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Thanks for posting that. That’s this weekends project. I love using old leaves as mulch. Really helps the soil and the good critters living in it. I don’t have as much this year as normal, but will use what I have. My wife already put straw down temporarily to keep everything in place, but leaves are so much better.
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the clay here is a brick brown colored volcanic clay. It pretty much has all the minerals the plants need. dense, but very fertile. If you keep it moist it wicks water amazingly well, and keeps a pot evenly hydrated.
I always mix it into my soil, indoor and outdoor. some cultivated landraces like lebanese and high altitude lines really like the clay.
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2 inches of new soil each year from leaves alone in that video. Leaves are awesome! I spread some yesterday and will spread more today.
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The good stuff. 
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I’d try and find, a restaurant that you could get their kitchen scraps waste, then with all yard wastes, add some of this: Compost & Composting Supplies - Dr. Earth® Compost Starter
My take a season or 2, I think microbes with do it better, working clay, hard pack soil, back to a growing medium.
just my $.02
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Haha for anyone who is thinking about a broadfork for next year this guy looks like he’s willing to haggle on some end of season stock, maybe it’s holiday money time too. I put one in my cart back when we were talking about them and just saw this offer from the welder, free shipping too!
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It seems like a lot of folks I read doing biochar like to soak it in a barrel of fish emulsion first, you gonna put it down fresh from the wood stove? Growing up we heated with two Vermont Castings stoves and cut our own 6-8 cord per year for it, mostly oak and maple with some white pine, we always avoided yellow pine and red oak. Sticky and stinky respectively! It was my job as the eldest son to empty the ashes and spread them outside on the gravel driveway to melt the snow and kill any weeds that would grow there, and we used them to toss into the grass and leaf piles over the edge of the hill then pissed into them constantly, it was a good system for making great leaf mold compost very slowly. We didn’t have any char because the screens on those newer stoves with catalytic converters are so tight, nothing but ashes made it through the double sifter
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I dump ash buckets out in the garden, after the are not longer burning. Works great. I am also going to start a giant slash pile fire thus winter once we have good snow cover. All the bio char.
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I learned a lot from this ag extension bulletin from the University of Maine, they have a really fantastic set of public documents about basically everything you would need to farm or homestead, Maine being the way it is geographically and psychically (Mainers are a proud and different breed of New Englanders who seem to like a challenge). Wood ash is something they have a LOT OF up there since forest products are their biggest industry and they use the slash for biomass power generation very heavily, there’s like a half dozen power stations in Maine burning pulp and lumber mill scrap and so farmers there have access to huge cheap quantities of ash, with each plant’s waste output having a different final analysis, it’s pretty neat! The NPK of it is pretty perfect for soilbuilding in conjunction with a boatload of green inputs for nitrogen like cover cropping. Check these out!
Wood ash-Maine Agricultural Extension.pdf (159.1 KB)
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Are you talking about 2 different things here? Ash is fully combusted and add potassium but raises pH, but bio char is heated in an anaerobic environment to create charcoal which can be added as an amendment.
Very different.
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Def just ash, with some biochar
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They are very different but most wood stoves will produce a fair amount of nice charcoal in the ash tray depending on how fine the ash grates are and whether you’re just raking out the chamber or hearth or sifting it
Edit: when I say sifting we used to use a huge strainer spoon to pile all the charcoal in a metal bucket before brushing the ashes down through the grates, my dad was CHEAP!
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Yea, we don’t have an ash grate but we get some nice charcoal lumps buried at the bottom.
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I used to take a bucket of those as a kid and use them to start campfires in the winter when the wood was kinda wet out back in the forest where I had my little camp
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Yep! I use it to fire my smoker up in the winter.
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Yup. Just scatter it on the snow. The beds are probably 30% composted manure, so it will be good and inoculated by Spring without my help I think. But since you brought it up, I had a heck of a time trying and not succeeding in meeting the N requirements of my plants with fresh biochar thrown in the mix. I would strongly advise inoculation with compost tea or castings tea/ emulsion tea first, to avoid N deficiency in containers.
It’s great stuff. Raises the soil PH, which is a bonus here. I always mixed it in my bush patches. A lb mixed in 25 sq ft worked well, and I’ll be adding a similar amount to the beds. Blueberries grow well here without acidifying the soil. I think it runs around 5.5 or so.
Mulch was added to the beds. About an inch of chopped leaves, then some shredded straw on top of that, another inch or so, and to hold it in place, some regular straw on top of both, again another inch. I figure the leaves will encourage worms, and will break down first, followed by the chopped straw, and Finally the regular straw. We’ll see. I like to add 2 or 3 times as much leaves, but didn’t have them this year.
@webeblzr that’s a great idea, but not sure there’s any organic type restaurants in my immediate area. I’ll check though, thanks. Maybe I’ll get lucky.
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like mine man but i got some red dirt as well very stony in some places at the top of my moutoin i have black soil im gona do the horse and cow manure mix i hand cut weeds to put on top for a year and that has some nice dirt now in some places. got a massive compost heap going to any time anyonw is mowing like the local councel i get heaps of that and add it as well and sprd it in the earth also there is a ausse company makeing stuff to add to clay soil to give it stuture.
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I meant to get some photos of what the soil looks like now. If I get a minute I’ll get some tonight. I couldn’t even believe how good it looks. Looks like decent garden soil. Garlic is growing great.
Gypsum is great to add to clay. You want to get the powder type. When you roll your clay in it it basically prevents little pieces from sticking to each other like when you add flour to bread dough.
Sounds like you have as much work cut out for you as I do😁
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ya man work cut out allright. i got super rocky ground and im on a big hill il get some gypsum today im doing a lot of growing in pots i just cut a big copper boiler so im gona use it as 2 pots as some say the copper is very good for plants. il see how they go and let you know if there any good. im gona try with the black soil at the top as well i i just found it as i was clearing trees away. 
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