite expensive), so they do a pretty good job of acting like a big water tank that can slow-feed the soil they contact. On the other end of the spectrum, granite is only ~1% porous, so it won't hold very much and will lose what little it has fairly quickly. Not very useful from a water-retention perspective. From a broader, more fundamental perspective I think it helps to look at where water is held in the soil: The percentage of total soil water has been estimated to range from 5% to 14%, and while that's certainly meaningful to a point where it does need to be considered, but look at the math: if your plants wilt after 10 days with no rocks then at best they'll make it 12 days with rocks put back into the soil. That's meaningful, but it isn't nearly enough to be worth the effort and expense. If the goal is improving the growing conditions, including water-holding capacity and drought/weather resistance, of your soil then you'd be better-served to deep mulch and learn ways to increase organic matter content, both labile and more durable content. Durable content is basically charcoal and some long half-life fungal carbohydrates (takes care of itself if you leave roots in the ground). Learning how to make wood charcoal and mix that in is really simple and cheap, it has a better water-holding capacity than stone, and the carbon compounds produced by charring are very slow to degrade and are able to hold a much higher amount of micronutrients which basically means it will help reduce nutrient leaching. The slow degradation of charcoal also means you are establishing long-lasting air spaces that many plant roots need a certain amount of for optimal performance. It also helps to learn how to intelligently cover crop, because that will rapidly increase the organic matter content of your soil which is where the vast majority of water-holding capacity increases will come from, but you also get the added benefit of a living nutrient battery in the form of substantially increased total populations of soil microbes. Cover-cropping for this purpose is honestly really easy. You basically grow rapidly deep-rooting plants, often a sorgum-sudangrass hybrid but there are lots of options that may be better for some areas. You basically let these things grow, cut them off most of the way and let the cut matter lie in place, let them grow back, and repeat until they die and you let everything rest under the substantial layer of mulch the plants produced... or until it's time to replace them with an easily-terminated winter-hardy cover crop that is mostly there to keep the soil life from dying. Just one year of that is enough to substantially improve your soil. If you have smaller areas and lots of wood around, you could use Hugelcutur: You basically just bury layers of water-saturated wood with dirt or compost, so you're making a wood-dirt sandwich or mound, and then you cover the outside with 4-12" of topsoil or finished compost. Soil microbes will out-compete your crops for available nitrogen the first year or two if you don't fertilize, but after that this is a super low-maintenance way to do things. Ideally you'd dig down 1-3 feet and bury everything in layers underground as well as up to a foot or two above ground and then do your top layer, but whatever. Do what you can, not what people say is "best." Again, I'm not saying rocks aren't important... just saying that if you're trying to make a difference in your growing conditions there are many higher impact things to do.
@timothyblazer1749
2 жыл бұрын
Rocks do not do the same thing at all. Fired clay is a very different material, and does several things. It isn't just a sponge. It also functions as a mineral salts buffer, as it will absorb mineral salts that are in excess and store them until the soil needs them. Fired clay acts as a water and mineral buffer. Bio char acts as a water and fertility buffer. They work together.
@---yu7ff
Жыл бұрын
@@timothyblazer1749how is fired clay better at holding minerals than biochar is?
@timothyblazer1749
Жыл бұрын
@@---yu7ff porous throughout, if it isnt vitrified. In fact, ollas ( underground watering pots ) take advantage of this to provide water to crops in arid climes. Secondly, they are chemically neutral, and function not unlike zeolite. So they both selectively absorb small molecules, and act as an ionic exchange medium to deliver minerals to roots only on demand. Biochar has large pores, and captures nutrients in matrix. Large molecules and complexes are selected. Then the carbon acts as a local chemical material, if not also electrochemical. AND it is hydrophilic, so it will easily give up its water and payload. All of this means that biochar does hold minerals, but weakly, so it will dump its payload very easily given flooded soil. Terra Cotta holds them strongly, and so acts like a longer term, selective reservoir that sequesters minerals away from soil chemistry, and so isn't as vulnerable to flooding. Biochar is also more chemically active, and so won't function well as a longer term store of minerals. It WILL work as a great store of fertility in the form of larger molecules and anaerobic microbial life. So it contributes heavily to the nitrogen cycle.
@blueroseyt
Жыл бұрын
how have the "experts" missed this little but massively important detail. possibly they used the pottery till the biochar kicked in and got charged. or they knew the water holding benefit of both. so why not use both. makes since, use what you have available to you to its fullest extent, recycle the broken pottery
@lorebrown5307
6 жыл бұрын
Probably the biochar came from cooking the pottery.Low fire Terra Cotta type pottery is more porous than high fire stoneware or porcelain. Terra preta seems to have come together through serendipity or divine design depending on one's perspective.
@frafranildo
5 жыл бұрын
The only objection I have to that position is that you have to "charge" terra preta before you mix it with the soil. That would demand some planing and, therefore, some know how. It probably was discovered by serendipity, but surely was spread in a conscious manner.
@robertnorris3036
4 жыл бұрын
@captain K Inoculate it with a special microbial population
@RealHankShill
3 жыл бұрын
No way lmao. This requires amounts of char orders of magnitude greater than just some accidental leftovers. I would be more inclined to believe they filled the pots with char and threw them. No way man. Honestly, I bet you anything the pottery is any random broken pottery (trash) that was repurposed as a water holder for the soil. LOL. Like the amount of charcoal in the soil, I mean, thats like looking at a dump truck full of sand and then speculating that the truck was actually made of sand.
@presterjohn1697
3 жыл бұрын
Lighting farts on fire helps to inoculate the burning wood with microbes as well
@anonymouswhite7957
3 жыл бұрын
@@RealHankShill It’s not impossible though, they are living in a rainforest after all (rainforest are pretty dense). I’ve seen people in rural(?) areas cut trees, and burn the rest that they didn’t use just to make some space. There are also many (scientific) theories on how it came to be Personally i believed that it’s a byproduct of cooking, pottery, and disposal. Pit firing pottery can produce broken pots and charcoal, while the organic materials can come from disposal mounds. With middens, the charcoal can both be accumulated large enough and charged by nutrients via the waste. I suspected this since terra preta also contains fish bones, animal bones, trace of blood, and excretements
@vergaoneverga
9 жыл бұрын
is that normal clay?????? does gray clay work?
@babylongate
3 жыл бұрын
lol all clays are (SiO2) and a mixture of other minerals such as Alominum Iron oxides maybe some traces of titanium and water or u just call it ( hydrous aluminosilicate) the red color depends on how much Iron is inside the clay, oxygen reacts with Iron and creates the rusty red color of that clay that we see up there in the video , iron has nothing to do with absorbing water , so that means all clays are the same
@vergaoneverga
3 жыл бұрын
@@babylongate scared
@crystalroseblue6760
3 жыл бұрын
Water .....uncealed potery holds water moisture............YES!
@feltingme
3 жыл бұрын
So would regular store bught bricks work?
@thdn8127
3 жыл бұрын
Probably. I'm an enigneer, not a gardener, but if you try it, make sure it is unglazed. Higher absorption is better, which means a LOWER structural grade if there is a choice. Broken fragments might work better, since roots would work around fragments better. If there is mortar clinging to fragments, unless the soil pH is too high, it probably won't hurt since mortar is lime + cement (calcium carbonate + silicon oxide) + sand + water.
@FutureRefrence
3 жыл бұрын
Arkhoms Razor. Its always the simplest explanation
@Tolinar
3 жыл бұрын
Occam's razor. The simplest explanation is often the most accurate. Arkham's Razor is, it was the Joker again.
@bogbody1480
3 жыл бұрын
@@Tolinar This is your underappreciated comment award 💶 🏅
@jambohoofgood3417
2 жыл бұрын
Do bricks work or should it be clay?
@---yu7ff
Жыл бұрын
@cosmokramer3081are you saying that terra preta would be better if the fraction of pottery in it would be replaced with more biochar?
@whatilearnttoday5295
Жыл бұрын
That's a pile of ash.
@GL.cats123
3 жыл бұрын
I Dont get it. 😐🤔
@franc362
2 жыл бұрын
Clay holds and moves water by capillaries
@rizkisyadewa2635
2 жыл бұрын
Bikin apo?
@frafranildo
5 жыл бұрын
I was expecting the effects of pottery in terra preta. Here, have my downvote.
@Moofasa1211
5 жыл бұрын
the effects are shown, pottery was used to help hold water in the soil, keeping microbes/ bacteria alive, and helping the soil to feed the plants, as shown by the growing seed in the brick in water.
@RealHankShill
3 жыл бұрын
Dude, use your powers of observation. They show clearly how the pottery holds water and wicks it. Dont expect everything to be spoon fed to you, there is a lot more information out there if you look for it instead of making someone tell you.
@presterjohn1697
3 жыл бұрын
Well I was expecting Mr. Rogers to do an elaborate puppet show on terra preta. Needless to say I was less than impressed. I guess birds of a feather downvote together.
@macmcleod1188
3 жыл бұрын
As the video shows, pottery helps wick water upwards in the soil. In normal soil, water sinks downwards. Pottery acts in a rootlike fashion and brings deep water upwards keeping the soil moist but not wet. I guess the video hit you on a bad day but it does show convincing evidence of the purpose, effect and value of pottery in terra preta.
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