Anyone have thoughts or testimonials on use of biochar?

I use prepared biochar from a local vendor in both our indoor cannabis, our outdoor gardens, and potted plants. When I first started using it a few years back I was convinced that I would be making my own very soon but alas I did not, choose to support my local organic garden supply shop. About 3 months ago we bought a smoker for smoking fish, veg and olives :drooling_face: and it gets some use and produces nice char!! I have been collecting it up and will charge a batch when I start to get low with Nutrient Tea, dry and bag it. As usual @Tinytuttle great thread, love my water only organic soil and it just wouldnā€™t be the same without biochar!

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Do you think itā€™s plausible to grind up some biochar and water it in?

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Piss on it! You could and let it steep for a few days or you could get a batch of tea going and bubble char in it!

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When I up pot I place about 25g (small coffee spoon) of specific K rich biochar on the roots (Growtek Black Pearl) of the plant before it goes into itā€™s new pot, really helps with transplant shock. Any that gets sloppily applied will stay on the surface of the soil forever- doesnā€™t water in. This is quite fine material often 1-3mm ( below 1/10th of an inch in freedom units ) squares.

I donā€™t see why not but as you likely know by the question you asked it is not the typical delivery method and therefore you may not see the best of results. The place to have biochar is in your rhizosphere (below the dirt) so that it can house microbes close to the areas that they affect the most benefit. Many microbes are otherwise sensitive to light like most beneficial ones and only live in the soil. Watering in biochar may leach whatever nutrients into the soil but you likely lose nutrients to evaporation and dilution instead of a longtime nutrient deployment/soil structure combo below the soil line.

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Yes, urea or uric acid is a way of charging char but there are many others. I would likely go with nutrient teas like kelp, fish or even fermented anything really, place the char a bin of the desired ā€œnutrientā€ let it absorb for a few days until it is fully saturated and then let dry out a like over a wire rack or something that can drain somewhere cool. I use it in my water only soil when mixing up batches, love it on everything that is running soil

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Not sure what the isolating CO2 Is all about In soil but, all Iv every is itā€™s beneficial to get a carbon source in poor soils guess compost might be considered carbon as well ( all once live organisms ) you have the source ? Like to give it a read

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Would plain woo ash work for covering roots while up potting

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I mean Iā€™ll read anything

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Ok. Iā€™ll pis on it. I put a half gallon of my own piss in my supersoil for 15 gallons of medium. Everything is healthy as can be!.

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Iā€™d think that good cheap way of getting char would be to also pick out chunks of char wood in campfire pits I do this in my pit fire when I burn stuff down , cannabis stalks and such and utilize the ash ( every thing is used) as well in soil application which is High in potassium just watch amounts cause ash is very basic( high ph) ā€¦ one of the ways of making soap in the olden days
I checked one time what like a cup of ash was on a gallon on water ph wise and it was like 11.0 PH

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That might make for some pissed off plants ! Lol

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Somewhere on here, there is a list of organic constituents and their relative NPK range, I am not sure exactly where wood ash will fall in that range without knowing the type of wood and how hot the fire got as I imagine this swings things around a bit. It is important to note that I use that specific char for that purpose because it is high in K and char and ash are unfortunately 2 different things in this case. Ash is widely used in living organic soils/agricultural cultivation and commercially available K is often potash which is ash but a very specific type. None the less if it is just costing you some time and some char from a fire pit, some soil and some piss - its worth an experiment! Report back Lol

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I alway thought NPK was NPK. I guess not

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NPK is just short hand for the main types of nutrients found as you likely know. N is for Nitrogen, P is for Phosphorous and K is for Potassium. When someone refers to NPK in terms of growing typically are speaking to the breakdown of these compounds in the substance like Gaia Green 4-4-4 which has an NPK of 4-4-4. That Growtec biochar I was referring to is like 0-0-5 for NPK, the wood ash that you piss on will likely be 3-1-3 or the likes as urine is high in Nitrogen (especially if you are a carnivore) but also has some phosphorous and the ash/char will be high in K - totally an example not actual NPK analysis of piss-soaked bio char :joy:

Edit: Wood not Would :wink:

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Makes sense to me!!

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Thatā€™s what I did the other night, dug a cone shaped pit and let her rip! Doused it when we went in and crushed it the next day. Will be adding it to the compost bin each time I take out kitchen scraps so it will charge.

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Not sure what this is but cool as fuck ! Wrought iron in front of a pit fire?

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Had me staring too, half a pic acheived that symmetry, look at the tiny white house in the middle.

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CO2 sequestration was a goal mentioned in some publications.

I was on the CO2 bad bandwagon for sometime but revelations of data manipulation and the fact that historically speaking, we are in a CO2 drought changed that for me.

Works best in highly acidic soils as the charcoal balances ph.

The ancient Amazonian Dark Earth areas have respiration rates that are different from terra preta nova or modern plots indicating that either centuries of the practice or unknown additives to the charcoal making process were used back then.

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ShaZaam!
Mirrors are magical my art prof use to sayā€¦

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