Biochar and natural farming

_Brian wrote: »

How can biochar be produced on a scale to add to soils.

Hi again Brian,
After easily converting a heap of sticks and brash into biochar in your lovely flame cap kiln, you'll want to activate the char before adding it to the soil.
Its not a fertiliser per se, more of a habitat for soil organisms,as a bonding substrate for holding nutrients and preventing leaching, and increasing the cation exchange capacity of the soil to which it is applied.

This is a good explanation of what works well when it comes to activating biochar
http://www.ithaka-journal.net/wege-zu-terra-preta-aktivierung-von-biokohle?lang=en


all the best
tim

_Brian wrote: »

I understand the activation process.

But say I want to improve 1 care at a time, how much do I need, and what are the resources consumed to produce it.

I presume 1 Acre at a time,

I have read that 10-50T/Ha is the goal, this is a lot.
Of course you could not ad this all in one go.
One would assume that building up the char content of your soils over time would be a better approach


For each 5 tonnes or so of stuff that you process into char you will get about 1 ton of char.


I'd say that by simply charring your waste on farm each year, you'd have a very significant addition of char to your soils after 5 years or so. i.e. just keep tipping away each year for a number of years to add sufficient char to your soils. Provided the char is properly activated before adding there would appear to be no practical upper limit to the amount you could add, although above about 10T/Ha it is my understanding that further gains in soil performance will be small.



charcoal is a bit too valuable to add directly to soils in any case.


The current char, activate, add to soil, paradigm is in my opinion a bit wasteful.
Instead char may be activated by using it for something else before adding it to soil, i.e. only add it to soil after you have used its capacity for something else
clear as mud right?
for example, add char to concentrate fed to cattle to improve animal health and reduce methane farting and conserve nutrients, then add further char to the manure produced in a compossting process, then add the resulting mix to the soil. In this way you will retain most if not all of the micro and macronutrients.

Char may be added to poultry bedding or animal bedding too, its very effective at moderating the smell of horse piss in stables etc, and gets activated n the process. Chickens don't like bigger sharp pieces, char for chickens should be well ground and mixed with the bedding.


tim

timfromtang wrote: »

The current char, activate, add to soil, paradigm is in my opinion a bit wasteful.
Instead char may be activated by using it for something else before adding it to soil, i.e. only add it to soil after you have used its capacity for something else
clear as mud right?
for example, add char to concentrate fed to cattle to improve animal health and reduce methane farting and conserve nutrients, then add further char to the manure produced in a compossting process, then add the resulting mix to the soil. In this way you will retain most if not all of the micro and macronutrients.

Char may be added to poultry bedding or animal bedding too, its very effective at moderating the smell of horse piss in stables etc, and gets activated n the process. Chickens don't like bigger sharp pieces, char for chickens should be well ground and mixed with the bedding.


tim

Thanks Tim..
That makes great sense now, sort of a double use from it with the primary being feed/bedding additive and second being spread along with manure already activated in the primary use..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhSmTPdDvAM


tim


A well known and widely used product in Asia.
multiple uses
easily made
produces charcoal too (this would be a somewhat tarry charcoal 70% fixed carbon or so and need further heat treatment for use as biochar)

Say my name wrote: »

Right on the natural farming side of things.
This is the craic I'm currently at.

Making my own humic acid/ seaweed juice.

I'll half fill an ibc tank with seaweed and the rest with well water and start using the mixture every 10 days or so for the year. Either to be sprayed on the grassland or let into the slurry tank. Hopefully I'll have enough seaweed for 4 ibc tanks.

Rinsing off the sand before it goes in the tank.


And an ibc and in the ibc tank.





Rest of the job is to continue filling and then top up with water.

*Before anyone asks. It was got in international waters. :cool:

Wow, what are the results like.
Is this aerated or just left stew ??

Is it like the activated compost tea I’ve read about ??

Say my name wrote: »

It will be left stew.
From what I've read and even just by entering "seaweed" on boards here people get on well with it this way.

Hopefully if I get it made, the plan down the road will be to use it for quenching biochar in a kon-tiki kiln.
But for now it'll do this way.

I contacted a company about how they processed their commercial seaweed foliar spray (which I used before) and they never came back to me. So that had a major influence on this development.

There's a poster on thefarmingforum using seaweed this way and mixing with biochar before feeding to sheep. So it's nothing that hasn't been done before.

It's something to pass the time anyway!

You should look up compost tea and the sites, some interesting stuff with claims of good results.

Right Say...

So I watched that video of the lad in Estonia make biochar. When and how is it spread afterwards?

I’d have a lot that kinda small light timber that really only gets thrown in the ditch, so I might make a go of making it into biochar...

So if a lad was to do this, on a very small scale, how would I go about this? Just use a old iron barrel I suppose is it?

I am only getting around to looking at this now (I dont think I'll be doing anything about it for another while)

From the bits I have seen online, to inoculate the biochar, they talk about soaking it for a while - 1 - 14 days is what various sources say.

So lets say I made biochar in a pit - and I quenched it with some kinda seaweed/FYM/nettle water mix, would that inoculate it? If it was in a pit, the pit wouldn't hold the water very long, so not sure if this would work?

Lets assume the biochar has been inoculated, its now a black wet mess (hopefully) in the pit - to dry it, is it just a case of covering the pit for a while, and letting it dry away itself?

After we have dried our biochar - I want to land spread it, on grassland, it wouldn't be worked into the soil. I suspect it needs to go into the ground to work, so will I need to crush it into tiny pieces?
Is it feasible to spread it in this manner, or should it really only be put into grand that is being worked?

After it has been spread, how can I ensure it stays on my grassland? I dont want it getting blown away in the first gale...

I don't know if anyone has the answers to these, but said I'd throw them out there anyways...

Talking to a clever person recently.
I forget if it was per ton of an An based product or the raw N value but equaled a 15% loss of stored C.