Hello,

It's about time for me to do another gardening experiment. The last experiment I did, I used stinging nettle tea to fertilize plants. It worked wonders when done properly. I grew a 2lb cauliflower with it. That was a fun experiment.

Recently, my brother and I were talking, and he told me about a soil that was used in the Amazon called Terra Preta. It basically consisted of charcoal, animal bone, plant residue, and was extremely high in nutrients. I was very interested in this, and I thought I would try it as an experiment. I found a source that told me to get some charcoal, not briquettes, but just burned wood until it is charcoal. After that, I'm going to be soaking it in some compost tea. It will soak for about two to four weeks, and then it should be full of nutrients. Plant residue and animal bone will also soak with the charcoal in the compost tea. I am then going to add this to regular potting soil, and attempt to grow potatoes in containers as part of this experiment.

I am going to be growing two containers with potatoes. The first one will be regular potting as a control group, the next one will be potting soil with the experimental soil I mentioned earlier, Terra Preta. I will chart each plants growth, and see what happens when Harvest time comes.

If anyone has some recommendations on anything else I should do for this experiment, please let me know.

Wish me luck, and I will keep you all updated.

Jared

Good luck,looking forward to your future postings

Good luck! I'm interested too!

Hello,

Here is an update on what I am doing so far. The compost tea has been made, I have added organic material such as leaves, debris, Etc. I also took some animal bones that I found while hunting, and smash them and ground them tiny pieces, and added them to the compost tea. I did the same with oyster shells. After that, I added some water soluble plant food. I forgot to mention that I have one gallon of water, and 1/4 teaspoon of this water soluble plant food. After adding all this, I added small pieces of charcoal. When I say charcoal, I do not mean charcoal briquettes. I mean wood that has been burned, turned into charcoal, but has not turned white or fallen apart. I then mixed it all together.

What I think is going to happen is that everything in there, especially the charcoal, will absorb the nutrients of the compost tea. This way, whenever the soil is watered, the charcoal will let out a little bit of the fertilizer, fertilizing the plant every time it is watered, not much fertilizer, but enough to feed the plant for a couple days.

My hypothesis is that the plant with this soil, which is a potato plant, will grow faster and or bigger than regular potting soil potato plants.

Now, I got to locate some seed potatoes, and in two to four weeks, I will strain the solids out of the compost tea, then I'm going to mix it all together with regular potting soil and plant a seed potato.

I will give the next update when it is time.

Until then, Happy Gardening!

Jared

Forgot to mention, here is a picture of it so far.

Update:

Potatoes are planted, got the controlled soil with regular potting soil, then I have the potting soil mixed with Terra Preta. I'm going to chart the growth of each plant. After they sprout, I will do weekly updates and weekly pictures to show their growth.

Jared

As Nitrogen control is the most important item for growing potatoes, checking ph level of your growing soil might be a bit of info worth checking.

@RpR, thanks for the tip. I'll check it and make sure it's at the optimum level.

Jared

Update:

This is amazing.

So, after doing research, I realized I planted the potatoes at the wrong depths. I gently dug them up to plant them at the right depth, when I discovered something amazing.

In the control test pot, the roots are 2in long, and there are many. The plant was getting ready to grow its stem when I dug it up.

However, in the pot with the soil mixture, the Terra Preta, which was planted at exactly the same time, there was almost no root growth and no stem growth when I dug it up.

This did not support my theory. I hypothesized that the Terra Preta pot would grow faster than the control pot. Instead, it looks like the growth has slowed down drastically.

After doing research, I discovered what might be the problem, and this is what was amazing. The plant in the Terra Preta pot was being over fertilized, stunting its growth. It is showing all the symptoms of being over fertilized.

So, the Terra Preta is a good soil, loaded with fertilizer.

However, only a small amount should be added to a plant's soil. If too much is in there, the plant will be over fertilized, which is what happened with my potato.

This is a theory.

I'm going to continue to let the plants grow, I'm going to chart their growth when they sprout, and see what happens.

If anyone has input on this theory, please post it. I'm eager to hear it.

Jared

Heavy or above average fertilizer is not bad for potatoes until the green comes out , it is then you run a chance of a beautiful large green plant with chicken egg size potatoes underneath.
Acidic soil with heavy nitrogen is best, the N early on, from there you have to keep it under control; base soil brings on scab.

If you read the many sites on planting potatoes, ten sites, seven different answers.
You cannot really plant to deep, with around 16 inches being a practical limit, the more shallow you plant the smaller the potatoes will be but there could be more of them.

@RpR, thanks for the input. As I said before, I am continuing to grow them to see what happens.

So, heavy fertilizer is not bad for potatoes until the green comes out? I did not know that! Thanks for telling me!

Maybe I will restart the experiment and have less of the fertilizer mixture in the potting soil. I can already tell it is stunted by too much fertilizer as it is. What do you think?

Will pictures help?

Again, thanks for the input.

Jared

Potatoes can be , unhh, disconcerting till you have grown them for awhile.

I planted two potatoes last spring, side by side, same dirt, same variety, same day and one was two weeks behind the other.
A good read, or hair ripping read, is comparing what is written on farm, professional sites compared to garden sites, you get an idea of what bulk growers may or may not do differently from the average gardener.

Picture would be nice but all it would really do is I could say, YUP, that is a potato plant in a pot.

For a comparison of checking variety of options, you might be best to do six to eight pots, with six to eight different soils but with two pots of each type.
Then if two were fore all practical purposes identical but came up differently to a large degree you would be able to muse on whether or not it was the seed potato making the difference not the soil.
Potatoes are fussing about temp. when planting, so take that into account of how they act.
Last summer I planted my last ones at a time when usually it is a waste of time but with the odd weather , temp. and moisture they came out fine.

@jnicholes I am interested in watching your experiment, because I grow potatoes just in the straw. (I have little time for the garden, because I work.)
I just put there the onion peel (from insect pests) and a little ash. I throw weeds from above in the summer and water. Probably my potato grows without fertilizer.
But I thought about growing potatoes in bags. Then I need soil. I am interested to see how you do it.






I'm not sure that I can help you, but I want to learn.

@GreenTara18, you're in luck. I live in Idaho, a state famous for its potatoes. I'm still learning about potatoes myself, but I do know a few things.

First off, I do know that potatoes grow very well in loose soil where the potatoes can expand in.

Second, as @RpR mentioned earlier, nitrogen control is important.

That's pretty much what I know about potatoes so far. Other than the fact they are delicious. As I said, I'm still learning when it comes to potato growing.

I did hear that the grow bags are very good for potatoes. I might try it after I move to a new house in March.

Jared

Interesting...
can you try with other plant, like tomatoes, or grass,.... plants that grow fast, without tuber or stored organ, since tuberous or large seeded plants relies more on their stored nutrition during early growing times.
I would also interested if this will be great in container plant such as petunia, Boston fern or other... as I am very lazy to fertilize my plants.
Since you said it is good in small amounts, May be you could do serial experiments, by differentiating ratio of infused coal to medium, and observes the difference.

You will of course need lots of trials to really have meaningful conclusions. And being very casual about your amounts and processes may greatly cloud results. But have fun!

Hi, Jared - been following your posting on your soil experimentation with interest as I do most of my gardening in containers. I've never tried growing potatoes although my wife and I certainly eat enough of them. I usually grow tomatoes and sweet peppers...but this year am planning on expanding my attempts at bush cucumbers, chives, and parsley. What type of soil mix do you find works best for you in containers - other than the one you're now experimenting with? Please keep us posted as to the results of your experiments.

GreenTara18 said:@jnicholes I am interested in watching your experiment, because I grow potatoes just in the straw. (I have little time for the garden, because I work.)
I just put there the onion peel (from insect pests) and a little ash. I throw weeds from above in the summer and water. Probably my potato grows without fertilizer.
But I thought about growing potatoes in bags. Then I need soil. I am interested to see how you do it.

What is under the straw?
Where are the roots, roots are always under the lowest potato, in straw or dirt?
Do you just throw dead weeds on top to keep it under some form of compost?
You have a carrot there, what is that planted in?

what kind of compost do you use?

@RpR
Carrots grow in the usual garden bed with loose soil.
Potatoes are another technology.
4 years ago.
Spring - I chose a place for potatoes and put all the "spring garbage" of the garden there after the winter - dry branches, stalks of autumn flowers, last year's grass and a little straw. I put it on the grass and did not dig the soil. All summer I laid weeds and cut grass on top.

In the fall I cleaned the garden, put corn leaves on my potato bed, broken sunflowers, lupins ... and straw on top. It all went under the snow.

The following spring I added straw, put potatoes with sprouts in this "Grass soil" (in the middle) and and watered.
When the potatoes began to grow from this straw, I laid weeds and grass around each sprout so that the tubers were not green. In the fall I collect about 4 buckets of potatoes (I do not need much).

And I repeat everything again, but I don't put sunflowers and corn, I put straw on it. In the spring I add straw and plant potatoes again in the middle. I add a spoonful of ash on 1 potato and a little peel of onions. The main thing is watering. The potato grows in the middle of this "pillow", the roots with tubers grow in breadth, in the straw.

Some gardeners are digging the ground here, putting potatoes on the ground and putting straw on top. But I don't have time to dig a lot.

But before I planted in the ground. There were more potatoes on the same amount of ground and the potatoes were larger. I think that in the ground potatoes grow better. That's why I am
thinking about the bags.

Hello,

@DonfromPA, I use regular potting mix for growing in containers. NOT garden soil, potting mix. This is VERY important. Truth be told, I have only grown potatoes in containers. I do, however, have some knowledge that applies to ALL plants. I have posted this before, but I will say it again.

Nature is what happens when the conditions are right. If the conditions a vegetable is in are not right for the plant, it will naturally not fruit. If the conditions ARE right for the plant, it will fruit. My advice to you is to figure out the growing conditions of the plant you want to grow, like soil, light, humidity, etc. Then make the conditions right for the plant to flower and fruit.

I would start with finding out soil conditions, then amending the potting soil for the plant you wish to grow.

If the conditions are right for the plant, it will naturally produce delicious vegetables.

Thats my advice to you.

@sallyg, thanks for the advice and input. You are correct. However, I will have fun. I always have fun with these experiments.

@tofitropic, You just put an idea in my head. I think I will try this experiment with other vegetables also. Maybe I will start with green beans to go with potatoes. Thanks! As for other plants besides vegetables, I will look into that.

@gardensmart, I just use store bought compost for my plants. I plan on making my own soon, though. Welcome to the forum!

Jared