About 5 years ago I read an item on the American site of garden banter giving some of the history of biochar and its uses. The claims made intrigued me and I spend long hours googling it, finding out how to use it and, more importantly, how to make it in relatively small quantities. The most difficult part for me was that I couldn't find anyone to discuss my findings. I needed to make relatively small quantities, up to about 20 litres, getting to be a little bit on the ancient side and unable to handle anything very heavy. I also needed to be able to use wood shavings as these were fairly easy to obtain. At that time I grew very little in the garden, anything I tried my wife would never use. I now think it was probably due to the slugs etc that she would find in the veg. I now like to grow things that will store, freeze or pickle and to that end I have made raised beds totalling 16 sq.m. My first batch of biochar went into a 5 sq.m bed, and was relatively successful in the first year, but failed in the second year. Biochar absorbs a large amount of liquid, but in the first year it also absorbed a lot of nutrient from the soil. I overcame that by soaking it in liquid nutrients for a few days . I now use whatever I have available in the beds, and that is probably about 300 litres. The manure l use is alpaca which goes directly on to the beds and l put some to soak to use for priming the biochar. My crops are good. and whilst I normally trench out my runner beans, this year l just added a couple of buckets of biochar to the row. Fewer plants, and an even better crop than last year. Initially, I must have spent about £250 perfecting a technique for making the biochar. The drawback with the method I used was a small amount of smoke produced, but enough to upset my neighbours if the had washing out. The new method I use costs about £60, produces no smoke (virtually none), has double the output, and should produce about 200 litres before parts need replacing (£20 to £25). I think the Mayan Indians of Brazil got it right when they just kept adding it to their soil making Terra Preta. Believed to have been used for 2,000 years in the Amazon valley. Nothing added to it for 500 years and farmers still using it without adding any fertilisers. A lot of research is being done by universities. A couple of companies producing it and charging a small fortune for it. I get my shavings free so I calculate that it is costing me about 10 pence a litre. I think the time l spent looking it up and working on it has been really worthwhile . And l would recommend giving it a try.