NASA scientists experiment with eco-friendly fertilizer

VIRGINIA BEACH

At a new home off West Neck Road, NASA scientists are experimenting with an ancient fertilizing method they hope will grow shrubs and flowers in an environmentally friendly way and help control global warming.

The method dates back hundreds of years to a simple but largely forgotten formula once favored by Amazon Indians, African tribesmen and Chinese farmers.

Today, the method is called "biocharring," and it basically works like this: Take burned pieces of wood, grind them up, combine them with compost or clean soil, then bury the mix in the ground, maybe 6 inches deep.

On Tuesday, workers were laying down blobs of biochar - a black paste that resembles mud, cooked up the night before - into holes in the front lawn at 3164 Coopers Arch in Virginia Beach. It is NASA's first residential test of biochar.

The workers then placed ornamental shrubs and flowering plants on top of the goo base, gently spread out the roots just so, covered them with dirt and mulch, and gave them a good first drink of water.

Doris Hamill, a physicist and business developer at NASA Langley in Hampton, watched the landscapers with delight.

"Most environmental technologies have a downside - as in, 'Well, it's good for the environment, but...,' " said Hamill. "But as I've studied biochar, it's the only thing I've seen with no downside. Nothing! And that's very exciting to me."

The test home is being constructed by Robert Letchworth, a Virginia Beach builder, as part of the Spring Homearama festival this year, running from May 28 to June 12. The house also is lined with NASA-developed insulation, the same kind used in the space shuttles.

NASA approached Letchworth about trying out biochar, and he quickly agreed, noting how environmentally friendly building features are becoming popular items among buyers.

"Any time you can use the biochar, you can use less fertilizer, less chemicals, and it's something you can do yourself," he said Tuesday at the site.

Biochar stores carbon in the form of the burned wood in the ground - the reverse of what many scientists believe is occurring with global warming: taking carbon out of the ground and releasing into the open atmosphere.

In the ground, it also acts like a natural fertilizer, filters metals from groundwater and provides microbes a place to colonize as plant food, Hamill described.

There is an International Biochar Initiative, which promotes the method and documents its development worldwide on its website - cacao farmers in Belize starting its use on their trees, a researcher in Ghana working with the U.N., a Chinese company looking into biochar as an alternative to nitrogen-based fertilizers.

In Brazil, biochar is called "terra preta," or black earth, which indigenous people added to their farmlands over 700 years ago. Western scientists were intrigued by the idea and, about a decade ago, brought the paste home and began experimenting with it.

Hamill got wind of the experiments and, because NASA is involved in solving the great climate-change riddle, saw biochar as a way to sequester carbon in the ground, garden by garden, community by community.

"Everyone wants to talk about the big projects to address global warming," Hamill said. "I'm interested at starting at the bottom and building up from there."

She has been working with the city of Hampton and the Hampton Master Gardeners for about a year, cooking biochar in homemade little ovens and talking to landscapers, garden clubs, Boy Scout troops and civic groups, spreading the word.

Carol King, a master gardener, pulled out a plastic bag with two types of biochar made the day before - one batch from burned bamboo, the other from charred gum balls that fall from sweet gum trees.

She crushed the spiky gum balls in her gloved hand, then spread the black ashes into a wet bucket of compost.

"That's it," she said. "You're ready to go."

King and Hamill said there are no local outlets where homeowners can buy a little oven to make biochar. But several garden stores and entrepreneurs are inquiring, they said, including Sam Manning, a Chesapeake businessman on hand Tuesday.

Manning said he is "looking for the next big thing" and may start manufacturing and selling the cookers.

"It seems like an opportunity worth pursuing," Hamill told Manning, who grinned at the suggestion.

"Maybe," he said. "We'll see."

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com