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Originally Posted by Bigal
Pity you didn#t prime it first. You would have seen a big difference.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bigal
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.
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The problem with Britain is that is is full of sceptics until fully proven. That is why our universities take so long to prove that it is useful. Absolute proof is needed. We are lucky in Britain in that our soil is generally quite fertile. But some of that fertility is maintained at a cost - nitrates on the fields getting into the water systems. Biochar has millions of miniscule pores which lock in the fertiliser, and more importantly, retain it. It can also lock in something like 10% of its volume with water. Could be useful if we end up with very hot summers, although it doesn't look that way at the moment. It certainly isn't a fertiliser but does seem to work like slow release fertilisers. Biochar is carbon which can take thousands of years to break down and be released into the atmosphere. The deadly carbon type gasses are also burned off during itsa manufacture.. Anything left in the ground to rot gives all of its carbon back to the atmosphere. My method of making it burns off these gasses, but on an industrial basis they could be collected and used to run motors, generate electricity by either steam or running a small generator. No matter how much I try to inform people, scepticism steps in the way and it is forgotten, much as will probably happen here. I have attended garden forums where even the experts know nothing about it, and I have then had to offer what knowledge I had on the subject. Fortunately, it is being taken seriously in some countries. I thank you for reading this, and unless anyone has any questions, l shall retire to my 16 sq.m of vegetable garden to continue picking what is left to keep me supplied through thee winter via my freezer.