BioChar Benefits Your Garden

BioChar Benefits Your Garden

I just opened an issue of Organic Gardening, the first article I stumble upon is about BioChar titled “What is Biochar.”

When I first saw the piece, it seemed like I was looking at a popular advertising campaign’s “most interesting guy in the world,” that got my attention.

The short piece in Organic Gardening was very interesting, opening with a discussion on how Rohnert Park, of California and founder of Carbon Gold Ltd., a company in Bristol, England., hadn’t washed his hair since 1965! He states,

“…there’s a healthy ecology of microbes up there that he doesn’t want to scrub off by using soap. And so a rinse with warm water and olive oil is all he uses.”

The above article discusses Rohnert Park’s founded ventures like:

• Whole Earth Foods, Europe’s first organic food brand,
• Green & Black’s chocolate company,
• Carbon Gold

Rohnert Park is also chairman of the Soil Association (the British organic agriculture organization).

He seems to be a guy who has spent as many years working with and around organics and earthly matters as he as spent not washing his hair, interesting.

I’ve talked and written on the topic previously “Revisiting Something Old” when I’d read about it in Ode Magazine a few years back.  I haven’t incorporated this into my gardens yet, I still use wood ashe in the soil as an amendment, but haven’t yet taken that extra step to make oxygenless wood ashe.

Why is it important to know about?

According to the article:

Biochar is plant matter, wood mostly, roasted until it’s black and crumbly. It’s not burnt to ash but is a form of charcoal that has some of the same characteristics as humus, plus one very important other function: When it’s buried in the soil, it stores carbon so it doesn’t enter the air as carbon dioxide and contribute to global warming.

 

Is this just for gardeners and farmers? How does it compare to compost?

Compost: Adding 18 to 20 tons of compost per hectare (2.2 acres) of land, and only 1 ton of the carbon in the compost stays in the soil. As the compost decays into humus, the rest of the carbon is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

10 to 20 percent of the carbon goes off as carbon dioxide after a decade, the rest is sequestered in the soil for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Added benefit as it reduces nitrous oxide emissions by up to 50 percent, due to the proliferation of soil biota that sequesters it.  Farmers can use half their nitrate use and get the same results.

Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas 300 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. It’s emitted by nitrogenous fertilizers, including the anhydrous ammonia that’s widely used in conventional farming.

Does biochar help the development of soil life in the same fashion as compost?

• Roasting plant material retains all the cells and tubes for sap. Providing refuge for beneficial soil microorganisms, protecting them from “grazers” like nematodes and mites that feed on them. The nematodes can’t get into the caves and channels, so the fungi in particular survive. It houses many microorganisms with sticky surfaces for plant nutrients to adhere to so they aren’t washed away.

Should you start making your own?

That fact is up to you, your space, access to material,and other resources. If you are interested, Carbon Gold’s SuperChar 100, a portable roaster for farm residues and wood waste. Gases from the roasting are recycled and burned within the roaster. Most of the used energy is from initial ignition, then it fuels itself. There is a unit that’s 10 times larger, for bigger applications. It will make a 1-tonne batch of a day.

Carbon Gold also has:

• GroChar activated with actinomycetes, mycorrhizal fungi, and seaweed.
• A coir-based compost that is an effective replacement for peat.
• An organic 5-5-5 fertilizer mix is then pelletized. By putting the microorganisms and nutrients right with the biochar, you can use less. And since it’s black, it speeds soil warming in the spring.

In my previous article I wrote of the benefits which are:

• High Nitrogen
• Retains Moisture
• Stimulates Microbe Growth
• Stabilizes Nutrients
• Makes soil resistant to nematodes, fungus, and insects
• Soil Neutralizer
• Recarbonizes the soil

Organic Gardening’s article on  can be found here (via groworganic)

Mother Nature News has a nice DIY Biochar on making biochar as does Rodale’s Organic Life.

What are your thoughts on, will you consider using it with your soil and have you started researching how you can get your own supply?