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Old 09-11-2006, 01:39 PM   #6 (permalink)
JoeReal
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Default Re: preparing soil for bananas outside

In California, the organic matter in the soil "literally" burns up. So every year they should be replaced. Even the bark chips decomposes rapidly when in contact with moistened soil.

There is Coconut Husk Chips which are very good amendment and last several times than redwood bark chips or peat moss. They are still too expensive to obtain. They provide perfect aeration and they can store water at more than 5 times their weight. These are renewable resources.

Another wonderful amendment is wood charcoal, preferrably in powder form. If you have heard about amazonian black soil or terra preta, the first step is to incorporate powdered wood charcoal into the soil. Charcoal do not degrade, even for several thousand years. It helps aeration, increases fertilizer efficiency, provides better habitats for beneficial microbes, and others. This means that you wouldn't waste a lot of water and fertilizers. It takes 3 years to reap benefits of adding charcoal into your soil. But the greatest advantage of using charcoal is that you store carbon forever, meaning you will literally reduce the amount of carbon dioxide from the air. Plants sequester the carbon from the air via photosynthesis, now you make charcoal out of the plant material, put it in the soil and trap it there forever, helping solve our greenhouse gas problems.


http://citrus.forumup.org/viewtopic....&mforum=citrus


http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/l...aPretahome.htm
http://www.innovations-report.de/htm...cht-55516.html
http://www.newfarm.org/columns/resea...charcoal.shtml
http://www.geo.uni-bayreuth.de/bodenkunde/terra_preta/
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