soil amendments Archives

The Importance of Soil Carbon for Healthy Plants

Spring is surely coming and no doubt you are already looking at seed catalogues and planning your gardening activities for the coming growing season. If you don’t mind me asking… What are your favourite seeds? Hit reply and tell me what you plan to grow this year. I am interested and as a thank you for reaching out to me I will send you a coupon for 50% off on your next BioChar order. Now on to our topic about soil carbon…

As I mentioned in our first newsletter, biochar plays an important role for soils that have lost organic carbon. Biochar also helps to maintain the organic carbon at a healthy level between additions of compost. In this newsletter I am sharing three informative links that I think will greatly add to your understanding of soil carbon: a BBC podcast, a vimeo video, and a PDF that provides further information about the benefits of biochar composting and related research references – currently a hot topic in the biochar field. Continue reading to view these items…

Blending AirTerra SoilMatrix biochar into Memorial University Field Trials.

SoilMatrix Garden – Summer 2016

Soil Matrix Garden – July 17, 2016

Probably one of the most rewarding activities on the planet – Gardening. Throughout the summer of 2016, AirTerra will be featuring the SoilMatrix Garden. Every two weeks a new photo of the garden will be posted to chart its progress. The soil for this garden was prepared with a 10% blend of SoilMatrix biochar (by volume) with 90% good garden soil from Eagle Lake. Blending was accomplished using a ground tarp that was pulled from side to side until the two ingredients were blended evenly (easer to accomplish with two people pulling the tarp). Items in the foreground were planted from seedlings grown in a small greenhouse. Items in the rows further away were planted from seed. For example, Karin is standing beside the peas planted from seedlings, which are now standing 6 feet tall. The peas planted as seeds are to the left in the second row of plants and they are catching up quickly!