Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>]

A difficult question not knowing all the circumstances Pete. Here in Ireland it would be simple. We cook and heat the house mostly with timber for instance as do many people. A small bag of small timber/kindling to start the coal going sells for $5 and more. So 12 cords of oak wood might be the start of a commercial venture (although I don't really know how much a cord is, I am metric through and through:))

 

Also, timber left on the ground rots really fast here.

One point I wonder about is your soil pH. In Europe oak would typically be growing on slightly acidic soil and oak leaf compost would be pH 6-6.5. Also, I have no experience with termites since it is way to cold for them here but could termites not be made useful in some way? I am sure that chickens and other birds would be glad to eat them as would fish.

 

Another idea that springs to mind here is to leave timber on the ground and to plant vegetables in between. The timber would help preserve moisture and be a low windbreak and would eventually loosen up the clay with all the insect life that would find protection underneath.

 

In fact, turning it deliberately into charcoal to use as a soil supplement is the only option I would not consider. I can't help making a bit of charcoal myself from time to time. For instance we make our own fence posts from mostly Sitka spruce and the best wood preservative is to char the outside of the stakes we found. I have done extensive tests with the accidentally produced charcoal and have never seen it do anything good in or on top of the soil.

 

John

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Pete Vukovich

To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

Sent: Monday, April 18, 2011 9:22 AM

Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Making Biochar in my New Char Chamber

For the most part I think I've avoided the whole Biochar controversy, but it brings up an issue. Overall it seems like a lot of work for what you get. On the other hand a problem were trying to solve.

We are working on a 40 acre ranch up in the sierras and trying to make it into something that produces. The soil is sort of hard to describe, its clay, but mixed with tufa and some granite which we haven't analyzed so were guessing at some of the trace minerals in it, probably some phosphates and calcium. The property is strewn with enormous older black oaks which tend to drop a dozen or so cords of wood every season, and pine which drop another cord or so.

We cut a few cords for firewood and give away a few, but in older oaks you see a fair amount of rot (which is why they drop quite a bit in the first place) also more than 1/2 the material is small branches mixed with mistletoe and bryophytes.We end up burning most of this.

I'm not really comfortable with wasting that energy or dumping all the carbon they've stored back in the air. I'm not really happy with the idea of adding more alkalinity into the soil from the ashes either (given that its already probably slightly alkaline).

They don't seem to decompose quickly (unless the termites get them which we don't want) if we let them rot on the surface, and the amount of energy we'd put in chipping them doesn't seem to make sense either. Based on the number of dead branches I've pulled up from under the soil I'm skeptical using them as cores for huegel beds in that soil. It would be nice to capture that carbon and put it back in the ground, however for obvious reasons we can't let them sit on top of the soil and decay over decades. So what sort of things would you consider in a case like ours?




--- On Sun, 4/3/11, John D'hondt <dhondt@eircom.net> wrote:

From: John D'hondt <dhondt@eircom.net>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Making Biochar in my New Char Chamber
To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Sunday, April 3, 2011, 1:15 PM

Marty, if mankind stopped digging coal for just ten minutes that would help
more than all the people interested in making charcoal together for all the
rest of their lives.
By letting timber rot in the ground you increase the amount of life/
biomass. By making charcoal you increase death and our species is much too
good at that already.
john


> Liz
>
> I don't know what exactly goes into the atmosphere. I'm sure that a
> lot of it it water from those fresh chips. There are oils that could
> be seen burning as they came out of the chamber. They add to the
> heating of my house. As John says a weight comparison is in order.
> I'll dry out a batch and see. Even if it is not totally efficient i'm
> sequestering more carbon and keeping it locked up for a much longer
> time through pyrolysis than it i put the chips in the soil and let
> them rot.
>
> Marty
> On Mar 31, 2011, at 6:00 PM, Liz wrote:
>
>> I was wondering this myself. In most of the videos I've seen about
>> making charcoal, it sure looks like an awful lot of white smoke is
>> going up into the atmosphere. Marty, I see that you're using an
>> oxygen-reduced burn, which should release less CO2, but clearly
>> it's not a zero-emissions situation. Are you certain that most of
>> the CO2 in the wood isn't just floating away?
>>
>> Liz
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tradingpost"
>> <tradingpost@lobo.net>
>> To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
>> Sent: Wednesday, March 30, 2011 3:43 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Making Biochar in my New Char Chamber
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