permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Jul 4, 2016 at 6:38 PM, Gene Monaco <efmonaco@comcast.net> wrote:

> Been reading up on biochar lately, and I get this sick feeling in my
> stomach
> as if it is surrounded by darkness, cloaked in an illusion.
>
It has been cloaked in hype as well as illusion, usually by people who have
no real interest in using it wor would go to the trouble to do so.

To make it in quantity, as I understand it, you need the right kind of
equipment that will reduce wood to charcoal and not ash.
You can probably imagine the amount of really unhealthy smoke you would
inevitably breats when making biochar this way.
So, it should be a product made by special industry that keeps the
pollution out of the air and operators safe from exposure to high levels of
carbon monoxide, i.e. reburns the high BTU smoke somehow.
Some will make biochar in homebrew gear anyway.


>   But I'm often
> wrong.  I get the basic idea of it, but I have some questions I'd like to
> ask this distinguished group, for whom I have a lot of respect.
>


> 1) The literature seems to be divided as to whether or not it actually
> makes
> plants grow better.
>

Of course it does and it reduces the level of harmful pathogenic
microorganisms in an ecosystem too.
It absorbs large quantities of nutrients that plants and beneficial
microorganisms need. Absorbs then makes them available within a soil
environment. Beneficial microorganisms will grow huge colonies in the
biochar because it has such immense surface area then convery nutrients
contained in the biochar to plan available nutrients thus getting more
carbon into soil through increased biomass production by a wide variety of
plants.

>> | Some do, some don't.  How could we trust it in a
>> permaculture guild?  Experimentation is the best way, but that takes time
>> and controls.

Because it is just charcoal, nothing more. Produce it in small quantities
when using firewood heat in winter. Often there will be a lot of charcoal
lumps mixed in with the wood ash. Trees like wood ash in large quantities.
Here is a pix of one of my persimmons that I fertilized with a lot of
woodash, it was nowhere near this leafed out the year before:




​
​

>>> 2) If the idea is to get biomass into the ground without it having a
chance
>>> to break down, wouldn't it be better to re-afforest degraded areas in

I don't think you would want to do that unless you were sheet composting.,
i.e. thin layer of fresh manure over the ground, possibly mixed with a
layer of compost or biomass mulch,
left undisturbed to decompose and be worked into the top layer of soil.

>>> northern climates where winter will slow things down, burying layers of
>>> carbon over time, rather than talk of tropical plantations to burn
>>> fast-growing plants into charcoal before burying it?

Yes, burying small layers of biochar (charcoal lumps or granules) over
time, like every year, throughout the winter as the charcoal becomes
available.

You would be better off procuring large quantities f several typs of rock
dust frm nearby quarries and applying that in generous layers to garden or
farm soil.
Natural minerals are as important as NPK, if you want max nutrition from
your produce. As microscopic amounts of minerals from rock dust
incorporated into your soil make it to your well water you will drink very
healthy water. Remember the Healthy Hunzas and their mineral rich mountain
stream drinking water.
-- 
Lawrence F. London
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared/
https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/116100117925365792988/+Avantgeared/posts
https://ello.co/permaculture
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/permaculture








-- 
Lawrence F. London
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared/
https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/116100117925365792988/+Avantgeared/posts
https://ello.co/permaculture
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/permaculture