Hey, great video! I've been using biochar for the last 13 years an found it works best when charged with organic fertilizer or even better when put into the compost bin. The latter helps to speed up composting immensely but also lets the biochar "settle in". Over the course of a few months some sort of additional carbon coating ist forming and that is when the full effects of biochar set in. When you apply biochar compost, the biochar already spent some time forming the coating

@BudgetPhil

Ай бұрын

Thank you. That coating you mention really interests me, I look forward to learning more about that. And thank you for sharing these awesome tips.

Whilst I had heard of Bio Char I really didn't place any value for plants with it. You have explained the Value of it very well and therefore I will use it in the manner You recommend. Thanks.

@BudgetPhil

Ай бұрын

Thank you. I plan on posting more videos about biochar soon.

Thank you for this informative video. Parts of my garden suffer from very poor quality soil and biochar is definitely a solution I need to try.

@BudgetPhil

Ай бұрын

You're welcome. A new garden plot I started a couple years ago had red clay for soil, so I top dressed it with a little biochar and compost mix, only about a 1 inch layer, mostly compost. The compost had been inoculating the biochar during the previous months as it was decomposing. Then I mulched over it with wood chips, about 4 to 6 inches or so. That year the garden wasn't so good. The following year was much better, and now 2 years later it's much much better. The wood chips have decomposed quite a bit now and I'll probably need to add more soon, but they really helped to protect and feed the microbes and improve the soil. I believe 4 to 6 inches of wood chips was what the teachers of the "Back to Eden" gardening method recommend. That method has really helped me over the years, and biochar took it to the next level for me.

I made some this year, inoculated it for a few weeks , then added some to the soil of where i planted my vegetable plants. I am dissapointed and it seems to hurt the plants rather than help them.. not sure if i will use it again.

@BudgetPhil

Ай бұрын

I wonder if maybe the charcoal hadn't finished charging for some reason. I'll try my best to help you figure this puzzle out. Could you please give me some more info about the charging method that was used for the biochar? For example, was it soaking that long in a mixed organic liquid fertilizer/water solution, or was it mixed into a compost pile? Also, the approximate average temperature over the inoculation period could be helpful info.

@lawrencelawrence3920

Ай бұрын

@@BudgetPhil i crushed it into half inch and less pieces, put it into a barrel, added rain water , fish fertilizer, glacier rock dust , comfry, stinging nettle, sheep manure, chicken manure...for about 2 to three weeks . The smaller particles sank to the bottom, the larger ones kind of semi floated. I mixed it every day. I tried to use the particles that were water logged. I may have used too much char when I planted each plant. I dug a hole for the plant threw in some char, chicken manure, rock dust , mixed it and planted the plant.

@BudgetPhil

Ай бұрын

The concentration of biochar in the root zone might be the issue, but the problem may go away as the plants adapt and grow their roots out some. If the chicken manure was fairly fresh, it could cause a temporary issue with over-fertilization, as it's quite strong. On the other hand, if the biochar was very hydrophobic and didn't soak up enough liquid to saturate it, then it may still be loading up. If so, it may take a few more weeks to finish. The extra nutrients you mixed into the planting holes will be helpful if that's the case. I agree that it would probably be best to hold off on adding more biochar until the issue with the plants is resolved. Are the plants showing signs of deficiencies or maybe over-fertilization? If we could determine that, it would narrow down the list of possible problems.

@lawrencelawrence3920

Ай бұрын

@@BudgetPhil the plant have not died but they are either growing too slow or seemed stunted on the other hand we have been having not a great year as far as the weather goes for growing a garden. I will keep the remaining biochar in the barrel and add it at the end of the growing season. Thanks for your reply.

@BudgetPhil

Ай бұрын

I once mixed some biochar, that I only soaked in an organic nutrient solution for a couple hours, into a batch of my indoor potting soil. I crushed the biochar but there was a mix of different size pieces, and the large pieces were floating in the fertilizer water and not fully saturated, but I wanted to experiment. What ended up happening is pretty much what you have described, the plants I transplanted into that soil began to slow down and show signs of deficiency. I fertilized a few of the plants with a half strength organic liquid fertilizer mix when it was time to water them, and they began to grow more like normal a couple days later. Then I fertilized the rest after confirming it was the problem. I still had to fertilize them more than usual as they grew, because the biochar took another month and a half to finally finish taking from the soil, and start giving. I assume the larger pieces of biochar weren't finished charging, since I only gave a couple hours. But I would have thought the amount of time you soaked it would have been enough, because 24 hours has always worked out okay for me. Looks like I should learn more about the subject of charging and inoculating biochar. I'll study this and see if I can make a video or two that helps to shed more light on this topic. Thank you for taking the time to share your experience. You've provided some great info.