Biochar

[Rick]

Biochar is exactly what it sounds like. It is a form of charcoal, just like char cloth, made in the same way and out of agricultural waste. However, instead of using it to create fire it is buried to feed the soil. I thought this might be a good subject since everyone is in the process of cleaning up their gardens. If you take the waste from your garden and heat it without oxygen you will create biochar. This is especially useful if you have really bad soil. You simply dig a pit, fill it with your waste, set it on fire and cover it with dirt. Then let it smolder. What you wind up with is the same thing early Amazonian Indians used to enrich their soils after they had clear cut a section of forest for farming.

Biochar is also being looked at as a possible solution to CO2 release. By capturing the carbon in biochar and returning it to the earth it will become trapped much like coal and not be released into the atmosphere.

[hunter63]

One pretty good article was in MEN awhile back:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organ...Your-Soil.aspx

I have been burying my wood stove char pieces in the garden for a while now, not really enough to do much good, seems like it takes a while to break down.
Seems like a maybe time release type of thing?

[Rick]

Biochar won't break down for a very very long time. It's not an active carbon that normal microbes can use and break down. It's much more stable so it degrades extremely slow. Leaf litter would be broken down into dirt in one season because it is an unstable carbon that microbes can munch on. You'll be turning over charcoal for ever. If you're soil is very sandy you will see a noticeable retention in moisture. In other words, you won't have to water as much. In loamy soils you won't see such a dramatic difference since the soil is already pretty good at holding water.

[hunter63]

I have a real good crop of clay.
30+ years of ammending, have yielded a loamy clay, that has some "Tilth", and I sure that just the buired charcoal does add to breaking up the hard pan.

Good find!

[Rick]

Give that clay a taste. "The bitter the better" might bring YCC along so he can make some pots.

[hunter63]

Give that clay a taste. "The bitter the better" might bring YCC along so he can make some pots.

As Al used to say to Tin Allen", on Tool Time.........
"I don't think so, Tim, too many dogs, for too long, not tasting anything".

BTW I guess we are kinda on the same page today, posted a low tech charcoal article from Nat Geo in the General section.


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