Building soil from scratch and on the cheap!

[COorganics]

No vermiculite, no particular reason, don't have any laying around though.

I have my work cut out for me here, learning the way of no till. On the surface it's very simple to me, but there is so much reading to do on the subject. That will be keeping me busy.

 

[COorganics]

I'm reading a lot of new (to me) stuff.

 

[COorganics]

Does anybody think the half burned wood (apple) chunks from a commercial smoker could be considered biochar?

 

[COorganics]

Here is a picture. Inside of a 50 gal trash bin used for "spent" smoker wood.
There is a lot of ash and slow, half burned pieces.

Curious what anyone thinks about it?

 

[COorganics]

 

[Graytail]

Did some quick searching ...

Nitrogen, biochar, and mycorrhizae: Alteration of the symbiosis and oxidation of the char surface

TERRA: Carbon Negative

Fun Fact: While compost (humus) and clay will bind the cations for us (K, NA, CA, etc) The anions (like N) are sort of floating around, not so tightly bound. You can wash away Anions like N, but the Cations are held more tightly to the Humus and clay. Well, Biochar holds anions very well. So not only a home for microbes, but an anion sequester also.

 

[COorganics]

According to Wikipedia, biochar is made through a process called Pyrolysis.
There is some reading here.

Biochar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It says biochar can be created with a "lower tech kiln". The picture on wiki looks like what I have, if I removed it from all the ash

 

[Conradino23]

It works. I mean if you have any doubts just take a look at my plants, and I use fungal/microbial inoculant as well. There are virtually buckets of mostly bamboo/grapevine biochar in my soil, and it does the job. In my humble opinion you can use both wood ash and these small chunks of biochar to use the in your mix. These pieces of biochar can be grinded or crushed into even smaller pieces, which is better for your soil. And you won't need any perlite after that. Just be careful with wood ash, you want to add around and OZ per GAL, and only if your mix is 6.0 or less. With biochar you're fine with around 10-20%.

 

[COorganics]

Thanks for links GT

Ill need a little bit to get a chance to read them

 

[COorganics]

Thanks Conradino

 

[COorganics]

So conradino,
The slow, half burned wood chunks could in fact be considered biochar in your opinion?

I'm sorry if this is like, DUH!!, to you, but I am not sure as I read about the process,
Pyrolysis, and it is done in the absence of oxygen. This commercial smoker just slowly burns wood, with (I imagine) some oxygen present.

 

[COorganics]

GT, u guys have biochar in your kit soil amendments I believe?

 

[labexperiment]

I add exactly what you have pictures of ashes and all into my garden every fall. I do hammer the chunks into smaller pieces though and remove any un-burned/charred wood chunks, of which there are very few if any most of the time.

 

[COorganics]

Would u worry about pesticides from unknown source applewood?

 

[Graytail]

GT, u guys have biochar in your kit soil amendments I believe?

Yep, there's some added available carbon in the amendment. The lab developed a carbon coated pellet that serves the same purpose.

 

[labexperiment]

I would have to research into what happens to pesticides in extreme heat to know how it would fare coming out the other side of a fire.


Pesticide info

Not sure this link will help but it is a start.

This link discusses the breakdown of pesticides through cooking aka heat.

Based on my quick search and about 30 minutes of reading, I would conclude that I would put little worry into pesticides surviving a fire, then being composted(micro organism metabolic breakdown of pesticides), and sitting around for awhile before being used for growing any edible or smokable final product.

All the wood I have burned has come from my land and is more or less free from any pesticide as I do not use them ever.

Hope this helps.

 

[Conradino23]

Any half burnt wood can be considered biochar. I don't know about pesticides though.

 

[COorganics]

The soil mix that I've been working on here is completely done cooking. I put it (some of it) indoors and this time no crazy fly hatch occurred. So you could say maybe that it's good to go.

Not for me though, I am compelled to try a little different mix out. I am basically using a mix that is composed of 1/3 soil (the stuff I just amended and cooked), 1/3 OM (I'm using forest litter and fresh vermicompost), and 1/3 sphagnum peat moss.
This is the base and of course there are amendments. Quite a few actually. I am gonna sit down soon and try to write as detailed a recipe as I can for what I've done thus far. One of the ammedments I'm most excited to be including now is the 6-5-3 mix of rock powders. Another cool amendment I've been wanting to add is crab meal. It's in there now.
For aeration, the mix contains lava rock, clay balls and perlite.

Ill work on putting together a detailed (maybe) list of what the mix now has and approximate amounts of each. Now it cooks for a month again.

 

[COorganics]

Looking back on the thread title makes me laugh. "Cheap". Not really.

 

[Antics]

Maybe not cheap, but you've probably got an extremely high quality soil that would make Fox Farms blush.