[thatcat]

That's awesome! The tea thing is a good idea. No one is buying it yet, but the plan is to have some micro rain gardens installed this spring using the tech to reduce the overall area required due to the increased drainage depth and moisture storage. It's essentially an erosion control measure until there is a carbon market and we increase automation. We will also be doing some testing with trees - remediating poor drainage with living trees that have been already been planted.

Some of the organic material breaks down really slowly, providing some nutrients to bacteria at a rate that allows the gas to escape, but yea essentially the trick is the ultra high surface area and high compressive strength so that it maintains a porous structure instead of compacting into an anaerobic environment.

Yes, beneficial fungi reach much deeper than roots due to the higher penetrative ability of hyphae and they can still extract stuff from whatever depth they reach.

Long term I want to be able to do what the guy in the video is doing but with out all that shoveling...

[thomasfromcdnjs]

Never heard of micro rain gardens, googled them, also a good idea for some places in my garden.

And yeah seems like an awful lot of work aha

I'd imagine just getting a bull dozer or something, digging a whole lot of deep rows.

Then putting a sign in my neighbour for everyone to just come dump everything in the ditches, throw some wood on, light it up and repeat several times.

I saw that they are attempting synthetic stuff too which I might research later.

Some useful tips in this Reddit thread -> https://www.reddit.com/r/Permaculture/comments/1558h7/terra_...

Bamboo sounds like something worth investigating.

[jarmitage]

If you don’t mind me asking, what is/was your educational/career route that led you to the knowledge that you currently have? It seems interestingly diverse, like you have biology, agriculture, but also some mechanical?

[thatcat]

I got a degree in biosystems engineering (it covers electrical mechanical and chemical eng broadly from a systems perspective focused on bio production) and worked on research farms (organic academic and private viticulture). Then did some academic soil formulations research in greenhouse / nursery setting. Currently I'm employed part time on upwork doing chemical formulations reverse engineering for green products.

[jarmitage]

Fascinating, thank you - I have some more questions if you don't mind! Was that your first degree or did you switch to this domain from something else? Would you care to name/recommend your degree program, and any key texts, for someone interested in following in your footsteps?

[thatcat]

I got a visual comm degree, worked in video production for awhile, but decided to change fields. It kinda took a lot of time and set me back, but I prefer this kind of work. UC Davis has a good ag program, I think Purdue is highest ranked, Arkansas and NC state are good too. I went to UTK, it was not bad. The course work was just generic engineering stuff until junior level - then you get some really interesting bioprocess industry stuff and Sr level is focused completely a series of design projects. Learned the most there really, because it's about being able to quickly do research and apply it to a design that has to be presented for critiqued review. It's pretty fun for me to get presented with a new little niche problem and go down the rabbit hole trying to figure it out - after you do that a bunch of times you build up a pretty diverse knowledge base and it makes things quicker.

If you tell me which subject you're trying to learn more about I could recommend something. There's not really any text that covers that field broadly, you might start with a soil science book - I'd recommend Soil Science Simplified as intro or The Nature and Properties of Soils for a complete in depth text. Those won't tell you anything about nursery soils though, only field soil.

I added my email to my profile, feel free to hmu.

[jarmitage]

Much appreciated, thank you for sharing!

I don't have a specific interest at the moment, but have been more curious about this area recently after getting into regen ag podcasts.