Growing better soil

The Terra preta experiment that some of us here in the UK have started is about growing better soil.   

  

I don’t think that the production of Terra preta type soils depends on the climate.  Our indigenous micro organisms should be able populate charcoal in a similar way to those that are associated with Terra preta soils in other parts of the world.  

When artificial petrochemical and industrial based chemicals are placed on the soil, I would speculate that it affects micro organisms within the soil adversely.  

I would also suggest that we destroy the symbiosis between plant and fungi in many ways, not least by cultivation itself.  Adding insult to injury, if we then pour on damaging chemicals, the ground is further denuded of beneficial micro organisms.   Adding mychorrhizal fungi to garden soils just helps to replace ones that we destroy through cultivation.  If there is a way of maintaining these fungi by giving them a new habitat within charcoal then we may not have to keep replacing them.   

I doubt if gardeners will stop breaking the soil because even the act of cropping potatoes, carrots and parsnips involves us in destroying the fine networks of symbiotic relationships within the soil  Maybe charcoal is a way to ameliorate this problem.  

It may be true what academics say about mychorrhiza being abundant in the soil; however I cannot see their influence in the vegetable garden.  

“Inoculated charcoal could produce a slow nutrient release system.  Affinity of the charcoal for nutrients depends on the condition and type of soil it is in, but I would suggest that this could be a buffering mechanism.  It would adsorb nutrients when they were in surplus but as concentration decreases the charcoal would lose nutrient by a diffusion process, maintaining equilibrium with the surrounding soil.”

I would like to believe that the ancient indigenous civilizations of South America knew what they were doing when they created Terra preta.  This would have been a fundamental scientific understanding of how the soil works and how it provides nutrients to the plant.  Remember, science is not a list of unassailable facts; it is the best interpretation of data that we can come up with.  It may seem impersonal but that is the best way of understanding nature and can prevent us from going down blind alleys.  We want to know if adding charcoal to soil works the way that we think it does. Through some rudimentary experiments, I have come up with a a little encouraging observational data, which has convinced me of charcoals efficacy.

It will be even more convincing if I can replicate my results in 2011.  

Artificial, manmade chemicals must affect microorganisms adversely and subsequently go on to have an effect on higher animals.   All life is beneficial and the more diverse it is the stronger the web of life becomes. As Chief Seattle said: “Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”

The chemicals that we put onto the soil go somewhere.  I have been told that they break down into other less harmful substances.  I would rather that we did not have any artificial chemicals so they would have no chance of entering our food or the food of other living things. 

So the experiment goes on.  The soil will be fed with a diet of homemade inoculated charcoal.   

Wiki charcoal! 

It is so important that homemade charcoal soil amendments are developed because we must avoid industrial  take over.  There is great concern that areas of natural forest might be felled to plant crops that could be used to make and inoculate charcoal.  This is what they did with biofuels.  Making the inoculated charcoal a cottage industry will help to prevent this from happening. 

We have enough domestic vegetable waste to produce all the composted charcoal that we need. You do not necessarily have to use the “teas” that I do.  It may be that composted charcoal is a better soil amendment than inoculated charcoal.  

The soil created by adding augmented charcoal seems to be a lot healthier especially when it is used on poorer soils.  Soil should be alive with micro organisms in their many forms and produce a strong web of life within the soil. 

It has been suggested that we use the system called Bokashi devised by Professor Teruo Higa in Japan with inoculated charcoal.  The Bokashi system uses very specific bacteria to break down kitchen waste, however it can also be used as a remedial process that can help to cleanse polluted land and water.  I hope so…  

Humanity has gone over the edge of the cliff and now we must work to make our landing a little softer. 

Is BBC's "Gardeners' World" worth watching?

It seems that the BBC is changing its flagship gardening programme “Gardeners’ World” again; after the non gardening hierarchy tried to make it into a young professional’s fashionable gardeners’  “Top Gear”.  This left the stalwart serious gardeners resorting to their traditional bolt hole of: “Gardeners’ Question Time” on Radio Four.  Even this has changed out of all recognition since Professor Alan Gemmell, Fred Loads and Bill Sowerbutts left the programme.  Just their names conjure an image of hot summer Sunday afternoons with insects buzzing in a tranquil English country garden.
For many of us in the baby boom generation the epitome of the great iconic garden programme presenter was Percy Thrower… Although, Geoffrey Hamilton was a worthy successor.  However, now the senses are bludgeoned by the Jeremy Clarksonised, let’s mess about a bit and not take this seriously, presenters.   Well they have discovered that the committed amateur gardener takes it a little more seriously and  have been voting with their feet. 
We want good down to earth, Percy Thrower type sensible advice because we actually get our hands dirty in the allotment and the garden.  We touch the Earth literally.  We don’t dibble dabble around like Margo Leadbetter snipping a bit here and there.  I don’t want to watch presenters dance about buying a garden for loads of money and setting it up in less than three days before some poor member of the public comes back to find his back garden vandalized in the interests of television ratings rather than to produce a long lasting; earth enhancing; beautiful garden.   
You do not need any skill to buy a garden. You do not need a lot of skill to “set it up”.  You need a lot of skill to create a garden and then maintain it for tens of years. Great gardens are not designed they evolve out of a landscape.  ‘Gardener's World’ seems to be for plant people that can spend thousands of pounds on their gardens. I can't and I don’t want to.  When they advise us to go into Wilko or Netto where we will find the cheapest seeds and plants then I will sit up and take more notice. 

If you give people the impression that a garden can be created and maintained without effort, just dabbling about here and there, then we will continually get the happy, clappy gardeners that take on allotments and leave them high in weeds. Gardeners’ World encourages people to get an allotment, pay for it, then disappear without trace, while some poor soul, left on the waiting list for years, with a genuine enthusiasm has to work very hard to turn the plot around.
What we need is a programme that shows us how to get dirt under the fingernails.  Gardening and allotmenteering are hard committed work. We need something like:  
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=B07CCD2F921A8F08
If Claire, an amateur, can do it so well then why can’t highly paid professional programme producers do it?
As Claire shows us, one of the delights of gardening is to see just how much you can get for very little.
Anyone can grow if enough money is thrown at it. I need a programme that will show me how to get maximum yields with the least financial input; how to develop a garden to produce the most stunning results; how to nurture the soil, propagate and maintain beauty.  I don't need patronizing. I just need to know the best way to grow carrots.  I do not want to know how to keep garden center profits high.
There are more than enough new techniques: such as the use of aspirin, mychorrhiza, charcoal, companion planting, natural pest control and organic v inorganic methods, that would easily interest both the experienced and inexperienced amateur gardener.  Pippa Greenwood once berated me for using soft soap as an insecticide.  Why couldn’t you have talked about that on Gardeners’ World?  That is interesting. You just need to look on the gardening internet forums and blogs to find out what amateur gardeners are interested in.  

Warmer temperatures today.

With the warmer temperatures, I have eventually been able to move the black currants to their new home.  They have all had inoculated carcoal and mychorrhizal fungi put at the bottom of the planting hole in my attempt to produce Terra preta soil.  Black currents are very hungry plants and need a lot of nutrients.  I hope that this will give them a good start.  I had moved some of the primula yesterday because they were going to be in the way of the black currant row.  I am going to move the others tomorrow.

The retaining slabs alongside the blackberry bushes needed sorting out.  They had begun to lean over and were never right after the land drain was put in by the contractor.  I use upended slabs to keep my raised beds from overflowing onto the trackway.  I took out four of the 2' by 2' slabs and dug out a trench so that I could make sure that they were upright.  I know that I should have used a bubble but I decided I could do it by eye.  I am not so sure now and when I do the others I will use the spirit level.

The sweet pea seedlings are looking decidedly dejected.  Not sure what to do with them but I will leave them alone until the warmer weather.  If they do not seem to be recovering from the very cold weather, then I will sow some more but not until March time.

Only harvested carrots today.  I was going to dig up some parsnips as well but we have two at home now anyway.  Think when you are planting parsnips Tone, you will never eat more than one row.    Make sure that you thin the carrots and use them before the very cold weather (Or store them where the very cold frosts cannot get at them.)

I am going to select some of the vegetable seeds for  this year and record them here so that I know what I was sown this year (2011)

Although a lot of my potatoes have rotted because of the very cold weather, I think that I will continue with Kestrel.  It is a good second early potato and is very resistant to many potato pests and diseases.  My first early will be Epicure.

American land cress
Apple mint (already planted)
Bay (already planted)
Beetroot 'Boltardy'
Brussels Sprout 'Trafalgar'
Broad Bean (already planted)
Broccoli 'Red Arrow'
Blackberry 'Adrienne'
Blackcurrant (various already planted)
Blueberry (already planted)  Fashion accessory but I was given it so I will try it. 
Cabbage 'Stonehead' or 'Golden Acre'
Calabrese 'Green Sprouting'
Cauliflower (winter)  
Carrot Flyaway
Chamomile
Chicory 'Variegata Di Castelfranco'
Comfrey (already planted)
Courgette Parador
Cucumber Burpless Tasty Green.
Fennel Florence
French climbing bean 'Cobra'
Garlic (already planted)
Gooseberry 'Xania'
Grape (already planted)
Jerusalem artichoke (already planted)
Leek 'Musselburgh Improved'
Lemon Balm (already planted)
Lettuce 'Webb's Wonderful'
Mizuna
Okra 'Pure Luck'
Onion 'Ailisa Craig' (planted in seed tray 4/01/11)
Pea Early Onward
Parsnip 'White Gem'
Plum 'Victoria' (already planted)
Pumpkin 'Big Max'
Radish 'Cherry Belle'
Rocket 
Runner Bean 'Aintree'
Runner Bean 'Red Rum'
Rhubarb 'Champagne' (already planted)
Rhubarb Chard
Salsify
Scorzonera
Spinach 'Medania'
Squash
Strawberries 'Cambridge' mainly (already planted )
Swede 'Marian'
Sweet  Cicerly (already planted)
Sweetcorn 'Two's Sweeter'
Tomato (not sure which variety yet)
Thyme (already planted)

I would like to try some Oca but 'The Real Seed Catalogue'  has sold out. Might try a Yacon though.

Now for some more thoughts...

Lots of the remedies recommended by “organic” gardeners have unpleasant chemicals in them. I am worried that any chemical that you use will alter the population of soil organisms and cause more problems than it solves.
I’m sure that pyrethrum and derris are going to be banned if they are not already but these have dosage rates on the bottle and have been tested to some degree.
I have never used nettle tea as an insecticide but I would suggest that it would not damage your health because we eat it in similar concentrations in nettle soup and tea. As at least two common butterflies eat the leaves I cannot believe that it has any insecticide properties.

If plants are grown as healthily as possible then you are less likely to get disease and pests
 
I would rather use natural remedies like nematode worms, Bacillus thuringiensis, mycorrhizal fungi, and such like. Put up a few bird boxes around the allotment to encourage insect eating birds. Encourage hedgehogs and toads. Try to work with nature rather than battle against it. I know that the pristine allotment with regimented rows of beautiful vegetables is the ideal of all allotment holders but you will never achieve it, so get over it and accept what you’ve got. It will still be a lot healthier than vegetables sold in  shops.

http://www.puyallup.wsu.edu/~Linda%20Chalker-Scott/Horticultural%20Myths_files/Myths/Organic%20superiority.pdf

http://www.puyallup.wsu.edu/~Linda%20Chalker-Scott/Horticultural%20Myths_files/Myths/Compost%20tea.pdf

http://www.puyallup.wsu.edu/~Linda%20Chalker-Scott/Horticultural%20Myths_files/Myths/magazine%20pdfs/CompostTea.pdf

Blackcurrant bushes

Moving the blackcurrants is not a difficult job.  It is just a little time consuming.  They are relatively shallow rooted plants and taking them out is fairly simple.


I just cut around them with a spade and then go under them to lever them out.  I was replanting about 6 feet away so there was no long distance to transport them.  Getting blackcurrants in a straight line is a bit difficult because they are such big bushes.  I used the garden line but also two sighting sticks at the ends of the row.  The currant line is a little wonky but it will do for me.


Each of the planting holes had inoculated charcoal and mychorrhizal fungi scattered into it before the plants went in.  As the soil was returned to the hole, I shook the plants to make sure the soil was falling right up to the roots.  I think there was a little big bud mite (Cecidophyopsis ribis) on some of the branches so I took these off with secateurs. 

Black currants need a good mulch. January 2012

The blackcurrants mulched with horse manure
and the strawberries with straw. March 2012

I moved five primula that were growing in the same area using the charcoal and mychorrhiza.  These were moved because I have to redo the retaining slabs along this bed.  All I have to do is straighten them a little because they were never right after the land drain was put in by the contractors.  I wish they had contacted me before they did it because I would have done it myself, if they had given me the materials.


The spring is not flowing down the side of the allotment any more, however water is still bubbling out in the corner of the brassicae bed and where it disappears after that I don't know.  Just so long as the water does not flow onto my allotment, I will be happy. 


Still, that is by the by.  The primula were moved and I just had time to dig one more hole before the lack of light and freezing wind forced me to go home.


Monday 19th January


I have eventually moved all the blackcurrant bushes.[:D][:D][:D]


It's amazing what a few frost free days can achieve.  9 bushes and I think 9 varieties but I am not sure because I have lost the labels.  I just planted the best fruiting ones.

I did not cut the black currants back too severely this year because I cut out a lot last year. I take off as much of the dark brown wood as I can. The bushes will fruit on the new light coloured wood and I try to encourage sprouting from as low down as I can. Sometimes, if you cut out all the old wood, you are taking off the new wood as well so some has to be left to get a crop. I also take off any wood that has big bud (Cecidophyopsis ribis) on it. I did not get as much big bud this year as last. Maybe that's another one for the cold weather.

Now I have to decide what to do with the 3 bushes I do not want.


I like to bury things so they will probably go at the bottom of a trench.  It is amazing how much soil they have around their roots and this has left quite a hole in the new bed.  I will double dig this area using the compost, weed turfs and last years lawn mowings in the bottom of the trench.  Before that though, I will cut up the old blackcurrents and put them at the bottom.  I hope that this will raise this area up to the level of the rest of the bed.

Took Some Photographs of the Allotment Today

The allotment always looks untidy in January.

The ground was frosted and covered with a sprinkling of snow so I did not move any more of the blackcurrants.  I got some leaves and lawn mowings and filled up one of my bins with them. I put weed turfs on top of that.         

The bins are made from old pallets which are wired together with fencing wire.  I took two bins down so that I could putup my new shed  but I am going to make some new bins at the end of the comfrey bed.


There is a lot said about making compost.  I find that heaping anything that was once alive into a big pile and leaving for six months to a year breaks down into fairly good compost and even if it doesn't it can be buried relatively deeply and left to its own devices. I am not one for fussing about compost. 

This is one of my charcoal bins with charcoal marinating in comfrey and worm tea. There is also some sugar molasses, and some blood fish and bone in this bin.  I have used almost all of the charcoal in the other bin.  The lid is kept on so that the bins do not fill with rain water and overflow.

This is my comfrey bed.  The plants don't look too good at the moment but in the summer they can grow up to 1.5 metres.  The comfrey is harvested and put into the big green bins. 
Comfrey is as tough as old boots.  It will certainly come back in the spring.  Mine has died down and is difficult to make out at the moment.  I tried digging between the rows and started to dig up roots.  Not to worry though because I just planted them again.  They might not come but I have sufficient anyway. 
A bit of frost and snow will not hurt comfrey.



As the comfrey rots down, I run off the liquid into a small tub and put it into the charcoal dustbin. It looks a bit untidy because I had to move the dustbins.  Someone had pushed them over while I was on holiday but I have still been able to refil one of them with comfrey tea etc.

I use a water butt to make comfrey tea but I am not adding water at the moment. I have 5 rows of comfrey and two rows of nettles - grown properly with weeding and hoeing. I am now using sweet cicerly as well. It all makes a very good liquid fertilizer. I water it down in the watering can but it does not seem to affect the plants adversely if you use quite a concentrated liquid. I think that you are wasting it if you use it too concentrated. Looks just like Tomorite to me.

They say that nettles are high in nitrogen and comfrey is high in potassium. Compared with what though? I think we are talking about very small amounts of nutrient but that is all that most vegetables seem to need. Nettle and Comfrey have more nutrient than farmyard manure but farmyard manure has very little nutrient  so there does not need to be much more to be better. I think that the adding of both comfrey liquid and farmyard manure to the soil have greater effects than just adding artificial nutrient. They encourage soil organisms, which may form symbiotic associations with plant roots or at least provide further nutrients or nutrients in a form that the plants can use.

 5 rows of strawberries.  This half of the strawberry bed has marinaded charcoal and the other half of the bed does not.  I put the charcoal in the planting holes.  We shall see if Terra preta works with strawberries.
Several rows of broad beans behind the strawberries seem to be surviving the very cold weather.  The strawberries were planted during September and the broad beans during October 2010.


This is where the Kestrel potatoes are going this year.  The horse manure will be spread about and dug in as I plant the potatoes.  Half the potatoes will have inoculated charcoal and half will not.  I will also plant some earlies as well. There are still two half rows of carrots, two and a half rows of parsnips and several beetroot still surviving in this bed.  I will need  to clear it by March this year. 


This is the onion bed.  The garlic is in already and showing through. I have not dug this area because it had potatoes on last year.  I have just levelled it out a little so that I can plant the onions and leeks.  I will be covering both the onions and the leeks either with cloches or enviromesh to protect them from the leek miner fly, Phytomyza gymnostoma.  This fly was first detected in Wolverhampton and I have had it on my allotment since 2000 if not earlier.  I thought it was onion eel worm but I can grow very good leeks if I cover them which indicates this is an air borne rather than a soil borne infestation.  It comes to something when you have to cover leeks and onions.

I think that I added a little bit too much brush wood to this soil  It is three spits down though. I will be planting the cordon sweet peas and the runner beans in this bed. 








This will be the brassicae bed this year. I am attempting to move the black currant bushes to a more convenient position but it keeps on snowing.  I will endeavour to persevere. I am planting the blackcurrants with inoculated charcoal and mychorrhizal fungi. I don't really want to, however, I will plant half with charcoal and half without just to see if charcoal affects the cropping of blackcurrants.

The purple sprouting broccolli has been knocked about by the snow and frost but it is very hardy and I expect it to recover.  There are some winter cauliflowers behind them that are surviving well.  They are covered with netting to keep the pigeons off them.  Sprouts are behing them.

I am surprised that the bay tree has survived but it gets hardier the older it gets. 

I have picked a lot of the brussel sprouts.  The variety I have left were much smaller than the Trafalgar so I will not plant them this year. Needless to say I have forgotten what they are called. 

Sweet peas

I usually sow sweet pea seeds in the autumn.  October seems to be the best month.  I do not nick, sand or any other way mutilate the seed.   I find that they germinate well without damaging the outer shell of the seed.  I think that if the seed do not germinate, it is more to do with the viability of the seed rather than the thickness of the seeds outer coat. The pots are left in the greenhouse overwinter.  It is a cold greenhouse with no heating at all. 

I sow the seed in individual 3 inch pots and label them carefully. I use New Horizons peat free compost to plant them in.

When the seedlings have grown their second or third leaf, I pinch out the growing tip to encourage side shoots. The strongest side shoot is left while all the others are removed. Some growers leave two side shoots. From what I have seen of other sweet pea growers, this is quite an important thing to do if you are growing exhibition standard cordon sweet peas.

In the past I have taken out a trench and put in well rotted compost or manure, however now the soil is very fertile on the allotment I don't necessarily do this any more.

I use canes to grow the sweet peas up and make a line of canes in a similar way to runner bean rows.

I plant sweetpeas out fairly early - end of March or the beginning of April. When I planted the sweet pea seedlings I included both inoculated charcoal and mychorrhizal fungi in the planting hole.

I grow them as cordons i.e I take off all side shoots and tendrils and tie them to a cane. It is really the only way to get large flowers. The other secret, and please don't tell anyone else, is to feed the sweetpeas with comfrey liquid. They love it.
I am experimenting with using charcoal inoculated with comfrey tea and that had even better results for me.  We will be experimenting again in the spring.

The leaf is the food factory for the sweet pea. If you take off the leaves it will begin to starve to death. The tendrils grow out of the leaf and these can be taken off - not the leaves. If you are cordon growing them then you will need to take off the tendrils and the side shoots. They are then grown up strings or canes to support them. I am going to put some pictures of my sweet peas on the blog later. You will also have to tie them onto the canes with wire because you have taken off their natural climbing apparatus. If you do this carefully and feed them with comfrey liquid you will get large exhibition flowers.

If you just want flowers for the house then let them grow naturally and provide them with netting to climb up themselves.  They will not grow as large as cordon sweet peas either in height or size of flowers.

Triple digging

I am triple digging the allotment. I have some brushwood to get rid of so I am digging a trench about three spits down and putting the hedge and tree cuttings in then covering them up again with the soil.

There are several reasons for doing this. The alternative is burning and I do not like to burn good nutrients and send them up into the atmosphere to pollute someone else's land. Taking the brushwood to the council tip means either it will be burnt or composted. Why should they have the benefits of my brushwood?

Putting the brushwood deep into the soil helps to drain the soil and keep it open. It will also raise the level of the soil and this will help with soil drainage. Nutrients locked within it will slowly be broken down and returned to the soil. Brushwood forms very good compost when it eventually breaks down. I am using a lot of mychorrhizal fungi throughout the allotment and I would like to think that they could exploit this brushwood both aiding in its breakdown and delivering the resultant nutrients to plant roots.

Before adding the brushwood, I put a layer of lawn grass mowings in to give the microbes a boost. Lawn mowings have relatively more nitrogen in them than the brushwood does. Another layer of lawn mowings goes on top of the brushwood to make a sandwich.

This has raised the level of the soil about 30 cm. and judging from last year’s triple digging the level of the soil continues to be elevated well into the second year.

Not only does the trench help to bury large amounts of brushwood, it also helps me to clear off a lot of the weeds and vegetables that have gone over. I have buried the old peas and some of the lettuce that has gone to seed. I will be also adding the chard that has gone to seed as well.

I still need to get some horse muck though Tone.

Frosty weather

After loosing my blog of about three years on another site, I have decided to continue on this one and hopefully I will not loose this one.
It is a very late year this year. Frosts on the 11th of May. Not the worst I have had. Once there was a frost on the 1st of June. It was some time in the 1960s when the weather was normal.
So, the greenhouse is full of plants and I cannot get into it. I think that I may loose the peppers but everything else will be alright.
I have dug the last of the green manure in on this years brassica bed and limed the area. This is all ready for the brassicas to go in now when they have grown a little larger. I am weeding the runner beans and the sweet peas. The sweet peas seriously need tying up. This will be done this week.
The onions are still doing well despite the onion fly still being around. I want to cover these with envirofleece but I have not gone to get the blue water pipe to make the supports yet. The sweet cicerly is enormous. I am wondering if it is the mychorrhizal fungi that I put under it. Possible.
Spuds are coming through. With the frosts I think they might get a bit damaged, however this will not be fatal and they will just throw up new leaves. I have hoed them all up quite high but I still think that I could hoe them up even more.
Carrots, spinach, beetroot and parsnips are showing now. These need to be weeded but I will leave them until I have the other beds clear. The strawberries are doing very well and I think that if the frost does not kill off the flowers I will have a good harvest this year. The raspberries are a little thin because I transplanted them this year, however they are doing really well and I think that the mychorrhizal fungi have done their work well on them.
The row of early onward is doing well. I will put up the chicken wire to support them as and when. The winter cauliflowers are coming now but I wanted to leave them until they got a little bigger. I do need the ground for more peas though so they will have to be harvested soon. The good thing is that they tend to all come together so I can harvest and freeze them together and get a big area of ground to use quite quickly. Hopefully this is what will happen this year.
The new rhubarb is champagne. I just wanted a named variety because the rhubarb on the allotment is what I inherited 28 years ago. It is good rhubarb but I don't know its variety.
I have been harvesting quite a lot of rhubarb.
French climbing bean posts have been up for a while but no beans growing up them until the frosts have gone.
I have taken my first crop of comfrey leaves and put them into the digester. I have moved the tub down to the comfrey bed - a sensible thing to do because there was no point in transporting barrow loads of comfrey leaves up to the top of the allotment for no reason. I have put the tub on a pedistall so that I can put a watering can under the tap. It is full of comfrey now but when this rots down I will put some sweet cicerly and nettle in too.
The resultant 'tea' will be used to make charcoal mix. I am attempting to replicate Terra preta soil.
The three bins at the bottom of the allotment are full with very well rotted compost and I will be planting these with cucumber, squash and pumpkin. I was going to put the courgettes on there as well but they will survive anywhere so I will put them anywthere - except where I had them last year. Far too cold to put them out at the moment though.
The greenhouse is cocker at the moment. I cannot fit anything else into it at all. I am hoping to plant out the runner beans at the weekend if the weather changes.
I think that I will loose the two gardener's delight tomatoes I put outside by the shed. I am hoping that the shed, being fairly black, would produce a micro climate that will enable them to survive. Some hope though. We will see.

Mychorrhizal fungi and Terra preta

I am very sure that fungi have something to do with the very strange phenomena of Terra preta soil increase.  The film says that the soil replenishes itself but there is some indication that compost is used to ameliorate the process. 
I have watched the film ( http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/secret-el-dorado/ ) several times now trying to glean all the information I can.
As I have said, this could be mychorrhizal fungi but yeast is another avenue to follow. I don't know where to get sour dough yeast from; however my local garden centre sells mychorrhizal fungi.
As to producing my own charcoal, I think that I am going to experiment with various commercial charcoals first and I am going to mix them with blood fish and bone in a solution of undiluted comfrey liquid to start with.
I have a particularly infertile area of soil on the allotment, (If you want to know why look on my allotment blog under benzo (a) pyrenes). I am going to set up a proper comparison plot with several sections. One with charcoal on its own, one with blood fish and bone on its own, one with comfrey on its own, one with blood fish and bone and comfrey one with comfrey and charcoal and finally one with all. I would like to check out fungi as well; however that might make it complicated :-)).
Trying to think of ways that the soil remakes itself may not be too problematic. The increase in microorganisms within such a fertile soil could cause it, if they are produced in enough numbers. Any nutrient from decomposition seems to be adsorbed by the charcoal and this also gives soil fungi a really good habitat. Together with an increase in the population of roots and leaf litter from above ground you are very likely to get an increase in volume of soil.