Timber Structures and Prefabricated Concrete Composite Blocks as a Novel Development in Vertical Gardening

A modern, environmentally friendly urban lifestyle requires paying attention to landscaping and green areas. The scarcity of free land in cities and the high price of land require the combination of greenery with buildings—both vertically and horizontally. The developed green technology for construction brings together computer numerical control (CNC) processing of supporting structures and prefabricated solid planting blocks made of concrete composite. The timber structures are fixed together using traditional carpentry joints. The details, which will be manufactured in the factory using CNC processing at a controlled temperature and humidity corresponding to indoor conditions, can be easily assembled on the construction site. The high bending strength but good elasticity and connections of carpentry joints endow the structure with good properties in a non-controllable environment. By combining CNC-processed wooden structures with concrete technology as substrate composites, labor-intensive manual work in landscaping and gardening will be reduced in the future. The novel material-hardening substrate composite material uses only the residues as the raw materials

Hardwood biochar as an alternative to reduce peat use for seed germination and growth of Tagetes patula

Biochar, a carbon-rich material resulting from pyrolysation, is one of the proposed alternatives as a substrate component to peat. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of different ratios of peat substitution with a locally available hardwood biochar on the chemical characteristics of growing media, seed germination, plant morphological and nutritional parameters of Tagetes patula. Experimental results show that biochar can be used as a partial peat replacement, showing a complementary liming effect, rising the initial pH of peat (2.8) to values of 4.5 and 7.3 in mixtures with 50% and 75% substitution of peat by biochar, respectively. The mixture with a 50% biochar rate exhibited the strongest change between initial and final pH, rising from 4.5 to 5.7. Increasing content of biochar in the mixtures corresponded to increasing content of total K, Ca, Mg, available K and decreasing level of available Mg. The highest germination percentage was observed in the mixtures with biochar rates from 50% to 100%. Among all substrates, the greatest plant diameter, true leaf area and total root length were measured in the 50% peat substitution mixture, where the highest contents of P, K and Ca in plant shoots were found