Perhaps the most important biochar video you will ever watch! 

Thanks again! I added your channel to my channel homepage and have been sending people to you as well! I've been doing that for years. We actually have a lot in common and maybe we can work on something together. Let me know if you want to do that.

​@@LiveOnWhatYouGrowHe sent me!😈 Muahaha!

You may be gratified to know that many many folks informed this guy that you had sent them. Hi David, Howz Bayou?

I just followed a link from your video here, and subscribed.

DTG sub here, new to your channel, sub'd. 🤙🏼

Thanks for all the kind words! The whole key to sustainable growing is in having ALL the necessary life in your soil including: bacteria, fungi, protozoa, beneficial nematodes, microarthropods, and worms. If you provide them the (underground) air, water, carbon, organic matter, and fungal food, they will manufacture, and mine the soil for, all the nutrients your plants will EVER need! I am working on a new video that explains all of this. So subscribe AND hit notifications so you will get the reminder when I put the new video up!

Excellent point!

Hi, thanks for your comment. I agree that small amounts of carbon enter the atmosphere, but not as much as would have if I was just burning wood. And actually what I said was a mistake. I meant to say, "The carbon that was left behind obviously didn't enter the atmosphere." But thanks for pointing that out. AND... I totally agree with you on no-dig! You will never create regenerative soil if you incorporate digging/turning. I will be talking about that in another video!

@@LiveOnWhatYouGrow Yes, the process is not 100% efficient, but with TLUD and similar O2 deprived methods the CO2 produced is minimal. I burn hardwoods usng TLUD in 55-gallon barrels and have produced hundreds of pounds of biochar. The cellulose conversion uses available water in the wood as you know: C6-H10-O5 + H2O -> 6C + 6H2O That's at 24:20. Your description is spot on. You have the holy grail of pyrolysis. The equation is not that different from humans burning glucose, although WITH the oxygen: C6-H12-O6 + 6O2 -> 6CO2 + 6(H2O) We as humans burn simple sugars (C6-H12-O6) for energy and breathe out water and carbon dioxide. I burned 60 pounds off me but that's a different video;) I sent a few samples of my biochar the NC state labs: 97.5%+ Carbon, 2.1% calcium, the rest roughly 20 trace minerals. I run my biochar through a hammermill to increase the microbio surface area. That's the only point I disagree with you on your video. The more area the better. Microbes are small, and surface area is key. Plant roots appreciate small cavities that hold on to water and nutrients. Great video!

Isn't it great that we can disagree and both still be right? There are different benefits to the two paradigms! The biochar eventually gets to the same size as yours over time in the soil, using my method, without me having to crush it. As it breaks in the soil, fresh new surfaces are constantly being exposed. But just not all at once! Some people say that their way is right and every other way is wrong. They think that I am the enemy, and they come at me like I must be defeated!

@@LiveOnWhatYouGrow I’ve heard the char needs to be 1/4 in diameter or smaller. I’d like to see the science on it. I agree with you that crushing it to powder doesn’t increase surface area but wonder that the large chunks make the “storage” of “bios” impractical. I see the biochar like a coral reef for fish…massive structure for life forms. But if a coral reef was 1000 cubic miles (10x10x10), 95% of the sea life would be on the outer 10’ and hardly any would be found “3 miles in”. Biochar and coral reefs are apples and oranges, but given the microscopic nature of the biology taking up residence in (bio)char the smaller size …to us…is really a massive apartment complex on the microscopic level.

Hi David, thanks for writing. I was just thinking about this today. It all depends on how dense the wood is, to begin with. I'm using wood chips about the size of half a potato chip, not big sticks or logs that are turned to charcoal. The charcoal I make is so porous that I can blow air right through it. The microscopic life will have access to the utmost recesses. The thousand cubic mile reef wouldn't have water at its core but my biochar does and you can tell when you snap a piece. The dry pieces make a snapping noise, while the saturated pieces do not. As I showed in the last video I made, after I put it into the garbage can and loaded it up with water, it breaks into very small pieces by the physical act of stirring all the water, compost, worm castings, and other nutrients into it! I show that in my newest video, most of it just crumbles apart without me having to do it! It's because it absorbs that water all the way through, becomes very soft, and breaks apart very easily. I've been making and using biochar for a long time with great results and have come to the conclusion that there are benefits of crushing and different benefits of not crushing.

And then the EPA moved in!

Thanks for your comment, Kate. We're saving the planet one backyard at a time!

I know that. Every living thing: plant, animal, and person will decompose into carbon dioxide, minerals, and water. It just keeps recycling through the plants, through the animals, and back through the plants, and on and on. Along with the increase in the concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere, scientists see a corresponding increase in the vegetative matter on Earth! Nature balances itself in this way, and when we make biochar, we're a part of that process!

Indeed; thank you @@LiveOnWhatYouGrow

Thanks and welcome!

Welcome Richard, there are a lot of smart people who still think that smaller biochar is better, mainly because people have been saying it for so long! When people who are thought to be EXPERTS say something long enough with a lot of conviction, it becomes the TRUTH-- not! You're right about the journey part...I'm on it too!

Far and above ANY video on biochar out there! My best subject in school was biology, never thought I’d use it at 63! ❤️🌿❤️🌿❤️🌱

My advice is to keep on learning under the NEW paradigm. Much of what we learned in school, (I'll be 63 in June), was just totally wrong. If you still love science, go to the Elaine Ingham's Soil Food Web channel and subscribe to that! And keep on coming back here to this community and letting us know what you learned!

Already watched one of her talks!

Low risk of toxic leaves compared to straw and grass ... it depends ... some areas heavily spray chemicals on trees (not just commercial orchard trees) to deter various tree diseases before it spreads to other trees, for non beneficial parasitic growths that attach themselves to trees but cause harm instead of a beneficial symbiosis (although that is rare; most parasitic growths are actually beneficial to their host trees or at the very least neutral), as well as for destructive insects and destructive wood boring insects. Those who live near national forests also know only too well how the fire fighting airplanes dump heavy amounts of fire retardant chemicals which contain PFAS (aka "forever chemicals") several time a year during the dry burn ban (drought) season. City dwellers and those near certain types of manufacturing plants and highways need to consider the amount of run off, air pollution and smog and what chemicals are collecting not only in their soil but also on or absorbed by the roots of plants and trees. Same for those in rural communities living near commercial farms that spray their crops and use crop dusting planes. In neighborhoods, a person will have to consider what the neighbors could be spraying on their lawns and trees too.

If you used wood from let’s say a black walnut tree, it will still have the toxins that keep other plants from growing, in the the bio char. That could be what went wrong.

That is fantastic, congrats!

Yes, I believe it will. The longer you leave the charcoal in the organic mixture the better. I think it will be done in about a month if you do it as described.

Thank you so much Sir for an immediate reply.. take care.. have subscribed your channel to learn more ..

You're welcome. I'm glad you've joined us!

Yes, and there are a lot of videos online to show you how to do it!

It totally blew me away when I first learned it!

Welcome aboard!

I've already got mine charging with garden compost I brought in before winter, some worm castings, kelp meal, greensand, Azomite and lots of water. I do the nettle tea and bubbler in the spring

I just went to your channel and subscribed. WOW! I was going to make some videos of my own microscopy, but I'll just send them to yours! Good Job!

Glad it was helpful!

Thanks Garth for all your input. I really enjoy having this discussion. I agree that much more needs to be done, and making biochar and compost are ways we can sequester carbon into our soils both long-term (biochar) and short-term (compost). When man continues to poison and destroy soil fertility, and subsequently the nutrition value of food through the current agricultural processes... this is a far greater threat to mankind than ANYTHING else. This is something that soil biologists like Elaine Ingham understands, but it's not something political enough for the mainstream media. So I think we're definitely on a collision course with food shortages. If all gardeners would make biochar and compost... at least we're doing our small part, AND BTW, making our gardens the most productive ever!

@@LiveOnWhatYouGrow during covid lockdown, I decided to grow myself in different ways… took Dr. Ingham’s SoilFoodWeb foundation courses, built a small greenhouse attached to my heated workshop, so it’s very easy to heat the gh, even in zone 4, with excess heat from wood stove (that burns as much salvage wood/pallets as I can haul home in my Honda Fit), built a garden pond, and took Matt Power’s’ Regenerative Soil course. And I turn 79 this year… just getting started… so long as my legs don’t quit! LOL. I enjoy your videos because it’s obvious you speak from experience. I’ve already got a five gallon pail of charcoal being charged.

Good job Stephan, I like the holistic approach too, that's why I heat my house by pyrolyzing the wood chips and then using the resulting carbon to turn to biochar. I'm not against people making biochar in an open burn pit in a warm climate, but why should I pay for fuel to heat my house, and then just throw away the heat I produced by making char outside in a pit? That doesn't make any sense to me!

Many people need repeat. Over an over to sink in!! 30 years of science teaching!!

Planting a tree removes CB carbon from the air… sequestration!!!

You may want to work on your patience. You may also want to research the word “rude.”

@@tavenchristensen3157 excuse me? Shorter videos, which can be repeatedly viewed without a lot of time usage, would make it more likely for a viewer to subscribe and return.

@@angelwithbrokenwings2456 Yes, repetition gives emphasis. Not always appreciated when we are are only waiting for specific information. I'm not going to repeat myself though even for fun. Oops nearly did.

Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for sharing with us. I love your ingenuity!

You're welcome! Just make sure you watch the two follow-up videos to learn how to make and activate it!

The biochar from the pods and leaves (and cardboard) would be perfect for crushing and adding to your seed starting mixes as it will have all the properties of biochar, which aids in germination, but not be so large it would interfere with root development.

You're welcome!

Thanks for the comment. That's what I would do if I couldn't make my own!

Thank you great video !

@@adamdille6031 I appreciate that! Make sure you watch the other videos about how to make the retort and how to make the biochar and activate it, and let us know how it works out!

I am a first year gardener and started doing this this year. Very interested to see the improvements to my garden next year.

​@@aphillips5376 Congratulations! As I see it, the MOST important thing you can do is to provide the conditions for the various life forms in your soil in what is called the Soil Food Web. When you add compost, you're not feeding your plants directly, you're feeding the bacteria and fungi, which feed the protozoa and beneficial nematodes, which only then feed the plants. If you check out Dr. Elaine Ingham's Soil Food Web link in my Suggested Videos section, she says there is not a soil on earth that is lacking ANY nutrients your plants need. Unfortunately, they're not in forms your plants can use. When you add compost you're doing two things: you're providing nutrients for the microorganism, AND you're loosening up the soil to allow more oxygen to penetrate. That will transform the soil from an anaerobic one, where the organisms are mostly counter-productive, to one where the aerobic organisms convert nutrients for your plants, and for you when you eat them. Biochar also does two things: it provides homes for this microscopic life that makes all the nutrition in your soil available AND allows your soil to hold onto the nutrition by increasing your cation exchange capacity. So I tell everybody, no matter what time of the year it is, to start a BIG compost pile, as big as you can, and fill it with fall leaves, grass clippings, and anything you can find. I pick up HUNDREDS of bags of leaves people pick up with their lawnmowers and leave by the side of the road every year. The only thing you want to avoid is hay, straw, or horse manure that may have the toxic chemical aminopyralid which could ruin your garden no matter how much compost you use! Aminopyralids should be a concern for all gardeners because they think they're doing something good, but they're actually killing their soil and plants for years and years, and they won't know why it's happening! Here's one resource that details the threat: theprepared.com/blog/aminopyralid-contamination-is-a-growing-gardening-problem/ I hope you don't mind all this advice when you didn't ask for it, but if you can start it out right, it can feed you and your family for years! Good luck with your garden!

Thanks for the subscription, it means a lot to me!

Don't you hate it when the stupid people are in charge? Like when constructing a windmill-- more carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere during its manufacture than what would have been released had they just burned natural gas which burns very cleanly with little carbon dioxide! That's the whole premise of making biochar. The naturally occurring volatile gasses in the wood, i.e. methane and wood alcohol, (containing very little carbon), are driven out of the retort and burn very cleanly, (since they have little carbon), while the carbon is left behind in the retort! So you just sequestered the carbon, saving humanity and the world!

​@LiveOnWhatYouGrow Yes, the biochar retort contains the carbon and prevents it from escaping into the atmosphere, but at the same time, more carbon is being released into the atmosphere by the wood that's being burned in order to create the biochar. Of course if it's possible to use a cleaner-burning fuel like natural gas, then that would be preferred or if you had some sort of scrubber on your stove pipe that solved that problem. Personally I think that the focus should be on the advantages of biochar and leave 'saving the planet' to someone else. By the way, this isn't a criticism, just an observation. The burning of wood in order to create biochar (which is the accepted practice of most people in the world who make biochar), will always be the 'elephant in the room'.

I don't worry about it at all. The charcoal never decomposes because that would mean breaking down it into simpler compounds. Charcoal already is broken down as much as it can be since it is almost pure carbon that can't decompose further! I know what you mean though! I use woodchips that are about the size of a coin and most of it gets ground to a smaller size through natural processes in the soil, and even the larger pieces are still beneficial to microorganisms. I've seen it, and others have commented as well, that quite often a plant's roots will grow right into a piece of biochar seeking nutrients!

Hi Mark, I think you're talking about the wood ashes. I never had that experience at all. But you do have to activate your charcoal, which what it is before you TURN IT to biochar or it WILL have a negative effect on your plants. Once it's activated, with nutrients and bacterial and fungal life THEN you can use it on your plants at a rate of about 10% of the soil in your rooting zone, whatever that is for your garden. I am making a video about how to use your biochar this week, but you could also go and visit the Living Web Farms Site in my Recommended Videos section, like I suggested on the video! Thanks for your question!

@@LiveOnWhatYouGrow thanks! I will use this information. Listening to many people about growing becomes confusing .I think some people have a supernatural ability to grow plants and don't realize it. 🤔

@@markmcdaniel304, the REAL secret to being a successful gardener is to take notes on everything. Otherwise, you forget! If you watch ANY gardening video and don't takes notes, you're wasting your time! Sometimes you'll get advice (that you found out later was bad) and you just cross those parts out! Sometimes what works in one person's garden won't work at all in yours. Take notes of everything you do in your garden, like when you start your plants and put them out, and which varieties performed best for you! I talked about this in one of the videos, but you actually have to get rid of the "gardener" mindset, and put on the small "farmer" mindset, like your life depended on whether you were successful or not!

YOu're welcome! Thanks for the comment!

Thank you so much for commenting! BTW, after it's completely cooled, when you open up the retort, if you see that it's not fully done, just close it back up and put it back into the fire, even if a few days have passed. It'll pick up right where it left off! Please continue to post your progress. Thanks again!

@@LiveOnWhatYouGrow after I make some more I'll watch your video again on how to activate it.

Welcome aboard!

Thanks for the input!

I appreciate that!

It all depends on what you're using it for. Do you want more surface area, or more cubical area in the interior? When you crush it obviously you increase the surface area but it's also obvious that you decrease the amount of space inside. For example, if you crushed a one-quart jar of pretzels, they would probably be reduced to the size of a one-cup container. It's the same with charcoal. The pores in the charcoal were originally the capillaries for transporting water and nutrients from the roots to the leaves of the tree. They're not closed. The open spaces create a network that completely permeate the charcoal, When you crush it, in my opinion, you destroy the most important purpose for adding biochar, its water, nutrient, and microbe holding capacity.

With bio-char we are not working in the 3rd dimension ( volume/Z/³). We are making housing for creatures that are so small they are 2 dimensionaland cannot comprehend the volume. X and Y only (Sq area/²) no Z. Curvature become flat at this scale. As for water holding due to surface tension it is still flat. Volume is temporary storage to water, same as clay( 70% saturation = dry dusty clay.) Braking up the char reduces contained volume ( Z) by opening contained space( voids). Increasing surface aera by fracturing solid walls. The point of diminishing returns is where the pices can blow away when on the surface, and can leach/flow through soil into the water table or the nabors down hill. Eg take a 1qt jar put as much char in as possible. Now fill 2nd qt jar with water . Pore the water into the char, fill repeatedly till you have a jar with char fill to the brim no air space with lid on ( may take 1-2weeks to preform) jar 2( water jar)will typically only have ½ cup/4 floz or less water left. The water left represents the total solids/ mass in jar 1. Repeat expairament with different size pices to from un crushed char to powder , to determine the actual ratio of char to air space in the jar. I crush my char to fit through a ½" screen so more volume of soil can be treated ( spread thiner ) with same and result. Prevent the formation of Calcrete ( dead calcium carbonate cemented soil )

@@daviddroescher Thanks for the differing opinion!

​​@@LiveOnWhatYouGrow Upon further research I have found that crushing the char to the size of sand grains is ideal. First, it makes dispersion within the soil easier by activities of animals. Most animals living underground are not big enough to move particles bigger than pebbles sizes. You can disperse the char by yourself but that would cost some gasoline to run the machines unless you are planning to do this by hand. Secondly and this is the most important part, it helps the innoculation of the char particles by earth worms. Earth worms don't have teeth so they swallow grains of sand to help them grind up their food inside the guts. By grinding the char to a sand like consistency the worms will also swallow the char particles where they get innoculated inside the gut and dispersed by the worms.

Thanks for the comment Heidi, The FIRST thing I would do is to build some HUGE compost piles like mine. My piles are six feet wide, four feet high, and a total of about thirty feet long. You can see how I build my compost piles on this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Mr4GKDq1_4M.html and you can see the results of me spreading the finished compost on the asparagus video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-4MaxX0yioHI.html I make about 6 tons a year and could easily use twice, or three times, as much. Just put up some fencing at least four feet (1.3 M) high, wide, and long, and start filling it up with leaves, grass clippings, cardboard (non-glossy), seaweed, weeds, kitchen scraps, etc. I pick up hundreds of bags of leaves every year that people put by the side of the road, and I make two batches in each bin every year.

@@LiveOnWhatYouGrow Thank you so much for the advice. I did make a 4x4' compost pile last week, turned it yesterday and more are on my to-do list. I'll sure watch those videos you suggest. It's always exciting to learn more and I feel that the more I learn, the more I find the need to learn more, lol.

That's a good start, but you should seriously make four or five more piles if you have the space and available materials. One thing though Heidi, if you use leaves to make it fungal-dominated, you won't have to turn the piles at all! I will NEVER turn a compost pile again! Too much work for my large piles! Almost all the gardens I come across have a F:B (fungal-to-bacteria) ratio that's too high on the bacteria side. It should be about 1:1 or .8:1, slightly higher on the bacteria side, to get the best garden yields. Most gardens I visit are 1:25 or 1:50 with hardly any fungi at all. And gardens that are bacteria-dominated promote more weed growth! Basically speaking, when your F:B ratio has the proper balance you won't need to add much in the form of soil amendments because your soil life will unlock huge amounts of nutrients inherent in all soils! Check out some of Dr. Elaine Ingham's videos on my recommended channels: www.youtube.com/@soilfoodwebschool I watch at least one hour per week of her presentations! Using lots of leaves to make your fungal-dominated compost means you don't ever have to turn the piles! If I add kitchen scraps, I put them on TOP of the pile instead of mixing them INTO the pile to prevent the pile from becoming anaerobic. When you turn a fungally dominated pile you break and destroy all the fungal hyphae that are so important to introduce to your soil rhizosphere. I'm working on one right now that explains all the different criteria to increase all the beneficial soil life so you can build a regenerative garden that increases in fertility year after year even as we age and get to the point that we're not able to do the work to add huge amounts of compost to the soil anymore! That's why I use 6 TONS of compost every year and am increasing the biochar level to at least 10% of the top 10 to 20 inches depth of my soil! Please subscribe and hit the notification bell so you'll get a reminder when I put up new videos.

@@LiveOnWhatYouGrow I subscribed and look forward to watching new videos from you. Thanks a bunch for the great insights and suggestions. I'll definitely work on that.

@@heidiwilde4307 One more suggestion; whenever you watch any gardening video, mine or others, always write down the important points and eventually you'll have your own book covering a myriad of topics and pages of tips for every vegetable you grow. It's a waste of time for me to watch a video without taking notes because most of the time I forget what I learned! And please leave comments to let us hear about your progress!

The best thing is that it is free, so I don't mind the fact that the cans burn through after a while! Using cast iron or stainless retorts costs money, and you would either need a big one, or lots of them, to make a good quantity of char. I can fit three #10 retorts AND six or seven smaller ones into my wood stove at once. After you've got a good fire going with firewood, the more retorts you put in, the better! The fire FROM the retorts themselves produces the heat for the other retorts...and you get more heat for your house for free with very little carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere!

Thanks for the kind words. Please go to the PLAYLIST section of the channel and click on the BIOCHAR section to see the way we use biochar and compost in our garden beds. Also, I talked about it in our last video about planting asparagus: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-4MaxX0yioHI.html but we make about 6 tons of compost each year from the hundreds of bags of leaves we gather every fall for our 1/4 acre mini farm, and even at that we don't have enough. Nothing will make the fertility of your gardens grow faster than biochar and TONS of compost! I will have new videos coming out over the winter on how to create regenerative soil that increases in fertility year after year, so make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell to be notified when I put up the new videos!

Thanks for the post!

I’ve used the Wakefield product. I put it in my compost heap for a month before using it in my garden and I had incredible results. Biochar is different than charcoal as it’s made at much higher temperatures. It’s not inoculated, don’t confuse the two by saying because it’s not inoculated it’s not biochar. You will not get anywhere near the results by buying a bag of Kingsford charcoal and applying it to your garden. There are all kinds of lignins still left on the wood. That’s why people barbecue, to flavor their food with those lignins.

Glad it was helpful!

I appreciate that a lot... now go and make some! If you go to the Playlist Section, I have a number of biochar videos showing you how to make and use it, and I'll be making some more over the winter!

Glad it was helpful! To watch all my videos on Biochar, click on *Playlist* and then in the *Biochar* section , click on *View full Playlist.* And I have more coming soon!

Will do, @@LiveOnWhatYouGrow. And I'm looking forward to watching more of these... Please keep up the great work.

Thanks for the post! I agree with you. If I said the things I really wanted to say, they probably wouldn't have let me put up the video in the first place! But I am in agreement with you totally. But making biochar does remove the carbon that would have gone into the atmosphere forever so everyone on both sides should be pleased. Anne made a video to show people living in apartments how they can grow lots of food even in a two-foot by two-foot space: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-cjEvAsMDBtw.html Make sure you leave her a nice comment!

Mine too. Make sure you watch the video over at Living Web Farms. It's where I learned about it! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-_IwEGvb1O00.html

Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made!

Thanks, I meant to say, no one showed my how to do this. I came up with the idea on my own.

Wow, thanks!

Nano is good to try it

Yeah 👍 go science! ... and Sports, so they don't feel left out, ya know 😅

👏 Appreciate the correction. I mean he shows a picture of microscopic porosity and says not to grind it, it's microscopic! Grinding something to dust increases surface area a lot if I'm not mistaken...

You certainly save a lot of money and you are right but what you produce is not equivalent to $12240 because you should add the cost of packaging, marketing, labor, tax, all that stuff.

The primary issue with grinding RAW char is that it increases the surface area, thereby releasing the ash minerals trapped within the char structure and spiking the pH. But as we know, raw char is not biochar. Based on my own observations, the pH issues are corrected over time when incorporated into the soil or manually "charged" with nutrients and organic material, both of which facilitates microbial inoculation, with the microbes naturally balancing out the pH over time.

Hello D, I am so glad to hear what you're doing. I do have some advice for you. First is to take notes on EVERY video you watch and write yourself a journal on how to be a successful nurseryman. And second. learn about the Soil Food Web on Dr. Elaine Ingram's RU-vid channel. There's a link to her channel on my RU-vid homepage. This will give you a great foundation for understanding soil life! Having knowledge n your field will help you immensely so that people will want to buy from you, and keep coming back! As for biochar, there are many RU-vid videos that describe how to make charcoal in a conical-shaped hole in the ground. Just watch a few and find one that makes the most sense for your situation. If your situation won't allow you to do that, you can buy the Royal Oak Charcoal which has nothing but charcoal, WITH NO PETROCHEMICALS added. Just crush that up and innoculate it for a couple months into biochar. I wish you the best in your endeavor!

@@LiveOnWhatYouGrow I remember the first time I used royal oak I got 2 bags for 1/2 off at WalMart due to a small tears in the bags. I still have one bag that I’m going to use in my garden space. I’m in the city so I can’t be lighting big wood fires. I’m going to inoculate the biochar this time as last time I didn’t inoculate it. I put it in the ground along with shards of broken clay pots and compost. 😊

I appreciate that!

He sent me here too, and I agree with you

Welcome!

Any variety of wood will work as the high temps will turn everything pretty much to carbon and minerals. Because wood chips absorb so much water, I load up my buckets and garbage cans the day the tree guys drop them off. Even one rain doubles the amount of time it takes to turn them into char AND cuts in half the usable life of my retorts.

I make my own because I LIKE it to be all different sizes for all the different creatures and plants in my garden! The larger pieces do get smaller over time. But the main reason I make my own is the quality! High-quality charcoal MUST be heated to 1500°F (819°C) to volatize and remove all the impurities. I know that most manufacturers aren't going to reach that temperature because the char made at lower temps LOOKS exactly the same as the high quality. Most of the people that talk about biochar on the internet don't even know about this, and they think that if you make char at 500°F in an open firepit that it's the same! It's NOT! When you make your own you KNOW what you've got!

Thank you very much!

Cheers!

Thanks for posting. I couldn't have said it any better or more concise! I know we all gardeners hate winter and can't wait for it to end, but I have a completely different perspective. For me the winter doesn't seem long enough to get everything done before planting time! Winter is the the perfect time for planning and writing everything down, based on your last years' performances, to do even better in the coming season. The whole motive for our channel is to learn, and teach people, how to survive on what they grow in the event that food is not available, _for any reason!_ So not only must you gather compostable materials _when you can_ to build your soil fertility, but you also must learn how to grow the most food possible from any given amount of space. And then you have to know how to store it for food over the winter. So the winter months, at least presently, are the perfect opportunity to study RU-vid videos taking notes on the best way to grow every single crop. I have pages and pages in a notebook that I refer to for every kind of vegetable I grow. There are some great ideas out there... and some really bad ones too, BUT I manage to learn _something_ from each one of them, even if I only learn what _not_ to do! _If you like our content, partner with us to help get the message out to more people. You can do that easily for free by hitting the SUBSCRIBE and NOTIFICATIONS buttons, and also clicking the LIKE icon whenever you like a video. There are some bad things happening in the world and we should be prepared to grow our own food! If they DON'T happen, you'll still know how to grow superior food for yourself!_

@@LiveOnWhatYouGrow I'm grateful for your reply, particularly re your positive attitude toward wintertime! very helpful, and I'll try to adopt it. Like you, I seek to have the resources and skills necessary to get through circumstances that may threaten reliable access to food, etc, resources and skills I truly hope I will never need. However, what's the worst that can happen if I don't 'need' them? I'll be improving my garden methods, eating great fruit and vegetables, and gaining the peace of mind that follows these activities. Meanwhile, I can make a small contribution to the environment. I make tiny quantities of biochar, perhaps 10 gallons per year, with the following method: Using a backyard grille, I 'roast' dead hardwood limbs over dead hardwood logs. As each 'chunk' of char stops spitting flame, and I'm satisfied it's finished off-gassing, I quench it in a slurry of rainwater, coffee grounds, vegetable scraps, and, um, er, "liquid nitrogen''. When full, I let each bucket of this stuff sit for a few months, as I wait for the autumn leaf fall. (this year, my apple crop was so abundant, I used the 'drops' in my buckets, too). After shredding my leaves with the mower, I pile them up and add a bucket of this stew and mix it in. No idea if this will have a good effect on my soil, but the piles are heating up nicely! Your biochar videos truly inspire. I hope to make a larger retort using a "clamp-lid" steel can, perhaps 3-4 gal capacity, by drilling a hole in the lid, filling it as you describe, and cooking it in a firepit. Thanks again for the exchange.

That will work... possibly, but I like the #10 can idea better because, first of all, I can get as many of them I want for free at a nearby pizza restaurant, but also, because they're smaller they will heat up faster and you can do it in a smaller fire as the flames need to surround the whole retort not sit on top of a fire. I'm not saying your idea won't work, but if you can get unlimited cans for free, even using smaller cans, even small soup cans may work better for you. After they burn out, you just throw them into the recycling! I think that's way better than paying money for a retort which will eventually burn away and also have to be replaced! _Partner with us to help get the message to more people. You can do that easily _*_for free_*_ by clicking the SUBSCRIBE and NOTIFICATIONS buttons, and also clicking the LIKE icon whenever you learn something important from a video. In these times we should all be prepared to grow our own food! Doing these simple things will give our channel more exposure and you'll never miss a new video when it comes out!_

"Scientists" who say that don't know science!

I am almost certain any scientist saying the amount of water on Earth is fixed is most likely responding to bible literalists who think Noah's flood was real. That said, the oceans existed before life, so life creating 'new' water cannot have created them. The most likely origin is late cometary bombardment in the final stages of the solidification of the planet. Additionally, the H and O in water is used to form the cellulose molecule. Burning does not create new water at all. This video has a good overview of the photosynthetic process: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-xEF8shaU_34.html

Welcome!

Yes, I will as soon as we get production going this winter. Thanks for reminding me though. I've been super busy!

@@LiveOnWhatYouGrowis a thank you for answering me

The only difference to me is how dense the end product comes out. I use wood chips so I don't crush the charcoal at all before turning it into biochar. Yes' I get a few bigger pieces, but the diversity of sizes is what I want! But if I did it in a 55-gallon drum, or in an open fire, the dense hardwoods would definitely have to be broken down into a MUCH smaller size. The softwoods, not so much so. The porous softwoods absorb so much moisture, so fast, they don't need to be reduced to that same small size, in my opinion!

Thanks for the info!

As far as I know, terra preta just means dark soil, so I'm guessing, based on what I've been told, it's just dark soil filled with microbiological life.

@@LiveOnWhatYouGrow It seems like both - it's that dark soil filled with microbiology AND charcoal pieces that hold the fungi, etc.

@@zoro-i8u You're right it IS both!

@@LiveOnWhatYouGrow Terra preta is both, but the part that 'renews' can only be the soil micro-organisms - unless someone is out there making more charcoal.

It's NOT only the microorganisms that are renewing, it's the nutrient content of the soil that is increasing. The charcoal isn't duplicating itself, of course, but that part doesn't have to because it doesn't decay. The charcoal provides the homes for the microorganisms, but more importantly, increases the cation exchange capacity, which simply means the soil is capable of holding more essential plant nutrients. That's the part that's regenerating. The fungi send their mycelium deep into the soil, and hundreds of feet away from that immediate area, to collect nutrients into that central location making the terra preta more fertile with time without having to add more fertility.

Thanks for your input!

Charcoal IS burned all the way through, however because it is burned without oxygen, it never bursts into flames, in which case it would turn to ash!

Thanks for your reply. Here is the link for the study you were talking about: bioresourcesbioprocessing.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40643-018-0205-9 The important thing for me is that I have been doubling my yield since I've been using my homemade biochar. For example, I just dug 31 lbs (14kg) of potatoes from six plants that I started from potato peels as an experiment in one small bed with lots of my activated biochar. I never got that kind of yield before... even when planting whole potatoes! So if, "the best you can hope for is water retention and homes for bacteria and fungi"... that's not a minor thing. That alone is huge for building and maintaining the soil food web... especially if one does not plant a green cover crop for the off-season, which I believe 99% of gardeners DO NOT do!! I'm not saying you're wrong about what you have concluded from the study, not at all, but the yield is the most important indicator for me. Even if there was NO increase in CEC, which is unlikely, the doubling of plant growth would be reason enough to add it to your soil!

Fantastic Idea! We homeschooled all our 9 children, and every one of them is highly successful in their fields of endeavor.

Thanks for the question, I plan on making a video about this, but as you know, there are a lot of misconceptions about biochar, even the definition of what it is! One area of confusion is about charcoal which for gardening has to be inoculated, (activated), vs. charcoal used for water purification, which to be the most effective, must be activated by a completely different process. The confusion, I believe, comes from the word, ACTIVATED, which has two completely different meanings. When you make activated charcoal for water purification, you want the smallest particle size possible, because you want MORE surface area so the charcoal can attract the largest amount of toxins from the water. When you use charcoal in the garden, and ACTIVATED with nutrients, you don’t want more surface area, but more cubic internal storage area. So leaving the char slightly bigger, about the size of a US quarter, leaves more open spaces in the biochar to hold more nutrients and provide more places for micro- and macro- biology to inhabit. Every other “nutrient” you add to your garden soil will be more effective the smaller it is because it needs to be consumed by your soil’s biology to become plant available. Biochar doesn’t decompose, and it’s not absorbed by plants. It primarily is the home for biology and nutrients. One other important consideration for me is the release of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) into your soil from biochar. PAH are a class of organic compounds produced by incomplete combustion and are in our rainwaters, lakes, and all soils on earth. This study: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.2c00952# shows that crushing biochar to a powder releases more PAHs into the soil all at once, and could be detrimental to soil microbiology and plants. However, when you leave the biochar in larger particles, there is a specific bacteria that will live IN the char that will turn those PAHs into nutrients and decompose them, actually benefiting your soil! Another thing the study brings about, (and you’ll find it in the conclusion section) is the temperature at which the charcoal is produced. When produced at temperatures lower than about 1500°F (815°C) there will be more PAH and other toxins present. That’s why making large batches in a kiln, large drums, or in a firepit, I believe, is not the best option! Even when you buy biochar, you have NO IDEA at what temperature it was pyrolyzed at! When it’s made in large batches, some of it will reach the proper temperature and some of it won’t. Making it in small batches in the #10 cans ensures that all of it has reached the temperature needed to eliminate potential toxins! Because you make it in steel cans, you have the perfect indicator of temperature- when the retort turns cherry red, you know you’ve reached about 1500°F (815°C). One thing I want to mention about that study though, is that you must read it all the way through or you may come to a wrong conclusion. This is true of any scientific study you read, especially about biochar, as there are scientists that call CHARCOAL biochar when they are two completely different things! Charcoal BECOMES biochar only after it has been inoculated with nutrients and biology! Very few of the (prestigious) studies on biochar I’ve looked at were done on actual biochar, but on charcoal! I believe having correctly made biochar of varying sizes is the best for agriculture, but I’ve found that even if I put in larger pieces, the natural weatherization and contact with soil life, moisture, acids in the soil, and plant exudates will break them down to the size needed by my particular soil condition. Don’t get me wrong. I’m NOT saying what other people are saying is wrong, but these are the conclusions I have come to after doing all my research (including what I learned from Living Web Farms) and after seeing the results in my own garden! I easily have gotten at least twice the yield from my garden after implementing correctly made biochar!

@@LiveOnWhatYouGrow You are correct, terminology and definitions of the terms are very important, for any field really. That is why I'd like to mention a few things that I've learned about biochar and it's characteristics. Biochar adsorbs NOT absorbs nutrients. Best way to remember is, adsorption is it has the prefix "add". A dish sponge absorbs water, that is, water goes inside the sponge. Nutrients are adsorbed by the charcoal, that is, "added" or better said, attached to the surface of the charcoal. Charcoal made properly (no signs of brown in it) has a negative charge which will attract positive ions to its surface. That is why I like to have my charcoal crushed and have a range of particle sizes, from whole corn kernels to dust size. The mix is better for the biology, then just one size. There is research done on this. I have charged/inoculated charcoal with compost tea before.When you dump large chunks in there, they mostly float, as air is trapped inside of them, but the smaller pieces easily sink to the bottom. That is why charcoal used for water purification adsorbs what ever impurities are in the water to its self, and that is why charcoal (filters) will have to be replaced after a time. Make more Biochar!!! Sam

Thanks!

Yes, it has an open structure that allows more air in your soil, but its main way of opening up the soil is by the roundabout way of providing homes for all the microbiology (bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and beneficial nematodes) which in turn will attract microarthropods, worms, and other soil creatures. But you still need a lot of compost to make it happen and to stop digging and tilling.

You are so welcome! And thanks for subscribing, it means a lot to us! But I want to give a shout out to you as well. Most of the teachers I come across remain stuck in what they were taught 30 years ago, and are still teaching outdated chemical farming methods! It is now known that plants need ALL of the elements on the periodic table, AND that soil life, including, what I call the BIG FOUR, Bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and beneficial nematodes, for regenerative gardening!

Thanks and welcome

Finally, I've been looking for you!

LOL. It's just seems sensible. Also I'd be concerned how powdery biochar could negatively affect PH and other things.

Biochar has the ability to BUFFER pH, and that is: to bring it to neutral, (lowering high and raising low pH).

In my opinion, it really doesn't matter that much when you add a lot of bacteria and nutrient laden water charging it the way I do. The resulting end product doesn't need any crushing at all because, for my method, it's already at the appropriate size. There are two reasons I DON'T do it: When I quenched the charcoal while still in the retorts, it caused the retorts to deteriorate after just a few burns. AND, since I'm doing it indoors, it makes a bad smell when all that steam goes up, and my wife doesn't like it! If I didn't have those issues I definitely would quench it for the benefits you spoke of.