Bunny Guinness from the Telegraph: We’re nation of weather watchers, and the gardeners among us are getting extremely concerned. Even if we get a drenching this month, the hosepipe ban in many areas looks set to stay for the summer. It’s time for a rethink about the way we use water in the garden.

By Penny Stine:
Gardening may be as old as dirt, but that doesn’t mean that gardening methods, tools or ideas are equally aged.

Although it’s possible to grow a garden using the same practices used by your dear old granny, new research, new ideas and new discoveries may make it possible to grow more of what you want without moving to Iowa for the sake of growing better sweet corn.

Researchers and enthusiasts alike are singing the praises of biochar, a type of charcoal that’s produced when biomass is burned without oxygen.

The U.S. State Department announced:
The United States continues to be deeply concerned by the humanitarian emergency in the Horn of Africa, and particularly the hard-hit Somali population. Despite the end of famine conditions in February, nearly 10 million people in the region still require humanitarian assistance. For this reason, the United States Government is providing an additional nearly $50 million in aid for refugees and drought-affected communities in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya in addition to what we have already provided.

The Guardian writes:
There has been a huge effort to phase out the use of peat by both amateur and professional gardeners. Defra has been at the forefront, with support from B&Q. So it is surprising that B&Q is increasing the use of peat this year and more so given that it is a member of the Horticultural Trades Association's Growing Media Initiative and ran its own peat-free campaign last year.

Eliza Barclay from NPR writes:
You've probably heard of compost – that thick chocolate-colored stuff that's an organic gardener's best friend and supplies plants with all kinds of succulent nutrients.

But what about biochar? It's another ancient farming material made from slow-burned wood (also known as charcoal) that holds nutrients and water into soil without them draining away. And lately it has enjoyed a certain revival because it can also pull and store the carbon in greenhouse gases from the air. Everyone from California grape growers to home gardeners on YouTube is trying it out.

From PR Web: Worm condos. Terra Preta. Black Gold. Whatever it’s called, healthy soil is the most important tool in successful gardening. With the new Soil Reef™ blend being launched this spring, gardeners can create a healthy, organic and permanent home for beneficial organisms living in the soil.

The new blend combines OMRI-listed compost and worm castings from Organic Mechanics® with biochar, adding a unique porous carbon to the soil to create a habitat for life to thrive. How does it work? Soil Reef creates a network of nearly permanent, natural carbon structures throughout your soil, which hold onto water and nutrients, and create homes for microorganisms.

Marc Gunther from GreenBiz.com writes:
So says Robert Brown, a professor of engineering at Iowa State University and a leader of the university’s Initiative for a Carbon Negative Economy and its Bioeconomy Institute. Those are interdisciplinary campus efforts to develop ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by growing plants or algae, making them into fuels and burying their carbon residues in soil -- and make money doing it.

The notion that we can generate wealth and remove CO2 from the air is obviously appealing. As atmospheric concentrations of CO2 rise and climate risks grow, so does the need for carbon-negative technologies that pull CO2 from the air, as plants do, and then store it underground or deep in the ocean.

The use of Biochar to act as a carbon sink is causing quite a stir among environmentalists and scientists alike. This ancient technology of burning organic matter then burying it in the ground to fertilize crops may have been around for over 3000 years in the Amazon Basin, but the research that shows that this method of fertilization will also absorb some of the carbon in the atmosphere means that this could be a really viable solution to the long term problem of carbon over production.