Warning! Lunacy Ahead!

I picked up a bag of 100% natural lump charcoal from Whole Foods this morning. It's a little under $1/lb. I had no intention of grilling with it -- instead, I was going to garden with it.

See, while I was in the anarchist bookstore in the Haight about a year ago with h0mee, I ran across a small article in the back of Permaculture Activist magazine, about an ancient mystery of the Amazon. When the first Spaniards who encountered the Amazon came back to Spain, they brought reports of a massive civilization, huge cities, wealthy and prosperous. Eighty years later, when the Spaniards came back to check up on this story, they found nothing but impenetrable jungle and ruins. However, modern anthropologists knew that the modern day locals periodically stumble across "sweet spots" in the Amazonian forest, where the soil is rich and black and can be farmed for twenty years without adding fertilizer, regenerating naturally. The mystery was, where did this soil come from? Most of the Amazon grows on thin yellow rocky soil.

( The mystery solved, in theory )



Today I finally bit the bullet and decided to try and reproduce the published results of massive charcoal amendment. Is it chemically inert in soil apart from pH modification? We'll see soon enough.

Quite by lucky accident, I noticed that the neighbors threw out a soil-filled 3-ft wood planter. I enlisted h0mee to help me carry it back to the porch.

Now, to figure out how to grind the charcoal. God help me, I did the worst thing I probably could have done (at least for my household appliance that I really love) -- I tested a single small piece of charcoal in the blender. Righty-o! It turns it to powder! It also puffs out into your face and lungs when you open the top. Hello, blacklung. God help me again, I filled the blender with charcoal, added 2 cups of water, and made a "charcoal smoothie".




( It doesn't get that much worse... )


Initial Measurements, Day 0, March 12
Non-amended soil pH: average 5.5
Charcoal amended soil pH: average 6.0