Okay, if you are faint hearted skip my contribution. I butcher at least 6 roosters yearly, catching blood in a bucket, keeping said bucket as a fetid fertilizer solution; in the winter, being in zone 5, I use a woodstove and take a little wood out before its fully burned, and crumble the charred wood into the blood bucket and let it fester all winter in the mud room where it won't freeze and break the bucket. My sandy soil has been pitiful, but where I amended the garden bed this spring with my fetid bloody char solution, I have had tremendously increased production.

You screaming "chicken pit" wins the internet today, sir.

one more data point: about 5 winters ago, any time something would go bad in the fridge, I chucked the remains onto one spot in the garden. Meat, veg, fruit, soups, rice, pasta...anything. The next summer I planted poblano peppers in that area. The plants were over 6 feet high, very strong (I never staked them) and super productive. I still have some of the poblano salsa and jelly from that year, there was a LOT. I have taken to throwing refrigerator compost directly into the garden during the winter. During the summer, it gets added to the compost pile.

Love your teachings, barely 2 years and my food forest is exploding. Bio char has been a big part.

Terra preta has a lot of shards of pottery. The pottery will serve to wick and store moisture in ways that clay soil cannot. I think you need the capillarity as part of the system.

The terra preta thing is fascinating. The pottery thing, in particular is interesting because it seems almost intentional technologically, but they couldn't KNOW about microbiology or the function that the porous pottery serves in the soil. That got me thinking. The common elements are char, ash, bones, small pottery shards. In lots of indigenous cultures, there's a cooking method involving pretty much any protein, leaf wrapper, and then a thick coating of wet clay, which is tossed directly into a fire to cook for several hours unattended. I've seen them drug out of the fire and cracked open and I've seen videos on YT where they get opened straight in the pit and the leaf package retrieved to the plate. It seems to me this type of cooking done at village scale solves a lot of communal issues as a kitchen initially might account for most of the ingredients and perhaps subsequent generations went on to use it as a communal trash pit. I like the idea that my barbecue pit may some day respawn paradise. Thanks for your books and videos, Dave.

From what I've seen just getting your soil levels to about 20% charged biochar will basically make Terra Preta.

I’d love to see an assessment of what microbes are predominant in terra preta soils. It might give you some clues to what materials are needed to get it going.

Love how you are able to find resources. Thank you for the inspiration!!

When can we expect the Dave's Chicken Pit T-shirts to be available?

I think your onto a good clue David, Archeologists have also noticed middens i.e. trash piles left by the natives tend to be loaded with vegetation over them.

some live microbial specimens from terra preta would be truly amazing

I so love your compost your enemies song! Got stuck in my head for days.😂😄💖 Thank you so much for interesting information on this subject. I think I've watched them all now so I am going to experiment with this too! If you create a playlist I'll be checking regularly for new videos. Can we have one charred thumb and one green thumb for balance? 😄👍🏻

Makes perfect sense to me that they used their village compost, to fertilize their fields. Perhaps they randomly tossed the remnants of their fires in there, too. Or maybe, when it got too stinky because they didn't understand the science of composting, they burnt it.

I always watch til the end to be sure to hear that jazz bumper. Live your videos, David.

My pet hypothesis is that proper Terra Preta is built over decades to maybe centuries. Don't be discouraged if starting all over again doesn't work out completely. You already know most of the ingredients make for richer soil.

I'm really glad to see you continuing this project, can't wait to see what you learn!

You've got me hooked. I'm starting my expérimental pit this spring. Different climate being in Canada (Laurentian mountains, Québec). Will use what you tought me and my farm management and technology training and see what I can achieve. Thanks for your inspiration.

I usually cook the bones I have into bone broth but this would be awesome to do with the leftover bones and veg that I strain to make the broth. And any leftovers that we throw out. Any way to reduce waste and turn it into fertility is a huge win.

Neighbors probably wondering where the chicken is cooking.

Thank you for continuing you experiment. 3 years later I’m trying to improve my ground with much thanks to your guidance ☀️ I’m 55.4 degrees north, right on the coast of West Scotland. My ground just a foot & a half down is orange sand. NOBODY in the gardening world ever talks about growing in this stuff. However I refuse to be beaten. Nothing leaves my property, I compost or burn it first. However the most noticeable difference to my hundreds of hours of gardening effort is adding bentonite clay first. It rains here a lot. A LOT. No water ever sits not even for 20 seconds! Therefore all my amendments just get washed through, nothing hangs around for very long. I wouldn’t have figured out half of what I needed to do without your enduring curiosity. So I thank you again. Plus your dry humour is why I have you right up there with Charles Dowding ( who is not funny but very sincere) as my favourite channels.

Thanks for the update! I really appreciate all the effort you're going to in running these experiments. I'll be watching closely!

Excellent video thank you 👍 im stoked to see how this goes in like 5yrs if it holds nutrition or get degraded. When i have tried similar but not the same things the trees no matter how far they are away seem to hunt it down.

I saw a dig on tera preta pointing out the clay pottery sherds but they werent noticing the sherds are not random but arranged specifically as though creating water seepage transport across the materials below. I hope people notice and study the position of the elements more, thats likely going to resolve whether its happenstance or intentional. Its intentiinal.

I love biochar compost

I love this! I put my biochar in the chicken composting run. I did a video on how I make my char in a half hour and the "experts" brought up pyrolysis talking about oxygen getting in. I don't like my processes to get scientific. I let my plants tell me how the finished product works. Little oxygen never hurt anyone, including char. Can't wait to see the results!

Love it! This season, I will get all the deer and wild hog carcasses and make them "wild game pits" in a terra preta mix! It should be fun and informative!

The old midden’s pile was a good place to selectively pick slightly bigger tomatoes that popped up from last years. And squash and maize and avocados and peppers and beans. Virgil wrote about corn in the classical Georgics - I figured out he meant grain in general.

How do you go about making connections to get free food waste like the chicken bones? You've destroyed my fear of grafting, but i need help with the fear of asking strangers for meat waste.

I listened to a podcast about the ancient Amazon and they said it wasn’t a burn but a slow, long smolder.

So I'm working on the Fetid Swamp Water collection and I'm using the local weeds and the scraps of scraps... like the bones after bone broth is made, the fruit scraps from the strained vinegar, the potatoes that rotted waiting to be chitted. I can't believe the amount of money I've wasted on fertilizers. Thank you David!

Thats a good base for composing different materials.

Maybe you have to bury the potery intact with the opening on the top so that the water cant wash the nutrients away, but the plants can reach it with their roots. Maybe the broken potery wasnt broken when the fields were active.

"COMPOST YOUR ENEMIES" 😂 So much love for that shirt!

With all the meat left on those bones, you could turn those scraps into Blue Crabs if you lived closer to the Gulf. You might need to try that on one of your road trips. Maybe see what you get in your local fresh waters.

When I want great soil I make it. A lot like what your doing. I layout a giant brush pile and burn to char. I cover the char with a 6 inch deep layer of wood chips. I cover wood chips with leaves and grass clippings and chicken manure to sit over winter,as im in northern Virginia. The bed should be ready to plant in spring. It basically a permaculture garden on top of bad soil that penetrates the bad with fungal shoots that break apart,yet hold together the soil and turning it the most perfect black , loomy soil! But,like you said,the Terra preta keeps self feeding for many years to come ,as to where you would have to put more manure on top if the garden is lacking. Every method has it's ups and downs. That's part of the beauty of gardening. PTP.. point to ponder... I noticed that I have a mycelium layer that is critical to long term self feeding process,but keeping the mycelium fed is an issue I solved by collecting all my lawn waste. I vacuum mow what grass i have left,and then go up and down the side of my road gathering hrass clippings and leaves. I pike extra for chickens to go through and they break most things down for me in a fraction of bio- waste time of natural process. Sorry I am rambling.

A friend of mine is making a Terra Prada by processing each component, then finding the mix. She's making a small batch set up for herself.

"Cargo culting in reverse" is the most interesting idea I've ever heard. Thank you.

David is a true Renaissance Man. A Man of GOD, Gentleman Farmer, Musician, Writer, Author, Traveler, Academic, and 1500s Biochar experimenter. Let me know if I missed any.😁

I would bet it's any plant matter that remained from the late summer harvests so in the south present day maybe all that's left post harvest from late plantings of field peas.. sweet potatoes.. sugarcane pumpkin vines etc. and corn.. in South America corn is seen as being a gift of the gods so it would make sense that it somehow make good biochar for next year's corn field.. just a guess though

love the videos david Been watching you for over 6 years and love the books. keep up the work man glad to see your continueing to go at it. I have my own terrapretta mix for here in apalachia kentucky where our soil is all clay and limestone keep at it man.

It's nice to see that food waste diverted from the waste stream. 😊

You were saying it could have been a dump site, it makes sense. In England in the victorian time they used to dump a lot of waste from the tips over the fields for fertiliser. It would include lots of char and coal, plus food waste and human waste "night soil"

I'd say you're the closest so far I've seen. They would have likely started with burn pits burning carcasses from their food and possibly even bodies using the wood fuel around them. I'd imagine the next step for a true Terra preta would be using that material and doing a kind of traditional compos but with human manure.

I can't help but to notice the lack of fungi and mushrooms explicitly introduced into the terra petra. Earthworms also. What you're looking for is the most bioactive environment so that the soil can basically fertilize itself. I would introduce a secondary pit next to it converted into a pond. That way enough water can filter into the terra petra to keep it hydrated and bioactive. These rainforest soils had a huge amount of water in and around them. That's what you're missing most.

" This video has been removed for violating KZfaqs policy on propitiating the Great Old Ones" 🤣🤣🤣

Dig a narrow 12 to 20 foot trench at depth. Put in large metal or clay pipe with elbow extending up to ground level or just a small hole if no elbow available. Cover with grate so no one steps in it. Bury and compact pipe. Mark ends. Dig larger but not too large compost burn pit with other end of pipe extending slightly into pit. Now you will get a nice clean burn with lots of oxygen.

Been making char from tree limb trimming. Even garden waste. Tomato pepper plants with.we have burning ban July to October. It’s stupid.

The irony is that they probably even had less of an idea of what they were doing than we do. They probably did it because it had always been done that way. Saw dad do it so that is how I do it.

The 5,000 year old pits are called "Landfills" today.

Thank you for another video on this! I am throwing my pottery and my scraps in the hole, got the torch, ready to party!Jesus, please bless my soil

This is what I'm subbed for, please keep updating on this. I'm very interested in your progress as I have some southern red clay soil I want to plant in, and I'd like to get a start on amending.

Maybe dig an outhouse pit and put an outhouse on it. Layer in the Biochar, green sand, etc. It's a slow method but in a few centuries there may be a rainforest living there.

David's chicken barbecue pit or human sacrifice crematorium? As the Feds investigate mass poultry suicide and Amazonian tribes living in the jungles of the USA David seeks green nitrogen and practices looking innocent (whilst wearing a "Compost Your Enemies" T shirt😂😂😂😂❤

"This video has been removed for violating KZfaq's policy on propitiating the Great Old Ones." 🤣

BRILLIANT! I'm blessed by your addition of Scripture at the end, also🙌

My girl friend brought all her compost down from New York. Thats dedication.

What are your plans? Since you are getting all this chicken and you have all that brush, how much can you continue to burn into the fall and will you be digging and burning on all your rows? Any thoughts about using your terra preta to amend your permanent row gardens?

I remember reading about Terra preta on a small scale in the middens of Europe

You're unlocking some very Mystic moojoo. Be warned giant watermelon are forsaken on you ! 😂

I built a kon tiki style fire pit in the ground to make charcoal for my biochar and just love it. All of my beds now have biochar in them you see if you grab a handful and they're a few years old so well aged. my greatest tip is to store up gallons of urine and use that as the initial quench, the steam will frack the nitrogen from the soil deep into the charcoal and no pathogens survive red hot coals. It's got a start on inoculation right from the start. After it's quenched with lots of water I'll add bokashi liquid, compost and leaf mold, bone meal, oatmeal (great for fungal growth), compost extract and tea, liquid JMS and anything else that's good. Between the biochar and compost my living soil cranks out amazing plants and honestly, they have little if any pest or disease pressure either.

OK, yes……… but that is a king James version fire pit, right???!

We have had excellent results with tallow fat additions with the char, bones, compost and ash. Used tallow from high end fish n chip shop. Not seed oil. 1:55

1:21sec lmao you have yourself a sub, I came for soil knowledge and got a good laugh xD

You could fire some river clay in the pit which will make terracotta and help exclude some air.

One man's trash is another plant's treasure. And vice versa.

I actually throw chicken bones into my food forest after I cook them until they are brittle. When livestock and pets die, I plant them in my food forest. When I die, I want to be planted in my food forest or have my ashes spread throughout it.

Couldn't help but think on our mountain property your 'chicken pit' would have made your T shirt too true. Best wishes on the project.

Looking forward to the results, David, but I have a sneaking suspicion they will be great. How about this drought? All the more reason to get more organic material in to the soil, right? Food forest principles mixed with grocery rows has been a game changer, for sure.

The Amazon had 1 advantage: seasonal flooding which brought a huge amount of nutrients to the soil.

Everybody out here trippin' Me: Ayo! Let him cook! He's onto something

I like your shirt, but here in AZ, that's a real thing (only happened about 15 min. from where I like to hike). Ahhhhh! I go outside anyways, but bring my dog. Your videos are always entertaining and informative. Thanks & God bless!

Yo Dave! Will your greenhouse experiment involve water barrels and a JACKFRUIT TREE? ;-)

What did the ancient Amazon people grow? Corn? Tall stalks that can be burned after each harvest, providing more char? Grind it in season after season for many years...

The only draw back to Biochars and Terra Preta is the interruption is creates with Mycorrhizal Fungi.

No sewer or garbage truck… seems like these folks dug a pit, put biochar and ash on the bottom (that would absorb and mitigate smells). They could then dump all waste material on top until it was covered and repeat the process until the hole was filled. Wouldn’t be much of a stretch for them to discover that after decomposition plants grew quite well on these areas. A beneficial byproduct of there outhouse/trashcan.

Dang you KZfaq spoiling our experimental sacrifice videos! 👊🤬

Here in suburbia a fire and smoke like that would get you arrested 😅 Oh the joys of living way out of town. I watch in envy ;)

@ 1:26 i love the youtube Medusa 😅

David the Good is actually good

If Tera preta was just a burn pit for waste, why so much char? They must have purposely been using the char to absorb ordors or something, otherwise if they intended to just burn everything, there would be no char left. The creation and use of char must have been intentional. Perhaps they periodically covered their waste with it so it didn’t smell like a sewer.

i studied Mayan archeology, they were master architects at gardening and feeding their populations. I know a pure Mayan family in Punta Gorda Belize. their history is spoken. but the other history is in the pyramids and how they used terracing.

My bet was they dig a bit- that was their kitchen for a while, then it became the latrine for a while, then it because a landfill - then it became the farm

Adding that much bone material may put the calcium a bit high. I did my own bone meal and used a vinegar, ground eggshell mix to get the calcium and the residual micronutrients in a bioavailable solution. The wood needed may be higher for a complete burn, but you're trying to recreate a centuries old process so you likely have to play around with proportions. What could be interesting is adding vermiculture compost to the remaining product to see if the char material breaks down faster. Pond water to douse the fire woul mimic the Amazonian processes, especially if there are fish in the pond.

My garden sits over top of the leech field for my septic tank. It always grows great tomatoes. Good thing the wife doesn't understand how the septic tank works.

Thank you for doing putting in the groundwork for the rest of us.

Dont forget this will take TIME. I suggest looking into terrarium biome kits. They have the insects needed for breaking down wastes and soils. Also get worms. After youve introduced all that into your finnished and filled pit, everything must be left to break down underground naturally for a long TIME. Thin i suggest planting into the pit instead of digging it up to transplant somewhere else. Best of luck.

The addition of litter rich in lignin is what forms terra preta, the formation of a living soil is what allows fertility over time without the need to add more and more external inputs. Ernst Götsch's work is perhaps the most complete on regenerative and sustainable agriculture, I suggest the research.

I wondered if the pottery was an important component to making it all works as it would increase oxidation and other characteristics that could make it a soil amendment.

Native Americans are still making terra preta today. They sweep up ashes and coals and pile organic matter to let that compost and make the soil “strong”. I don’t think it’s a mystery any more. One factor to consider is the local soil chemistry of the Amazon basin. In general, studies show fresh organic matter composted on the native soil with fresh biochar selects a uniquely beneficial distribution of soil microorganisms by the graphite like carbon crystals facilitating electrochemical communication between species of said microorganisms. The other physical and chemical properties of biochar have been well characterized.

You can hear the firefighters coming at 6:35 :D

I want a big Terra Preta pit...

Hey honey, that new neighbor of ours is having another one of his cookouts and he didn't invite us again. Damn carpetbagger.

Maybe the continuous leaf debris helped keep the soils fertile along with the biochar? They grew a certain kind of nut tree but idk the name of it ❤

Terra means earth > nice. However, the definition of preta, according to google, is scary.

I miss the outro "ad" about the soyill, the 2 Jersey girls who just buried something but don't need no answers

i figured out terra preta. ive been warned not to teach the world due to the implications. i hope to run into you one day.

The nutrients you're tryin' to catch to stored in the soil, gone with the wind.

The secret is pottery fragments holding water and charcoal filtering nutritions then creates medium for beneficial bacteria when leaves and organic matter fell inside continuously create more and more breaking down nutritions and filter up all that by carbons, that makes it perfect soil

Most likely the pottery was just a long term source of silica. You should be able to add vermiculite into it and get the same effect.