Anyone ever use Biochar?

I made several barrels of biochar one winter and would make more if I ever had the time. The biochar is placed into the compost pile to absorb nitrogen which it then releases over many years. If you place it directly into the garden it will absorb much of the nitrogen that is required your vegetables.

I did not use the top lit updraft method and dog gone it, I can't remember what the one I did use was called. The one thing I saw was that the indirect heating I was doing to get the wood inside the furnace hot enough to start the pyrolysis just used too much wood which I thought was too inefficient. I think I would use the TLUD the next time.

Biochar is not a miracle cure that will make your garden into the garden of Eden but, I do believe the carbon in the soil will help in small ways over many many years.

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sorry but I am having a hard time getting my head around this. With the economy the way it is. I can't comprehend how some one could think this is the way to go.
I put our wood ash chicken manure and bedding and other organic material on my garden. Then I grow green manure crops for the garde and chicken feed. Once in a while I suplement the wood ashes with dolimite lime. I have seen where they make a small furnace to make this, that would probably be a better way to go. But even that seems funny to me as the our wood is for heating the house.

There's nothing wrong with it other than the expense and some of the claims which go beyond the truth. I have a math problem in dealing with the claims on Gobug's package. If it's supposed to be spread at ¼", it's either going to be awful thin or it must be mixed with a lot of compost. If it's supposed to cover 500 square feet, you're talking roughly 3/32". That's roughly the thickness of a nickel. When using it for potting soil, 5% is the normal application. That would be the same as ¼" per square feet at 5" tilling. Anything less than that isn't going to make much difference in the amount of water and nutrients that it can hold per cubic foot of soil. That seems to be the going application rate before diluting it with something else.

http://hawaiibiochar.com/biochar-cal...ication-rates/

Martin

Now I wish that I had some. I'd put a pint of it in a quart jar and add a pint of water. That would show how much water it could actually absorb. Since it can't expand, it could only fill any openings. After a few days, drain the water and see how much is missing. That would be the amount of water that would be retained. Calculating how many cubic feet of soil that would treat would show how much less moisture would be there if not used. That is one thing that I have yet to see anywhere on the Internet.

Martin

I've made several batches of biochar over the winter and plan to do some side/side comparison plantings this season, to see for myself what benefits it may have. Having done quite a bit of research...and despite some of the obvious hype I've read, i still have high expectations. Having some experience actually making it, it seems a few folks here may have the image of burnt wood and ash in mind when thinking of biochar, so i offer up a breif description of my finished biochar which was made exclusively from pinecones. After the pyrolysis/gasification process was complete, the pinecones retained their exact shape and appearance, just a tad smaller than their original size. Each burn produced very, very little ash. After being crushed, by allowing the cone petals to run thru the fingers and drop into a pile, they make the sound as if they were made from glass. It's pure carbon

Martin, you said "The part about biochar absorbing healthy things from the compost is exactly right. However, it's only done one time. In the soil it is released so that the plants can use it. But once it is released, it's just like an empty glass which will not fill on its own. After that, the biochar's use becomes an absorbent for moisture but with no nutritional benefit."

I sure hope that what you said isn't entirely true... "technically speaking". I'm viewing biochar as a bank account that sequesters water, nutrients and Microorganisms. I agree, the biochar would possibly never be as potently charged as the initial innoculation in compost before adding it to the garden. But, once the stores are released and used up by the crops, wouldn't the bits of biochar naturally recharge themselves with new nutrients created by my methods of organic gardening, which include added compost, cover crops, compost teas etc...annually between the winter and spring seasons?

Martin,
Thank you again.

I appreciate your inquisitive mind. I copied the link you posted. It advertised about the same price as I paid, and showed my 2cuft bag will do about 200sqft. The difference from what I read on the link/label for the product and the link detail you provided certainly raises my eyebrows. Your wish for some to measure the water absorption falls right into my approach. While I wont send you some, I will use my graduated cylinder to measure absorption. I wont need the large volume since I also have a good scale, and a microscope. I also want to know more.

jhn56, THANK YOU, too. Please describe your apparatus in more detail. I recall one plan I saw on line that was 2 concentric cylinders with the wood for "burning" in the inner cylinder and the biomass in the outer cylinder. The diameters and volumes were not in the detail I saw, but it looked simple enough to construct with the appropriate tools and plans.

Did you use a temperature gauge, or any way to control the temperature? Were pinecones the only biomass, and what was the approximate ratio of burned wood to biomass? How long did it take to produce how much?

Thanks again all.
Gary

No, It's correct as written. Before it is added to compost, it has no nutritional value. During the composting process, it will absorb nutrients from the organic material as it breaks down. When it is in the soil, those nutrients are released for the plants to use. That's what everyone wants as one of the two main purposes of it. But unless replenished, there are no more nutrients available. You can't take it back out and run it through another batch of compost to refill.

Some people think that it will feed their plants forever, just add seeds and water and stand back. Ain't going to happen with normal one-time application. It's the natural law of diminishing returns. Same amount or more of the original nutrients must be added back to the soil but little of it will go to the biochar. It's not a case where the nutrients first refill the biochar and then release it to the plants as it did when it went from the compost pile to the soil. Instead, the plants will consume it directly while the biochar more or less collects the leftovers. There is no feasible way to fill it to where it was when first introduced into the soil. That can only happen if more fertilizer was added than the growing plants can use and that's a good thing. It's not going to steal it all first and then give it to the plants. The only way that it would fully recharge would be if nutrients were added during a fallow period with no plants to compete for them. Same thing happens with water retention. Once it has released all of its water, there's never going to be a hint of moisture in a thousand years until it is replenished. It will not manufacture water.

Personally, I would not even stop at 10% and probably do have more than that in the SW corner on my home garden. That soil is almost black as coal and I've only added shredded leaves and compost as mulch with minimal tilling over the years. Had been planted with red currants for almost 50 years until last year. Now it's an asparagus bed and won't be tilled for the rest of my life. Who knows what was burned there over 40 years when burning any combustible was legal. I find bits of melted glass so I know it was used for burning. It is not the normal silt that would have been here. If it were analyzed, it would possibly be somewhat like terra preta but lacking human bones. Instead of pottery shards, it's more modern bits of broken kitchen things and metal bits.

Martin

Two cubic feet should do almost 400 square feet at ¼". For 200 square feet, or 5%, then it's almost right on for 200 square feet. I would say that it would be fairly effective at that rate.

Martin

The best YouTube video I've watched discussing a homemade retort

Right there is the best summation of all without a diarrhea of words. Even when totally inert and devoid of any other elements, there is no soil texture that can not be bettered with it. The same can be said for its brother, coal dust. Both have an attitude that time will never catch up with them and they've got a work ethic which goes on forever.

Martin

Is there any difference between biochar and plain old hardwood charcoal that I make in a mostly sealed barrell ?

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For those who want to review the scientific research on biochar, not the pop Youtube stuff, here is something you may want to study. : http://www.soil-science.com/fileadmi...session5_4.pdf

To give a better answer to the Gary. the OP, no I haven't used or experimented with biochar, either purchased or homemade. For me currently, it isn't necessary, since I use my own biomass in raw form as compost or mulch--with good enough results. I eat well enough. I use all my biomass, from my own property and I don't destroy any percentage of it to make a locked up carbon form that my soii microorganisms or plants can't use.

For anyone wanting to experiment with making or using it, please feel free to go ahead and do so. I think, from the OP's response back to me, that you will anyway.

geo

Thanks again jhn56! The video answered a lot of the questions I had, even if not asked. Now, making a large rocket stove to make biochar is on my do list. Since I have a lot of deadwood on my mtn property, it would solve some problems I have there as well.
Gary

Randy, I doubt if it matters what the wood source is. Carbon is carbon and merely charred wood last for centuries.

For certain, biochar is an enigma. I lay awake a long time trying to figure something out. It is no problem to accept the fact that it will absorb nutrients in liquid form just like a sponge. Someone must squeeze the sponge to get it to release its contents when needed. What does the same thing to make biochar to do likewise?

Martin

George's link makes it even harder to separate the grain from the chaff but it confirms what I've said if one can summarize the important details. One important statement in 3.2 is that the benefits are from non-nutrient improvement to soil function. That can be interpreted as making the soil looser or maintaing moisture levels since both are important to plant growth. 3.3 deals with its benefits from water-holding capacity. In both instances, porous lava sand does the same thing.

Martin

This sounds like activated charcoal.

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It's initial major use may have been as activated charcoal but not specifically. Terra preta is found as deep as more than 6' and contents the same from top to bottom. The people who produced it lived in high-density villages. Just like modern civilization, there had to be a system to get rid of human waste. That area was tropical and it would not take long before a pit would seriously stink. There's no reason to not believe that someone 2,500 years ago found out that a layer of cooking pit ashes held down the stink and flies. How long a pit lasted would depend upon how big it was and how many people used it. When full, another had to be dug. Eventually there would have been a limit as to how far they were located from the homes. Then the digging would have to take place where a pit had previously been. The excavated material would have to be dumped elsewhere and distance was no factor when there are a hundred people carrying it in baskets. Somewhere along the way, it was noted that crops were better where the recycled pit material were used and the dumping areas increased each year. The dumping grounds were shallower than those closer to the source. There is no evidence that it was purposely created as biochar since need for cooking wood was high and had to be carried for miles.

It would be no different than if a hundred people shared a typical farm outhouse such as was common in this continent until recently. Wouldn't take long before a new pit would have to be dug and the outhouse moved over it. Wouldn't seem like a big deal if it happened once a year. But when you consider that the terra preta covered a span of approximately 1,400 years, then it becomes a really big deal. No matter where terra preta is found in Amazonia, the basic content is the same. It's bones, charcoal, and manure. There were no domestic animals there so that manure was human.

Martin

Do you have research to this or are you speculating? I had not heard this angle before.

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That was a summary of all the known facts presented in a form where most can understand it from a wider angle. Best place to start is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta and follow only scientific links from there or your search engine. There are some which go into similar detail and have been discussed numerous times on various forums. Because of the nature of their handling the dead, few mention the cremains fact since it would lean toward cannibalism in a way of living which still exists. Remember that there are no city remains from what was originally described as a very dense population stretching for hundreds of miles. They all had to go to the toilet somewhere over hundreds of years and they didn't bury their dead. There's two main of the main ingredients in terra preta.

Martin

Now that everyone has had time to try to find the toilet or latrine part under "terra preta", next search should have you looking for "terra preta sanitation". There you will find that the terra preta in Amazonia was the result of "the most successful sanitation system ever". The facts are that it was a great source of fertilizer for the people to grow their crops. The truth is that it was the end result of their garbage and sewage disposal system.

Martin