Life goes on - Winter 2019

Hi dow famley, I am haveing a mathmaticle, burn out on char per gardon space. I have a 10 by 180 foot area of gardon i would like too bio char the sand before or after i plant highbush berrys bush. Any ideas on bio char per say a 10 feet by 10 feet gardon area. ? Thanks, hopeing someone has some estomates.Recomendations. ?

1 Like

Blueberries require an acidic soil for good plant growth
and berry production. Burning the area will produce just
the opposite effect, an alkaline soil condition, and detract
from natural acidic growth and production. Check out some
commercial blueberry fertilizer, you’ll see it’s highly acidic.

2 Likes

Yup one reason Blue berries do well in New England is decades of acid rain. But soil type is definitely local.
I know I can add ashes and lime almost without end because my soil is always on the acid side. At some point I guess the cleaning up and closing of coal plants will make that not true anymore but it will probably take longer than my lifetime. But everyone needs to know their own local soil issues and adjust for the plants we want.

1 Like

Thanks for the blue berry soil type, actually i am not what bush i will plant, yet but it said about adding char too help hold the moisture and or firtalizers.With sand soil.gess i will have too decide what bush since they might all be differnt require soil.

1 Like

Gess i need too check my sand soil acidics, how can i check my soil.Thanks

1 Like

We’re heading into Spring. I got the skid steer out to make paths through the woods. There is still 2-3 ft of snow on the ground.
I tapped 15 of the 250-300 I want to tap and only two trees were dripping.

7 Likes

Most garden centers have test kits to check acidic/alcilin levels . Litmus test

5 Likes

Thanks Tom i learn something today, thats a positive. i’ll look for some soil test kits, gess aint no farmer.

1 Like

Ironicly there are a lot of farmers who never bother testing for acidity. One of the old timers dropped in when I was setting up my garden and commented that my grandfather was the only one around here who used anything to adjust the PH and you know his fields always produced better… I just laughed.

2 Likes

Seem’s like I have a meter that has two probes to stick in the ground. Then the meter reads out the acidic level. But I could have that mixed up with something else.

As school kids during the 70s we used to check pH in lakes and creeks as our homework. Our country is scattered with lakes and a great deal of them were practicly dead back then due to acid rains from England’s tall coal plant chimnies.
Lot’s of lakes were chopper bombed with lime to prevent heavy metals to leak into our ground water. As far as I know there’s less sulfur coming from the plants now and our lakes and fish recovered.

6 Likes

Same here over the last 30 years the forests have started to recover but our soil still has high acidity. I suspect it will be a long time before all the damage is offset but that is good for someone who has wood ashes for fertilizer.

3 Likes

Coff
How many coal fired power stations in Sweden?

Today, there are 46 stations at 100 MW and over, 18 at 200 MW and over, 6 at 400 MW and over, and 2 over 500 MW.
5

There are currently 5 active coal - fired power stations operating in the United Kingdom which have a total generating capacity of 7.3GW.

1 Like

G’day mate,

From what I understand coal fired power stations have better ways of reducing sulfur emissions, compared to no filtering in the 70s. The reason I blame England for our acid rains at the time, is only due to the direction of the wind 90% of the time. I could have blamed Poland or Germany, also big on coal, but the wind very seldom come from there.

Zero coal here.
We’ve been running about 50/50 hydro/nuclear since the early 70s. In recent years a few nuclear reactors have been shut down due to old age and the lost power has been replaced by mainly windpower (12% 2019). A small % electricity is produced by burning garbage and forestry residue, but most most of them plants produce district heating only.
The northern Europe electric grid is tied together and Sweden is a net exporter of electricity. However, in certain circumstances, super cold winter days for example, we may temporarely import coal generated electricity.

7 Likes

Here in Australia they are trying to close down coal fired stations , but while they are doing that the cost of electricity and gas is going through the roof, and we also export most of our natural gas as well as our coal and guess what, we pay more much much more for for our gas and electric than the importer of our exported fuels , all so they can make there cheap knock off goods and pollute the atmosphere while we all pay for it . i bet the Chinese people are not getting price increases like we do here every few months . on a good note though our petrol price has stayed at around $1.23 a liter for 2 weeks now , normally it shoots up to about $1.70 every few weeks and then starts falling before shooting straight back up

4 Likes

I was looking to old history pictures. This one is a cutout from the fire storm bombardement of Tokyo, i left some parts out, but this caught my attention…
Any idea anybody ?

23

7 Likes

The pipe might be a flare/fanning port.

First rectangle box might be for water.

2 Likes

I have alway been fascinated by the technology the world had at the time of the world wars. I remember the first time I went to Taiwan for work and we flew over Japan the reality of how much the world had changed in my grandfathers lifetime hit me.
To think that people who had not had cars for that long found alternative means of fueling them is amazing to me.

2 Likes

The COVID-19 virus is starting to shut things down very rapidly here. I encourage everyone to make plans to stay home as much as possible. You may not be personally at risk, but someone you love is.

The DOW community is more home-focused in general, so we shouldn’t have any trouble riding this out. Avoid public places, wash your hands a lot, and don’t touch your face. The best prevention is “social distancing”… stay 6 ft away. And again - just stay home.

If you haven’t read much about this, here are a couple of articles from the “front” in Italy.

https://m.facebook.com/cristina.higgins.7/posts/10157623212885189

7 Likes

Hello Kevin,
I think it would be best to either buy or make a large pile of good compost (compost is usually acidic), and then make as much bio-char as you can come up with. Finely crush or grind the char, and mix it with the compost. It might not hurt to add some elemental sulfur powder to the mix. Berry plants prefer acidic soil, and the char is going to be alkaline, so to benefit from the minerals and trace elements in the char, it must be mixed in with the compost.
Ray

1 Like