Backyard Biochar for Long Lasting Soil Carbon

Biochar is adsorptive, meaning it absorbs nutrients and water when mixed with soil, sucking up both essential elements for plant life. Furthermore, it attracts beneficial microbes like endomycorrhizae that form mutualistic relationships with plant roots thereby increasing absorptive surface area and stress resistance.

Waste materials that contain carbon such as nut shells, woody invasive plants, yard trimmings or corn cobs can all be turned into biochar. The best results come when combined with compost as well as an inoculant to provide nutrients/microbes that thrive.

Benefits

Char has long been used to enhance soil, particularly during the Amazonian rain forest’s Terra Preta period when indigenous inhabitants used charred plant matter to transform nutrient poor and eroding soils into dark, rich and productive ones. Studies have also demonstrated how adding biochar can increase microbial activity and water retention while simultaneously improving drainage, aeration and soil structure.

Biochar is produced by heating carbon-rich waste materials without oxygen in a kiln, known as pyrolysis, to form charcoal-like particles with unique properties. Feedstock may include woody waste such as woody debris from trees and shrubs or low-lignin biomass like nuts shells, grass clippings or wheat straw.

Granular biochar is an effective way of increasing moisture retention and improving airflow in garden beds or fields, while simultaneously decreasing erosion. Furthermore, biochar is also an excellent source of slow-releasing nutrients and minerals, helping balance pH levels in soil while creating habitat for beneficial microbes.

Biochar’s greatest advantage lies in how it’s used. To ensure maximum benefit, biochar must first be properly hydrated and inoculated prior to being applied; otherwise it acts like a sponge soaking up all of the available nutrients from its surroundings. This can be accomplished either through soaking it in water for several minutes prior to application or by mixing with high quality compost tea, worm castings, EM cultures or mineral blends.

Cost

Biochar is an organic carbon product produced from organic material such as hay, straw, weeds, wood waste and manure which has been carbonized at high temperatures in the absence of oxygen to form dark, stable carbon that does not decompose over time. Biochar has gained widespread attention as an energy alternative and climate mitigation strategy by sequestering carbon into the ground.

Biochar is most often produced by burying biomass in a trench and covering it with soil – known as Kon-Tiki pyrolysis – though some of this biochar may contain heavy metal contamination, creating significant air pollution. An alternative technique involves placing a 30-gallon drum inside of a 55-gallon barrel and burning wood inside both drums to produce offgas for inner barrel pyrolysis.

One gram of biochar covers hundreds of square meters in surface area, meaning it has the capacity to absorb moisture and nutrients like a sponge. Unfortunately, if it is not charged and inoculated prior to being added into your garden it will simply “siphon off” moisture without providing them to plant roots as expected.

Biochar, when charged and inoculated, can greatly enhance the growing potential of soil or growing media for extended periods. When mixed with Persist PAF liquid at 5-10% concentration levels, biochar can be easily integrated into soil or growing media and continue its work of retaining water and nutrients essential for plant health over time.

Sources

Biochar is made up of carbon derived from plant material that has been pyrolyzed or burned under low oxygen conditions, producing a light black porous charcoal-like substance which can be added to soil as an organic amendment and used to improve nutrient availability, retain water in the soil and prevent leaching of nutrients. Biochar can play an essential part in regenerative agricultural systems by sequestering carbon emissions while simultaneously sequestering more greenhouse gases2.

Making biochar is the easiest and best way to utilize it in your garden, using carbon-rich waste such as nut shells, woody plants like bittersweet and multi-flora rose, tree trimmings, compost, worm castings (from your own worm bin), corn cobs and tree trimmings as materials for creation. Be careful to distinguish true biochar from charcoal products with additives like lighter fuel, accelerants or binders which do not provide similar benefits when gardening.

To maximize backyard biochar’s benefits, it should be “charged” and inoculated with beneficial microbes prior to incorporation into soil. This can be accomplished by soaking biochar in compost tea or another organic material source containing nutrients, such as compost tea. Doing this allows it to absorb and hold onto nutrients for slow release into soil while creating a habitat for beneficial bacteria to colonize more easily thereby improving nutrient uptake and uptake rates.

Application

Biochar is an invaluable asset when used correctly; it helps improve soil structure while increasing water and nutrient retention, sequestering carbon that contributes to global warming, helping reduce erosion by slowing rainwater runoff, improving microbial activity in the soil and making it more resistant to drought and flood conditions.

Biochar can either be purchased ready-made or it can be made at home using instructions provided by The Food Garden Group on how to make it yourself. All that is needed for homemade biochar production is an area protected from fire where you can use a charcoal stove to transform organic waste into activated charcoal; once cool enough you can break it into smaller pieces for use in your garden.

Biochar that has been “charged” with nutrients or inoculated with microbes prior to being added to soil is considered the highest quality biochar. This process alters its atomic structure, creating more porous structures. Furthermore, its outside surface area-inside surface area ratio becomes increased and makes an excellent macro habitat for bacteria/fungi to colonize it.

VGrid Energy produces Persist biochar using a high-temperature gasification process that maximizes removal of volatile organic compounds that contribute to greenhouse gases, then inoculate it with beneficial microbes, humic, and fulvic acids to give plants and soil a boost – field trials have revealed 14% yield increases for marketable strawberries as a result of this approach.