Anyone ever use Biochar?

A look at "terra preta fertility" produced this report from Cornell. http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/l...pretamain.html

It and its internal links summarizes the research that is being done with biochar with regards to soil fertility. As most research goes, one has to be very careful about jumping to conclusions. This thread may or may not get further discussion, because I think the OP and others may have done that already--they may be out searching Craigslist for steel drums and stovepipes......

From what I can gather from all of this, there is good reason to believe that much of the terra preta was formed as a result of human activity--waste and cooking remains, burning of bones and bodies, maybe, cooking fires, etc. There is some evidence to suggest deliberate "cooking" of char, or some kind of technique was done in order to make the woefully inert soil where they lived more fertile--but you have to remember that this was pre-Columbian civilization--they didn't have axes yet, so maybe not too many trees were cut down on a regular basis. (Maybe they cooked "laua" style, by covering pigs with banana leaves and earth in a covered fire pit?)

There is some evidence that biochar does enhance soil fertility by retaining chemical nutrients and moisture for longer periods of time than just the addition of biomass and letting it decompose down to elemental carbon, or humic acid.(The blackness that we know in North American soils). But Cornell does state that this process is short-lived unless more biomass is added--thus allowing microorganisms to convert it into useable nutrients for plant uptake (or as in industrial agriculture, chemical fertilizers)--after all, a plant uses the nutrients from the soil--and those nutrients get taken away whenever you sell the fruit or vegetable at the village market.....

When you buy a bag of granular fertilizer, you get a "guaranteed analysis" of at least the NPK content inside. With biochar, that is not a reality yet. Are you getting charcoal, are you getting coal dust, are you getting ash from a municipal waste plant, are you getting a bag of inert, locked carbon from an industrial retort, are you getting a pig in a poke? Right now, I would believe pig in a poke is the best answer. Nobody has yet settled on a definition of biochar. And further, nobody can yet state just what kind of "biochar" does create the terra preta effect.

For me, neither end of the spectrum seems to be a very good answer. Making it in an industrial retort seems to yield everything for the manufacturer and none for me if I buy a bag of industrial char online. The earlier link I provided showed that theirs was a "locked", inert carbon, of no use except to make the soil black. Making it in a steel drum at home, seems to be a waste of good biomass, which is already scarce at my place--unless I have a furniture factory nearby that I can scavenge--I certainly wouldn't cut down an oak tree to waste thirty to fifty percent of it to make some charcoal that might or might not be effective. (I need those trees to give me summer mulch. And if the furniture factory finds out their waste wood is in demand, they will start selling it...and then where would I be?)

I think the jury is still out, or in professor speak, more research is needed.

Hope this doesn't keep you awake at night....

geo

George, a few things in your reply were not what one would imagine. Cutting down trees was no problem to someone who had weeks to do it. A theory on the Mayan collapse was from a long drought caused by deforestation with stone tools. The terra preta fields of the Amazon region were often quite large and were indeed fields, not just planted between trees. The populations were all situated beside rivers which were their highways. That would have been how the wood would have been transported from existing forests upstream. The huge masses of people would demanded huge quantities of wood daily just for cooking. Imagine a narrow city 100 miles long with continuous side-by-side homes and that's a recorded fact. Then imagine all of the logistics to support it. Those in the central third probably could not see a single tree on any horizon. Wood would have been a very precious commodity in that community. Even now, go to Belize. There is a Mayan pyramid in the western part. On top of that, one can see for miles and overlook the tops of almost solid forest. In the west, the forest suddenly stops and there is just a some scrubby brush. That is Guatemala. There are twin cities also visible. At suppertime, one can barely see the Guatemalan half for smoke while the Belizean is clear. One uses wood and one uses propane. Some things never change after thousands of years.

Martin

George, I wish my soil was near as good as yours sounds! When I first joined this forum both you and Martin helped me tremendously thru a post I made regarding my sandy, inert, and wormless new garden plot. I live on some acreage here, surrounded by old growth forest and I have an endless supply of standing deadwood as well as a few other sources of hardwood for making biochar. I can see where you're in a much different position, but I'm still in the process of improving my soil after 3 years, despite adding well over a thousand CY of composted leaves to my plot.

I'm just now really starting to benefit from all those leaves, the soil has changed about a million percent, it's full of worms etc...and I'm on a roll. After reading extensively about biochar and being the tinkering type, I decided to make some for experimental purposes. No doubt, it's somewhat time consuming and it does require a lot for a little in return. When using hardwood, it only yeilds back approx. 30% biochar.

Only downside so far, is the 20-30 minutes it takes to prepare a batch. But at the same time, I'm cleaning up mu property and burning what would have otherwise just rotted back in the woods anyway. I have no magic bullet expectations, just looking to further improve my soil by sequestering nutrients and water that would have otherwise just leached away.

When adding leaves, you are not only getting the carbon but NPK as well. Biochar is basically carbon, as you know. Eventually it will also break down to about the same due to frost action in cold climates. End result of either will be a blacker soil as the carbon percentage increases.

Oh George, I'll bet that those in Amazonia would loved to have cooked a pig in a luau fashion. Domestic pigs hadn't made it to the Americas yet. Closest they could have come would be a tapir or peccary and those have never been known to have been very abundant and still aren't due to low birthrate.

Martin

Ah, Martin, I see my mission was accomplished, as shown by your posting time of 2:11 AM--I did keep you awake. But I do concede your points about the luau, and the lack of iron implements being a reason for the people not to cut many trees. Not being an archaeologist, and never having visited Amazonia, I won't speculate any more; I'll let the professionals do that.


And, though I never took organic chemistry, I do know there many, many compounds made from the element of Carbon, and that is the main point I am making. When it comes to the term biochar, we all seem to be speculating as to its nature, what kind of carbon compound or elemental carbon does the trick---and I don't think the science is there yet. That's why I am skeptical that just any old "carbon" spread on the ground will be effective enough to make any difference. That science is pretty new, so I am willing to wait just a bit for that.

There is still one sure fire way to get the "right" carbon in the soil; Nature has been doing that from the beginning. Letting plant matter(biomass) fall to the ground and then having it get eaten by organisms, ad infinitum, until the carbon left over becomes humus, or humic acid. Alas., we humans want to speed it up, to refine it, to overcome the extra carbon dioxide we have sent up the chimney into the air. Instead of spreading it on the soil, we now want to burn it, too, hoping it will get us out of the mess of the rising climate temperature--by denuding the earth of biomass to do it........ Right now, it doesn't make very good sense to me....

geo

An archaeologist would only look at what the people left behind of their civilization. Inasmuch as rocks are a rarity in most of Amazonia, there is little remaining. An agronomist would look at the soil and proclaim that's there's some good soil there. An anthropologist would look at the people and their way of life to understand what the other two saw.

For a history of what those civilizations could accomplish, you must go to Belize. Take a day trip to Chetumal, Mexico. The Mayan Cultural Museum is there and should take up much of the day just to understand 10% of it. (At the time of my visit in 1996, the tour guide was a graduate of one of our Wisconsin universities and a Packer fan!) Every bit of the Mayan culture, both good and bad, is detailed there. That includes how their population was more than the land could produce and deforestation was so massive that it changed the climate. And yes, that plus their massive stone buildings were accomplished without iron tools.

Martin

I went back and took a look at those posts, where we were all talking about your soil test, adding peat moss, and so forth. As you say now, the proof of the pudding is that your soil is better, it has more organic matter, more earthworms--and I would venture to guess you are eating better, too...... but I do thank you for the compliment.

My concern is that you, for all your efforts, may just be adding black color to your garden soil, rather than anything that will retain water and nutrients. I trust you are continuing those traditional practices of adding biomass, manures, legumes, and compost. Those things, though they take longer, will eventually add carbon in the kind that turns into humus(humic acid).

The science is pretty new, and even the scientists haven't yet found out just what is the nature of this biochar business. They don't yet know by sifting thru the diggings in the Amazon tera preta locations what is the 'secret' that makes these areas pretty fertile 600 years or more after they were created. Chances are they weren't created overnight, but over at least a span of continuous civilization and intensive daily living, pooping, burying refuse, animals and maybe even human bodies for many years, even generations or millennia. One article did indicate that the biochar they found was of the aromatic compound of carbon(which you may want to study). Another study seemed to show that charcoal, as one form of biochar, didn't actually do anything until it was "charged". They suggested that it may have gotten charged by soaking it in urine.........(Don't want to speculate as to the best modern day solution for that).

When I first moved here 31 years ago, the only good and natural spot for a garden was a 25 X 50 area where all the leaves got dumped each year. That's six oak trees, a couple of tulip poplars, several young maples, and five or six other oaks from a neighbor's place that blew over, plus various trees, locusts, mulberry, and some from the woods to the north side of the property. That garden soil was black, fluffy, fertile, and deep--a dream to garden in--and is still close to that today. As I expanded, I started using all these leaves for mulch, thus diluting the benefits. As the expansion grew to nearly an acre(I just had to have sweet corn......), the ground sort of dwindled down to some pretty infertile stuff, so I started adding chemical fertilizers and rotating the areas to keep at least two sections in fallow legume fields. That was sort of of the plan--and to use the supply of leaves as summer mulch and weed control. Oh yes, my manures(I have no animals except some horse manure once in while) come from my super-dooper fish head compost--since I live on an inland lake.

I have since lost five of the oaks when the county created a new paved roadway for us, so my supply of biomass has dwindled. But with the aging process, so has the size of my garden area--I have been growing oats and crimson clover in the harvested areas and in the strawberry turnover to add more biomass to the soil and to the compost. Still, it doesn't keep up, on this sand. But, in my main growing areas, I can see grey(not yet black) for about ten inches deep, so something must be working over the past 31 years.

I eat pretty well, and so do my robins.

As I said I in the previous post......"Patience wins."

geo

Martin,

You buy the tickets, I'll buy the Corona.

Actually, I want to go to Nova Scotia, but it may be a couple more years yet. (Two more surgeries to go.) Plus, since my dog died, and I have no more urine and manure in my downstairs area, I'm saving my money for new pecan flooring---how's that for cutting down the forest?

geo

There you have the agronomist telling what's there and the anthropologist telling how it got there. The communal latrines would have been used for both manure and urine. A latrine 2' wide, 6' deep, and 10' long would hold about 900 gallons. If there were 100 people using it, how long might it take to fill it? At same time, there would be the 120 cubic feet of soil to discard somewhere. For a densely-populated civilization as existed in Amazonia, I suspect that there would have been certain members who did nothing but dig latrines and carry soil.

No Corona in Belize unless out on the Cayes. Belikin rules!

Martin

I found a nearby distributor for a CO manufacturer of biochar. I will visit him next week. His price not counting shipping is about 1/8 of what I paid for my first bag (not counting shipping).

The products he has range in size of the biochar. In our short telephone conversation he said the small size is easier for houseplants, but has more dust which is less effective. He recommended medium size for my garden boxes and said the larger chunks would be better for a larger garden setup.

He said it needed to be inoculated for 2 weeks prior to use in the garden soil for the best results. He said do not place it in the soil dry.
Gary

After I read about terra preta several years back, I did some amending of the soil I use for container gardening with simple charcoal, taking oak or mesquite charcoal (not Kingsford junk), putting a chunk on a large piece of hardware cloth with a brick under it, and whaling away with a hammer. Then have simply mixed the powder in with the soil along with eggshells and such. No real composting process as such. Didn't try doing any controlled experiments so am uncertain if it made much difference. Didn't hurt, I don't think, and I had a mild impression that some veggies have been growing better as I've been mixing the char in some like that. Sure wouldn't buy any pre-packaged mixes, though. I also use a solution of Miracle Gro or equivalent, too, but try to go easy on it; basic soil start has been stuff like Super Soil, then some big bags of composted horse manure. Hard to tell anything definite with such a eye-of-newt-say-a-prayer sort of mess.

Another piece of the terra preta puzzle falls into place. Human urine is a common thing to inoculate biochar. For a real microbial treat, add some molasses.

Martin

George

Glad you went back to read those posts as it gives a better idea of what I began with here. Since that post, I have been continually adding biomass to the soil, mainly in compost form (shredded leaves/manures), but also by adding a good amount of shredded leaves as a top mulch during the growing season throughout the entire garden. On avg., I've been adding 400 CY of compost/mulch per season to approx. 18,000 sf. Haven't planted any cover crops yet though...but definitely will this fall. Yep, the proof is in the puddin

As I said, I'm the tinkering type, and I like experimenting in the garden and totally committed myself to growing organic. While my soil color and texture have both changed from hard packed red/yellow sand and small stones to black as coal fluff, I'm still on a mission to not just bring it all alive, but to also give the EMs more damp hiding places once I'm satisfied (if that ever happens)

Pig in a poke sounds about right, but yours truly has turned into Dr. Fronkensteen over the past few years, I'm on a roll and I ain't looking back

When building my compost pile, I add quite a bit of horse manure, some chicken manure, several 55 gallon barrels of coffee grounds, etc...which all get inoculated with a combination of BIM & Lactobacillus Serum that I make.

http://gilcarandang.com/recipes/lactobacillus-serum/

My experiment this year, if I actually get around to it, will be to do some side by side comparison plantings to see whether or not I can make a difference with the char. I agree, there are many variables such as biochar quality but the effort may just be well worth the reward. After the initial inoculation, I'm counting on my high octane compost to cover the necessary charging when and if needed. Chances are likely, I won't even see a difference as everything seems to grow just fine now

From what I've been able to take away from my research on biochar, it seems there are many proponents, each unwilling to even consider field testing, or advancing the scientific facts to a bag form, with the main reasoning being - the cutting of trees and it's effects on greenhouse gases (removal and burning). - Thats not always the case though, If i were running around cutting trees down to make biochar, I would have to agree. I have an unlimited supply of culled hardwood from both the local mill and my own property. I could go on and on as there's plenty of claims of Biochars effectiveness, but as you've stated, there really are a lot of variables and the science of it all has a long way to go before we'll see it on the shelf at the home depot.

As you can see, I'm on the fence looking to jump over for a try is all

Thank all of you for your postings. It has been interesting to learn more about biochar through the eyes of those whose postings I have often enjoyed.

My original impression was that biochar was made with wood as the fuel and other biomasses for the creation of the end product. While the marketable ingredients will not be the same as terra preta, it doesn't mean it has no value.

Perhaps the new terra preta will be marketed as Soylent Green. Hmmmm? Look at the earth's population now. Where is all that biomass going? I guess I will not buy biochar if made in Syria, even if it is closer to terra preta. Ever notice how cemetery grounds are rising?

From what I have learned on this thread, the current homemade biochar uses a variation of a rocket stove. A person burns wood to create pyrolysis in the other chamber. The regular steel cylinders, if used, are eventually consumed. Can a heat exchanger be added to the system so the energy oozing from the smokeless stack warms the abode?

When one is on the fence and considering jumping over, the initial work is done. Now coming back to earth is next. Perhaps walking on the fence is too much like a tightrope. Mother Nature's brothers (Mr. Gravity, and Mr. Inertia) will try to smack you down so she can send in the microbes to harvest the remains.

Gary

To learn about the science of Terra Preta, have a read of this scientific paper

http://advanced.jhu.edu/wp-content/u...Prins_ch18.pdf

Here is the Johns Hopkins University web page about it: http://advanced.jhu.edu/blog/dr-anto...-book-chapter/

It's not a cult or fad. It is important science. Cornell University was a leader in the field, but it is spreading world-wide.