How to make biochar, 1000 year soil amendment for your permaculture garden
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ก.ย. 2024
- Walkthrough video of how I make biochar. There are many ways to do this, and to me this method (inspired by Edible Acres channel) is the best balance between simplicity and efficiency. The video will include tips and tricks, a little bit of science, and a whole lot of fire.
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Lots of great info here. Glad the mobile kiln approach feels useful to ya! The cone pit method, to me, is superior if I can have a static location to do larger scale processing. The earth just banks soooo much more heat and runs so very efficiently. But the barrel is nice to be able to move to existing brush piles and work through them. Glad you made this video, great work!
I havent tried cone pit yet, but did a shallow trench method last year. It was really cold and I found the ground sucked all the heat out of my burn, so it was hard to get the hot gas layer hot enough. I suppose if I got down under the frost line I would have vastly different results. Maybe something to try in the future. I'm all for experiments and learning. I think it's pretty rad that edible acres watched my video! Anyone reading this from my channel, you have to subscribe and binge watch everything on his channel. It's as good as it gets. Thanks for taking the time out of your day to check me out.
This video has me completely hooked on your channel! Not only are you willing to show mistakes but you recognize them as valuable! And you don't disregard the needs of your other-than-human neighbors, valuing them as well. To top it off, you're investing your time and energy into the future fertility of the land as well as enriching for your own food supply. I can't wait to show this video, and others, to my son, who is starting a food forest with me. Thanks for all you do!
Oh, you are going to love my stuff! May I suggest this one next, if you haven't seen it yet? it sounds right up your ally:
th-cam.com/video/HUrh9xAaX_o/w-d-xo.html
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Thanks for the recommendation! I'll check it out
Your first video! We can totally tell btw lol. Glad you didn’t quit making them. I’ve learned a ton from you
Haha yeah. I'm slowly getting better. I'm sure I will be much better still in another 2 years.
Awesome tons of info by very handsome guy. Thanks so much .from Vietnamese.
You have an awesome property !!! Very lucky!
Hey Keith- Biochar is so confusing: it's hard to understand the terminology & what it exactly is. So I diversified my youtube choices (Generally I just watch you because we share the same climate) and I watched a bunch of Biochar videos from a ton of other people and I have started to really understand it. Hearing it from second and third "witnesses" and from different perspectives is super helpful and explained why you call it 1000-2000 year soil amendment and what inoculation is, but why it's called inoculation is beyond me. We easily acquired our 55 gallon drum for $10 off a local site, my bro-in-law cut it, and we burned old branches donated for our hugelkultur- but you can put fresh cuttings into a hugelkultur, so it's all good- AND we have made our first batch of charcoal. But gotta say: when they say it takes all day- IT TAKES ALL DAY. we started in mid afternoon thinking we had about 5 hours of daylight, that should be enough time, yes? NO!!! We finished at 4 am and the barrel was not completely full, it was about 3 quarters full, so yeah, next time we have to start in the EARLY MORNING, and we need to have a TON of wood ready to burn right there for convenience!! Wandering around looking for small branches to burn in the dark was not fun. BTW- Some people burn regular wood, I don't think it has to be as small as you recommend.
Cheers! I can run a batch in about 3 hours, which is the main reason I prefer the small wood. Small wood burns about 3x as hot as larger wood, it keeps a hot gas layer formed better, which speeds up the entire burn. The biggest problem is through-charing larger pieces, especially if they have any moisture at all in them, and they also burn colder because they have almost all heartwood. It definitely can be done though, I just prefer a burn that doesn't last 10+ hours if possible.
Some people use the TLUD method which is more of a burn and walk away method, but it doesn't make a lot of product, because you aren't constantly crushing and refilling. However it's good if you don't have much time.
Yes. We learn lots from the mistakes. Thanks for sharing the entire process.
You are indeed fortunate to have gotten this piece of land and with an artesian well. But I also think that the land was fortunate to have gotten YOU to live on it. Cheers
Thanks Donna 😊
“Gotta run off to hockey!!” Love it!! Canadian version of balance! 😂
Awesome, awesome, awesome explanation!! This is something I have been interested in for years but have never actually tried to make. Between you and Sean I now have the confidence to give it a shot! Your guilds sound like they are set up perfectly for wildlife...the layers make perfect sense to me. I am enjoying a rainy day off binge watching your content on the TV and learning a ton. Cheers!!
Thanks man, I have really been enjoying your stuff also. For anyone here reading this, give his channel a look!
Love this guy, such good vibes
Well done! I love making biochar and it has made a huge impact in my garden.
Thank you so much for showing your mistakes. It really helps. I don't have land or anything yet but I'm doing research in case I can ever afford it. Seeing someone with a perfect forest who doesn't show their mistakes would be really discouraging for people getting started, who might end up thinking they just can't do this.
Exactly 💯
Thank you for the time you took to make this video. The information and advice is great and I also loved the genuine human moments such as "sorry my hands are shaking, it's really cold" or "I love watching my kid's hockey game"!
This is a nice thing to say. I'm trying to make perfect videos, especially to try to grow the channel and get the word out about living this way, to decentralize the food chain, have more food growing on trees, food for wildlife and bees etc. But there is something to say about imperfection and the beauty of it, in all spaces, including our gardens.
Sometimes the most beautiful features of a system can be the mistakes and imperfections because that's where lessons are learned, where memories are made and stored, and were reality is.
My garden isnt perfect, my methods srent perfect, and I make mistakes. So will everyone reading these words. And it's those mistakes that make us better, and make our gardens unique and beautiful.
Thanks for the kind sentiment.
Happy to see someone, especially a fellow Canadian, understand that charcoal is NOT biochar... it MUST be inoculated.
what if I use BBQ charcoal and then inoculate it?
@Ken L, NO! Please don't. These have carcinogenic stabilizers added to them.
@@kenl7460 the briquettes are toxic, but I have tried pure charcoal chunks that I bought from Costco. They were made in Quebec from waste hardwood and you could still see the wood structure in the pieces. Before I bought the stuff, I phoned the company and asked if there were any additives and they assured me NO. However Costco went to another supplier, so I don’t know if it’s clean charcoal. Geoff Lawton (I think it was he) says this isn’t proper material to use because it’s designed to still burn, so all the gases haven’t been burnt off. The way to tell if the material is appropriately ready to be called char is to wipe it on your hands, then goes rinse them under the tap. If it comes off readily, it’s ready... if not, don’t use it. Garden On!
Garth that is exactly right. Perfect addition. The water part is important also because it can help you see invisible oils 🛢 (beading water).
Great video
Biochar is the best! All your videos are great. Thank you.
Thanks
Very Informative! I must've missed the part on terra preta, but the biochar is the most important element of it anyways. I've heard that a small piece of biochar can contain the surface area of about 10 football fields if laid out flat. Your garden is pretty much a big piece of modern terra preta, but i wonder if there's some ancient element we're missing. I need to make some biochar but fires are illegal in the city where I live.
Hey! Thanks for linking to this on your 5 year produce video. This is GREAT! We're only 3 months into our nascent food hedge (one day food forest) in MB. This will be a GREAT technique for us to use. THANK YOU!
Glad it was helpful! Good luck!
Thank you great info
Thanks!
I’m gonna make some bio char. Starting my food forest… thank you.
Good luck 👍
Wow! That was incredibly informative, thank you! We collect 3500L of fruit and vegetable waste from one supermarket a week, and we have a bucket load of leachate, which we could use to inoculate the bio char. We have absolutely terrible soil, no top soil in my large veggie patch and full of silt and clay, and have been working hard over the last 6 months creating compost and mulch to add to increase soil life and microbes in our soil (this will be a never ending job during our life here, hopefully many years).
I've heard about bio char but had no idea how to make it, or how it was beneficial to the garden. How long to you let it inoculate for?
That's amazing that you can protect your crop with onion, garlic and asparagus (we also get deer but they don't venture past the dams towards our house and zone 1 and 2 and plenty of rabbits), but I might experiment and see if it works for roos and wombats! Did I hear right that you grow paw paw? How? hahaha we're quite warmer than you are (our minimum would be1-2C but would only get that a few times a year, our average is 5-8C in the dead cold of winter)
Wow you are so dope, thanks man! Excellent tutorial, so much appreciation!!!
Glad you are enjoying the channel :)
Thanks for taking time to comment. It really helps the channel I think. It makes yoytube think that my channel has content worthy of sharing to others.
Good informative video,
You have some beautiful Ontarian land Keith! I had no idea you could create something like biochar to help your garden stay super healthy.
You should post on reddit and TH-cam what it all looks like in spring and summer!
Thanks for taking the time out of your day to watch my video. I have many updates on reddit and actively post in the gardening and permaculture subs. My username is Suuperdad
The best Iv seen yet you explain the science clearly. I am gardening on pure sand which requires me to import soil ammendments. To do this I have created a number of hot vbeds using a lasagna method ie pine bark, kelp, anamal poo, grass clippings. pine needles and finish with pine needle mold. I then plant straight into this hot bed in the autumn. I am in zone 10.5 on the coast no frosts here. My question is at what level do you suggest I add the bio char. Cheers from New Zealand.
The swedish have done trials with trees grown in up to 100% biochar. That being said most people recommend roughly 10-20% biochar by volume.
Hey! I loved this video. You did an awesome job especially for your first video!!
I do have a question: How important is it to season the wood before burning?
Very. You need the water out of it, because you need the burn zone as hot as possible.
Thank you for responding so quickly! I hope you have had a good winter up there in Canada! I'll look into how my climate will mess with that timeline. Thanks again for such a detailed and straightforward video.
What is the difference between the charcoal from the wood burning fireplace and biochar?
@@janew5351 that is the question! There is a lot (I mean a LOT) of super interesting science and experimentation on this topic going on right now. The field of biochar is very much in its infancy, even though we have been using it for thousands or millions (?) of years. People are experimenting with wood types, and process controls (temp, humidity, pressure, etc) and analyzing the resultant biochar. If you want really nerd out, the info is out there oh edu websites and research publications. For most intents, for the average user, I think the answer is probably "not that much".
This method however aims to do to things, 1) reduce waste products by using them (recombusting them) for heat. A fireplace or woodstove released these gases up the stack, but this process uses them as a heat source.
2) because this process uses those gases as further heat to drive the process, less wood is sacrificed, either charcoal turning to ash and lowering yield, or actual sacrificial wood used externally to create heat. (Say for a container inside a fireplace - you will use lots of wood).
Would a rocket mass heater make good biochar? It also occurs to me that it might be a good idea to study the process used years ago to make charcoal out of wood. They used, if you can imagine it that way, a kind of burning hugel bed. The people who did this were a separate culture that moved around the forests in Denmark, where I live, making charcoal. I’m going to look into it.
No because it pulls too much oxygen into the burn chamber. It's great, but not for biochar.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Thank you so much for your answer! I really appreciate it. 👍
Hey man nice job for your first video. Im binge watching your videos right now. Really getting serious about building a permaculture garden in our 3 acres of land. I have a question about this biochar. My husband makes his own charcoal for the bbq in a sealed drum. Its made in a different way he builds a fire around the drum and fills it with sticks and seals the top. The result is wonderful clean charcoal. Im wondering if you could tell me if this charcoal he creates would be useful as biochar in my gardens?
Yes, with TWO caveats:
1) as long as the biochar is orginally made from a natural thing (sticks, twigs). I would be very careful of doing this in a barbeque where there has previously been charcoal bricks in it, because those have carcinogenic stabiilizers in them, and when you scrape out the biochar to use, you may also get dust from those. As long as the only thing that has gone in this sealed drum is wood and sticks, then that's good. But also...
2) Once you are done, crush some up and rub it between your fingers. Get them all covered in charcoal. Then go wash your hands and rub your fingers together. If the charcoal comes off fairly easily, then it's good. If you scrub and scrub and can't get it off, then it's covered in bio-oils still, and many of those are carcinogenic. Those oils remain if the hot gas layer didn't burn hot enough, which you can get from a burn that wasn't properly done. Those oils also are carcinogenic.
The key when doing your burn is that the hot gas layer must get VERY VERY hot (2000+ degrees), and you only get that hot when you burn very small sticks (less than ~1 inch diameter). Often people will have problems with this when they burn larger pieces of wood, and they will have a lot of char that isn't completely finished (even though it may look finished) and that stuff will be covered in bio-oils.
I found - when we lived in CA that the rats lived in any wood pile we had- generally fire wood not thin sticks, but do rats & mice ever live in your piles of wood? Do you have fox that will eat the rodents?? I'd guess yes. How long does it take to "charge" the biochar? If you put it without charging it, and it takes "bio"? from the soil, doesn't it multiply after awhile and improve the soil??
We have owls, snakes, mink, and foxes which eat rodents.
I charge the biochar by putting it in compost for a few months, pee on it, etc.
Once it's in the soil, it acts like a hotel for microbilogy that can be charged with nutrients.
If you put it in the soil without charging it first, it will charge off the soil. The soil will be poor for a few years until it gets rebuilt (chop and drop, cover cropping, manuring, etc)
Hmm, trying to be like nature; how does nature inoculate the biochar after a fire?
Also, how do the western US wildfires fit into this? They are excessive, of course, but can they be helpful in the long run (assuming it gets under control)?
Nature innoculates it with urine, manures, and rain basically.
Its definitely a long term benefit to the soils, provided that trees are allowed to regrow. I would think there could also be some pH issues rest may take some time to sort out, depending in how much ash was created.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Duh, thanks. I have been in a suburban setting for too long, but that is about to end as we move to a forested property.
Anyway, I have started blogging about permaculture, mostly what I've learned from you (with credit and links), and I wondered if you would mind if I take a screenshot of your oil drum burn to post? I'm at paradiseorganicplants.com.
Absolutely! Just give credit somewhere to my channel, and you can use anything of mine. I just want the word out.
Your blog looks great!
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Thanks so much!
Good video. I have not seen biochar made this way. You could also do what I am going to do this summer. I am building a greenhouse next to the outflow of my artesian well. I am going to use the water to heat the greenhouse. I think it will signifigantly extend my season with zero power or outside source of heat needed. I have not yet decided how to run the flow through the greenhouse. Pipes in the soil? Open pond? I was even thinking of making trenches using half culvert and let the water flow around the house until it exits.
Have you considered flowing it through rocks that you double as a footpath? I am thinking the same thing, as this river site is likely going to be where input a greenhouse one day. I am still waffling between digging one into the side of a south facing hill, or doing it right in top of the artesian well flow.
I was going to run the flow over rocks to store the heat and act as a heat sink/storage, and then cap it with flatter rocks that will be toughing water at their base, but remain dry on their tops, and use that as a footpath also.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy More good ideas- thanks. I too love the idea of the sunken greenhouse - this accomplishes most of what I am trying to do with the water flow-heating.
I was thinking the water flow would release a LOT more heat than sinking would provide because of the flow but I don't really know that. Both ideas are great so go with the easier one I think. I'm lucky that my spring outflow is right where I want to put a greenhouse so I will probably go with that. Maybe run the flow through a lined trench filled with rock. This lets me use that space as my foot path. Maybe a couple of spots that I could dip water from too for spot watering. Thanks again.
Thank you so much for this! We have a ton of twigs/ branches, no idea these could turn into biochar. Would you then spread the biochar around where you want to improve the soil?
Yes, but only after it spends 3 months in a compost pile. Have to charge it up first.
I'm interested in knowing what your soil pH is like. Biochar and ash raise pH right? Where I am the soil is already fairly alkaline and adding wood ash is not recommended.
That's correct. I'm at 6.6 to 6.7 depending on location. You need to add a LOT of biochar to raise it even 0.1, so I'm pretty set. I've been doing it for 4 years now and it hasn't budged it at all.
Now, if my soils were pushing 7.1-7.3 I may be more cautious as there are various nutrient cation exchanges that start getting blocked, namely phosphorous.
Biochar PH varies a quite a lot depending on a variety of factors. UC Davis biochar database has this info and a lot more.
Any updates with comparisons of with and without
I mostly only have "with", because those areas did so much better that I added biochar everywhere after the third year.
Would it be possible to fill a drum, close it and have a fire underneath and drive out the gasses that way slowly and refill it from time to time? Or maybe a fire next to it.
Yes, there is another common method with 2 drums, an inner and outer drum with a fire done in between them. The inner drum is filled with wood for pyrolysis, and the space between is filled with wood for heat. The inner drum has holes on the side at the bottom and the outer drum has holes in the side at the top.
What do you suggest for a suburban backyard? I have a decent sized yard but am not alowwed to have a fire like this.
Also, how is this different than the ash left in a reg fire pit?
It can be harder in a smaller space. You can do it in a wood stove if you have access to one. The key factor is keeping air out of the fire as much as possible.
Charcoal and ash are completely different chemically, how they interact with soils.
Ash has almost no carbon left it it, as it has mostly been combusted and released into the environment. Ash is mostly SiO2, Al2O3, Fe2O3, CaO, MgO, SO3, Na2O, etc. Almost no carbon left.
Ash is still a good soil amendment and can be a good source of some minerals, but it can also raise soil pH and cause issues. I would add it into a compost pile instead of the garden.
Can't help but see a lot of fire hazard in all those dry lower branches of those trees, given the news in the last few years.
And it almost seems like a waste not roasting something in that fire :) Or at least harden some earthenware.. Have you no clay on your property?
I always fo a burn after a huge rain. I also soak the area around my burn. No clay on the property no. I may do a maple syrup run on the next batch.
I've been screening charcoal out of the ashes from my woodstove. Is this not appropriate for making biochar?
That's good for sure. Your end product may be a bit ashy compared to a really pure clean run, but as long as you test your soil pH and it's not already really high, then you should definitely use that.
The biochar doesn't turn the water into alkaline water (like for making soap) if you let it sit overnight? How long is too long for it to sit in the water after flooding? How long is too short?
I haven't noticed any scum layer no. No max time, but it should be in water long enough for it to cool. I do it overnight which is plenty. It then gets mixed into horse manure and compost to get charged up.
I don’t have a place in my yard to make biochar and it is very expensive to buy. I live close to a provincial park where I ride my bike frequently. There are many fire pits scattered throughout where people have campfires.
Is it safe to grab the leftover charcoal from past fires and make some biochar from it?
It depends on what wood was used, and hot and complete the char was. I personally wouldn't risk it, because an incomplete char can have carcinogenic polyphenols remaining in it. Having those completely burn away is a big reason most char is done with small pencil sized feedstock, to ensure a completed char.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Darn…. Thank you for the response. Would’ve been nice to be able to use for gardening purposes. I suppose it may be good if I was planting underneath some grass where I know I won’t be planting edibles by.
@lrrerh8090 Yes then absolutely you can use it. It would be perfect for a pollinator garden for example.
What’s the difference between biochar and charcoal from a bonfire using the same type of wood?
Mostly the heat and the controlled oxygen free environment of the design of the burn. This results in very small pore size, increased surface area and increased burn off of bio oils.
The last part is very important, because they are carcinogenic.
What's the drawback from using bigger pieces? say 2-3 inches in diameter?
Really hard to get it to char all the way through. It also burns at a lower temp, which drives less heat to the rest of the stock. So the more large pieces you have the lower the avg temp, the harder it is to drive a full char batch. A few pieces is fine (just keep them on the top as you go, ajd it should slowly get consumed as you stomp. But too many larger pieces and it will be really hard to get the batch done properly.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy makes sense. as always, thanks for the info Keith. You're my go-to permaculture guy!
How do you kill that poison ivy?
th-cam.com/video/RmS-VcD83pM/w-d-xo.html
Just fpund your channel, i live in northern ontario amd am about to start my own permaculture project, i only have half an acre but i will do my best, the house came with a thirty year old crabapple, a raspberry and blackberry patch and 4 small cherry trees, it also has a thick hedge made of super closely planted mountain ash trees, i dont know if that hedge is usefull
Half an acre is plenty. I'm on about 4, and had full plans to plant the whole thing out. I'm several hundred trees into my project and I have only planted out maybe half an acre. When you plant densely in guilds, you can put a surprising amount of plants in one area, especially when you plant in sacrificial chop and drop soil builders to replace the function of large ruminants. The mountain ash is a good tree. The berries arent something to write home about, but can be made into jams and preserves, just make sure to remove the seeds as they can form Prussic acid with water contact. The birds will eat the berries, but at a lower priority. Dont eat the leaves, they contain cyanogenic glycoside, not fatal but also not something you want building up in your system. You can try pollarding them and triggering a flush of growth to really ramp up the windbreak effect.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy yeah the mountain ash hedge is maybe ten feet wide and twenty feet tall and 100 feet long, theres probably a thousand trees in the hedge... I had a ton of wildlife getting drunk off the berries last fall i was thinking of chopping out sections and putting in three or four ten by ten green houses
Yikes, you mentioned Aurumn olive... VERY invasive.
Yes spreads quickly on dead soils to repair them, then once they are repairs it quickly dies. It's like a scab on a wound. Things that grow really well on dead soils do pretty well on our planet in it's current state.
How do you kill that poison ivy?
I did a full video on that! th-cam.com/video/RmS-VcD83pM/w-d-xo.html
Thanks! I will watch that!