I remember when scientists first discovered the amazing Amazon soil that the ancients had made so fertile, even after hundreds of years. It was such a mystery as to how they had accomplished this. Thank you for your interesting and informative video.
This is the BEST presentation I've seen on making biochar. Most other videos have you making a kiln of one kind or another, which is simply not practical for many of us. He shows that all you need is the fuel and a pit in the ground -- the rest is just a matter of how you feed the fire.
Nice description here. I've been enjoying making biochar in cone pit for 5+ years and this method truly is ideal for diverse feed stock... One trick to offer up, in regard to getting a finer texture in your charcoal AND increasing efficiency... If you use the long stick you have for moving material around to really poke and agitate as the charcoal is being produced, you can pre-crush a lot of charcoal in the pit, help reduce ash formation, and speed up the whole process. Over time I've found I spend quite a bit of time poking/crushing/shifting material in the fire and at the end, the quenched material is often already a texture I'm happy with for inoculating and garden use.
i use a spade to crush the char while its still burning, to event out the surface before adding the next batch i think this way, there layer of crushed char will prevent oxygene from reaching underneath as easily i avoid the extra step of crushing it
That would work. I have read mixed advice about how fine is best, and it seems that a variation between the size of pea and coarse sand is thought to be best.
@@REDGardens Great video! My recommendation would be a good little wood chipper. I used to have a chipper and it would made processing garden refuse much easier. The wood chips would be perfect for suffocating the fire during the charcoal making process. I am interested in the scientific reason why biochar is such an effective agricultural method. It would require some research, but many forests like the amazon exist in areas with nutrient poor soils. All the nutrients and carbon are sequestered in the vegetation, and once that is removed the soil has little residual productivity. Slash and burn agriculture in these areas rapidly depletes the soil because of nutrient runoff. Biochar captures these nutrients and locks them in place where roots systems can still access them. Just like nanotechnology surface area to volume ratio is of critical importance. Smaller particles have a much higher surface area and thus activity. The charcoal itself is fairly inert and long lasting, it does not break down quickly like wood, but can act as a PH buffer as well as a nutrient reservoir. It may also provide some protection against soil pathogens and promote a healthy soil microbiome. Have to go but you get the just of what I am saying.
You can use a concrete mixer to crush to a defined size. Fill it, mount a fitting fitting screen across the opening and then run it with the opening facing slightly down. The particles will stay in as long as they are larger than the screen width. A little work upfront, but you can screen and crush a lot of material this way.
@@REDGardens The Generalist is spot on. High surface area hard carbon made from pyrolyzed cellulose nanofibers is currently being researched for use in improving sodium ion batteries. Your backyard biochar should contain a fraction of these high surface area pyrolyzed cellulose nanofibers as well. If you are interested in the battery research, these sodium ion batteries have the potential to replace lithium ion batteries in certain applications such as stationary renewable energy storage. This is important due to the environmental issues caused by lithium extraction and the global shortage of lithium driving up battery prices. Sodium ion batteries have the potential to make renewable energy storage much more feasible and affordable and pyrolyzed cellulose nanofibers could become a critical component in these batteries.
I’ve watched so many guarding videos before this and I never understood the point of bio char or a practical way to make it until I watch this. Thank you so much!
I like the way you present your data. I hope you’ll follow up with a review of biochar. So far, there doesn’t seem to be anyone else willing to provide a comprehensive analysis of their experiences. I’ll remain open to the possibility of using biochar until that happens but not convinced.
Here in SE Michigan, I take as much finished compost from my pile as I need for all of my spring plantings. Then I spend the rest of the growing season rebuilding the pile, mainly with alternating layers of fresh grass clippings, and leaves that I had stockpiled the previous fall. I also make charcoal during the growing season, adding it to the compost pile. I run my small Mantis tiller through the pile several times during the season, mixing the accumulated materials. I let the decomposing compost inoculate(activate) the charcoal. Your pit method seems to be working well for you. I like the particle size you end up with, and your method of activation. I've collected some small cookie (biscuits in UK) tins to use as retort chambers in making charcoal. I load them with sticks & twigs, wood chips, pine cones, make sure the lids are tightly in place, then set them atop a hot fire. Three small holes are drilled in the lids to allow escaping gases to burn off. When no more gases are seen venting from the holes, the tins are removed from the fire and allowed to cool completely. Like you, I crush the charcoal into smaller particles.
I think your method of adding charcoal to the compost pile as you build it up is probably the best way to get it into your soil. The cookie tin method is a cool one as well, especially if you regularly have fires for other reasons.
@@REDGardens Please very quickly, I have already 5ft by 7ft space dug for refuse by the fence side in my farm garden. Can I use same to burn my biochar as it's also 5ft deep and plastered round. Hope the fire won't have effect on the fence? Thanks
Hello from Co Leitrim. We harvest rainwater for household use, presently I buy in biochar to use in the filtering system so this method will be helpful for us, thank you.
I can suggest you two things to improve your biochar making: the first is to put a metal pipe rght down the burning charcoal and using a funnel, pump all the water from bottom to top untill water gets on the surface and let it cool. This will ensure you to stop any burning. Second tip is about grinding the char. I use a meat grinder and even if it's a bit slow it works. Also it can be automatized (big funnel with more biochar on top and a drill connected to the crank). Hope it can be helpful.
A retort can produce biochar more efficiently than the method shown, and with fewer emissions. There are also questions of economy of scale. Can enough biochar be generated from waste cellulose for a small site doing what is shown in this video? I don’t argue with small scale efforts that are less efficient. There is value in doing what is currently possible rather than waiting for large scale production of biochar using a retort. I believe, however, that a retort designed for the needs of multiple gardens is the end goal.
@@DovidM Good questions and ideas. I think that this pit method is suitable for people with small scale gardens or explorations. And it also fills that gap that you mentioned about waiting for the large or more sophisticated equipment to be developed or become affordable. That was a big benefit for me. It also allows people like me to produce some char without any upfront costs, so that I can do some explorations about how useful the biochar could be within my context before I start to upscale. I imagine if things go well I will transition to using a retort of some kind, just as you mentioned.
Brilliant dude! I was wondering how and what i needed to make this. I was pretty certain the amazonians didn't go through the fancy systems i see people making. Great explanation
I have a similar fire pit in my yard that after summers use in enjoyment with family I utilize the it as my compost pit throughout the winter. Throughout the season.. turn.. turn.🎵🎶 Cold winter mornings find it steaming.😁 Undoubtedly it is imperfect and I use the contents sparingly with other compost and potting soil to coax my hard pan clay into better production. I could probably produce some lye from the pit for soap making as it is at times way past biochar. It's Amazoningly incredible what we learn when observing nature! Thank you!!
Nice multi-purpose pit. I was thinking of setting up a pit like this with a few chairs for sitting around the fire when I just want to relax/cook, and tools use it for biochar at other times. Hadn't thought of it as a compost pit, but might also work, especially with a cover to keep the rain off.
Benefits of adding biochar into garden bed will increase your plant air intake upto 400% and it also increase water holding capacity of your soil it's magical gift to your plant my brother 🇮🇳🙏
@@REDGardens Hii Red, try a good effective way to make biochar while making wood vinegar.. wood vinegar is very good, it can dischourage pest thinking fire (get away) and i found out plant sprayed with very diluted wood vinegar (after filtering tar away), make healthier plant.. very obvious. as i believe these wood vinegar has got la lot of plant "essence" in it.. or even hormone (guessing)..
This is they second video of yours that i have watched. You are incredible!! You do full research prior, then you show all aspects of what u did. You are one of the best youtubers!!! New sub over here!! :)
I saw a RUclips video where they ground up their biochar using a heavy duty kitchen garbage disposal mounted in a hole in a table & draining into 5 gallon buckets. Smart idea, I thought!
I use a Weber kettle BBQ to char rose prunings. I have found that feeding the fire as fast as I can without smothering works,though the fire does get rather big. When the char stops flaming I put the lid on to smother the fire for about a half hour and then douse the fire to put out any smoldering material. I get a good amount of char and little ash.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I want to experiment with a bigger burn where I add material faster, but first I would want to move the pit cone further away from anything that could burn!
Thanks for the video. Great stuff. One thing I've found is inoculation with half n half good compost and worm bin castings. The worms seem to love char. I've also used moringa tea and worm casting tea. Seems inoculations can be achieved but the follow up study I've never really kept track of. I do know stuff works very well.
With other people's research and experiments, it seems like biochar may not be worth the effort if your garden soil is already rich in organic matter and fertility. But it totally makes sense that if you have poor soil, it could greatly improve it over time. That is exactly what it did to the poor Amazonian soil.
So informative. I have a conical fire pit my sons built for me from stone that will work perfectly for this. Thank you for sharing I will try this soon.
Make sure and build yourself a johnson su bioreactor. The fungal based composting system really seems to help build alot of biology in the soil and is another fun experiment. Great videos!
I suggest for an experiment, you can make charcoal in different ways and different sizes, and inoculate them with similar dosages. Then you can prepare different beds for each type and garden them with a same method, then just report results with time. Great video, btw, I didn't know about this type of charcoal making before. I'm planning to try this method in the future.
I'm really glad I found your channel! It is very educational. This is just the second video I've watched, but I can already tell that I'm going to end up starting from the beginning of your catalogue and viewing every one while taking lots of notes.
Funnily enough, I had just watched Edible Acres take on producing biochar. Using a 1/2 SS euronorm food container with cover. He used his house wood stove, and mostly scraps trimmings and off cuts. Seemed to work well and easy to control, the small batch size balanced by the more intense heat which gave a fast, simple and controllable burn. He reported up to 4 burns per evening. Thanks again for showing us your experiments.
I hadn't seen the Edible Acres video on biochar, thanks for the pointer. If I had a wood stove in my house I would definitely use a similar method, to make good use of the heat. A good way to burn smaller material as well, and an option if I used a wood chipper to manage the bulky pruning material.
Both are legit ways to create biochar. This video shows a really amazing way to produce biochar with the 'feed stock' he has available which is a huge pile of loose, small branches and finer wood. Cone pit can process mountains of 'slash' and prunings in a crazy effective way. The wood stove style I use is excellent for small offcuts from a wood shop, or sweepings, or nutshells, or other smaller, more uniform material in a slower, more controlled way. Whats so great about this cone pit style is it really stands as a potent argument against needing to have a wood chipper. @RED Gardens - I would suspect you found a similar outcome, that cone pit really can process branch wood as fast as a small chipper!
@@edibleacres Good input about the different options for different feedstock. Yes it is fast, and I would definitely prefer to tend a fire than feed a noisy wood chipper.
Nuts! We have almost as many pesky squirrels as nut trees. We get few nuts, but lots of shells, finally a good use. Do they smell nice when being roast by the fire?@@edibleacres
We started doing this a few years ago, with a long rectangular bed. We put manure on top and planted pumpkins. I was thrilled to get about 30 pounds of pie pumpkins from 4 plants. The next year (which is when I heard the biochar really takes effect), we got 175 pounds from 4 plants, with what was supposed to be an 8 pound max in each, producing 20+ pound fruits. We still do it, but the deer discovered the patch. This year we are covering the patch with row cover, on the theory that if the deer can't see the plants, they won't eat them...
You might be able to use a cement mixer to break up the charcoal into smaller pieces. Rock is broken in mining operations like this using mills. If the material breaks on its own or can break other particles, it's called an autogenous mill. You could also try adding grinding media, like steel balls, to the mix to help break the material down.
Thanks for explaining the cone burn. Interesting to see so many people struggling with this new/old resource. The Amazon people did not have modern factories to process theirs. Today the commercial makers wish to control. Odd nobody has shown the actual terra preta soil close up. How big are the pieces in it? What is the range/average etc? Here we are today taking baby steps to master this ancient craft. I have large trees to process so the cone doesn't look right for me. Hope you follow up. We need intelligent open people working on this. We need to understand what we are really trying to do.
Howzit! As usual, a very informative presentation of the data. I think we have been thinking and playing with biochar from a similar perspective. The car lasts 1000 years so application is probably more important than precision. To a degree. "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler". It made a significant difference for radish planted in a fine grain inclusion into a clay loam soil. I made a video where I demonstrate my double-barrel TLUD design and I wrote a short post about the method and construction with some discussion. I have since moved to the Kontiki style drum. I use a 350L steel pressure vessel which is cut in half. I welded the ends closed and now it sits on an old wheel rim. I can easily create 100L of biochar and because the vessel is sealed I can use the quenching water during the "charging" of it. Reduce the total water usage in the process. I try to make a batch per bed. About 70L int 7.5m2 beds mixed with compost and dug in initially. My TLUD video - ruclips.net/video/PBfij8SM02U/видео.html
I've been using an old concrete feed trough as a burn pit; it's about 5' long, 3' wide, 2' deep. I tried some smaller sizes before, but didn't like all the extra labor involved to cut the prunings down to fit. With a large pit I can just throw on bundles of long limbs, then push whatever sticks out the end further into the fire as the rest of the limb is consumed. Another perk with the large size is that there is so much material piled in, the weight of the mass does a nice job crushing the lower layers of char into small bits. Afterwards I pile the char in layers with fresh cow manure and a bit of soil for microbes, then leave it for a season while the manure composts and leaches into the char.
Sounds like a great system. The bigger, or longer pit makes a lot of sense, and I am planning to scale up for my next few burns. Thanks for sharing your experience.
I forgot to add that the fire is slowly destroying the concrete (turns it back into lime and gravel) so after a few dozen more batches it will probably be too cracked to use. I'm happy with this b/c I need to remove the trough anyway, and this is easier than sledgehammering it. I won't need any more biochar for years afterwards, but for a new pit I might see if I can find an old junked metal watering trough and bury it part way. Good luck with your research!
This is great info as usual. I am experimenting with Mel Bartholomew's square foot gardening method and believe the gardener could profitably replace the coarse vermiculite with charcoal.
Thanks. Replacing the vermiculite with charcoal could be a very interesting approach, so long as the char was adequately charged. I have been dreaming of building a rooftop garden one day, and think biochar could make a great light weight component of the growing medium.
Recently in Zambia ~ central Africa, i was able to access fine charcoal in good quantities, which I added to 200 liter drums of pelletised chicken manure soaking in water. No exact figures for pellets, about 10 liters, and from under trees and shrubs decomposing leaf litter. The idea is to produce char with all the components that symbiotically produce plant growth and health.
I use the same easy and low tech method to make biochar and it works really good. You can crush the charcoal with a stick while burning, just before adding the new layer of wood. Going this way, you avoid most of the dusty part of the job and get the perfect particule size!
This is it! :) Made some trials myself following the instructions of the Ithaka Institute. If anyone experiments with urine try to inoculate the full bottle/can whith some drops of buttermilk against the ghoulish smell that develops. It takes just some weeks to ferment to a sour and sweet smell.
for a couple of years now i have been using the dark carbon rich soil from spots where i had made bonfires on the ground, in my opinion it grows better plants
I have just recently found you and have really enjoyed your videos! However, I quite like THIS one, especially 😊 I have used an old roaster in our fireplace to make biochar following the method EdibleAcres used in his videos. But I have never tried his method of the cone pit. After watching this though, I might re-watch this one a few times and his videos again and give it a try! I like the amount of charcoal y'all are producing!
Glad you found my channel. The method that EdibleAcres uses is great, especially if you already regularly use a wood stove. This cone pit method is great for bulk material and lighter stuff.
Very much looking forward to your assesment down the line. Biochar to me always sounded quite homeopathic and frankly unscientific, but i trust your judgement and scientific mind and am ready to be convinced by actual results.
It is interesting how we can perceive things differently depending on where were come across the information. I fist was introduced to biochar by through the scientists studying terra preta, and other agronomists, so I feel it has that scientific foundation. But lately I see biochar based content all over the place, and often not well supported or documented, with lots of wild claims, and I can easily see how people could suspect the validity of its use.
Black Soil Amendment sounds like a sweet metal band name.
Yeah, but what would their hit song be called?
This side of the dirt
@@salazarpayne3784 Nice one!
six inches below
@@REDGardens Diamonds in the dirt or in this case , Nutrients in the dirt .
I remember when scientists first discovered the amazing Amazon soil that the ancients had made so fertile, even after hundreds of years. It was such a mystery as to how they had accomplished this. Thank you for your interesting and informative video.
I heard about that... what did they find?
This is the BEST presentation I've seen on making biochar. Most other videos have you making a kiln of one kind or another, which is simply not practical for many of us. He shows that all you need is the fuel and a pit in the ground -- the rest is just a matter of how you feed the fire.
Thanks!
But still too many Oxygen for this method.
This man is my gardening spirit animal.
:-)
Very excited for your results!
FOR ONCE,i enjoyed this video....the man talked ,but precise and clear with much démonstration
Contrats.
Yay!
I'd love an update on how you think biochar has affected the parts of the garden you've used it on
As would I... and what changes you may have contemplated along the way. THANKS!!
Update please?
Yes please I have found no other video on the subject in your channel
Nice description here. I've been enjoying making biochar in cone pit for 5+ years and this method truly is ideal for diverse feed stock... One trick to offer up, in regard to getting a finer texture in your charcoal AND increasing efficiency... If you use the long stick you have for moving material around to really poke and agitate as the charcoal is being produced, you can pre-crush a lot of charcoal in the pit, help reduce ash formation, and speed up the whole process. Over time I've found I spend quite a bit of time poking/crushing/shifting material in the fire and at the end, the quenched material is often already a texture I'm happy with for inoculating and garden use.
Thanks for the suggestion about using the stick. I'll definitely give it a try on my next burn.
Dude! ^2 of my favorite youtubers!
Thanks for the videos RED Gardens! I love your thoroughness.
@@kdogg040 Hey, thanks! Glad you value my work.
i use a spade to crush the char while its still burning, to event out the surface before adding the next batch
i think this way, there layer of crushed char will prevent oxygene from reaching underneath as easily
i avoid the extra step of crushing it
@@zazugee Sounds like a good process, thanks.
You could use a cement mixer and some rocks to crush the charcoal up. It should beat it to a powder fairly quickly.
That would work. I have read mixed advice about how fine is best, and it seems that a variation between the size of pea and coarse sand is thought to be best.
@@REDGardens Great video! My recommendation would be a good little wood chipper. I used to have a chipper and it would made processing garden refuse much easier. The wood chips would be perfect for suffocating the fire during the charcoal making process. I am interested in the scientific reason why biochar is such an effective agricultural method. It would require some research, but many forests like the amazon exist in areas with nutrient poor soils. All the nutrients and carbon are sequestered in the vegetation, and once that is removed the soil has little residual productivity. Slash and burn agriculture in these areas rapidly depletes the soil because of nutrient runoff. Biochar captures these nutrients and locks them in place where roots systems can still access them. Just like nanotechnology surface area to volume ratio is of critical importance. Smaller particles have a much higher surface area and thus activity. The charcoal itself is fairly inert and long lasting, it does not break down quickly like wood, but can act as a PH buffer as well as a nutrient reservoir. It may also provide some protection against soil pathogens and promote a healthy soil microbiome. Have to go but you get the just of what I am saying.
@@thegeneralist7527 That is an interesting comparison between biochar surface area and nanotechnology.
You can use a concrete mixer to crush to a defined size. Fill it, mount a fitting fitting screen across the opening and then run it with the opening facing slightly down. The particles will stay in as long as they are larger than the screen width. A little work upfront, but you can screen and crush a lot of material this way.
@@REDGardens The Generalist is spot on. High surface area hard carbon made from pyrolyzed cellulose nanofibers is currently being researched for use in improving sodium ion batteries. Your backyard biochar should contain a fraction of these high surface area pyrolyzed cellulose nanofibers as well.
If you are interested in the battery research, these sodium ion batteries have the potential to replace lithium ion batteries in certain applications such as stationary renewable energy storage. This is important due to the environmental issues caused by lithium extraction and the global shortage of lithium driving up battery prices. Sodium ion batteries have the potential to make renewable energy storage much more feasible and affordable and pyrolyzed cellulose nanofibers could become a critical component in these batteries.
Can't wait for the results.
Thanks to this video, the burn pile will now be made into biochar. Thank you.
I watched this a year ago, and forgot about it until now... Rewatched, and got me doing my own. Thanks Bruce.
You need to watch gardening like a Viking. He’ll show you how to make biochar. Thanks for your video. God bless you and yours.
Nicely informative with a bit of wisdom and a perfect touch of passion. Thank you for creating this.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Such a straight forward and informative video. Thank you.
:)
Thank you so much , it is very helpful for me as a beginner 🙏🤝
Glad it was helpful!
Extremely informative with a bit of wisdom and a perfect touch of passion. Thank you for creating this.
Thanks!
I’ve watched so many guarding videos before this and I never understood the point of bio char or a practical way to make it until I watch this. Thank you so much!
Glad you found my video useful!
Great use for Willow especially in areas where not many other trees grow well due to the waterlogged conditions.
Yes. We have a lot of them growing around, and I have gotten into the routine of coppicing them (cutting them back knowing that they will regrow.)
I like the way you present your data. I hope you’ll follow up with a review of biochar. So far, there doesn’t seem to be anyone else willing to provide a comprehensive analysis of their experiences. I’ll remain open to the possibility of using biochar until that happens but not convinced.
Same
David the Good did an experiment and was very happy with the results.
Here in SE Michigan, I take as much finished compost from my pile as I need for all of my spring plantings. Then I spend the rest of the growing season rebuilding the pile, mainly with alternating layers of fresh grass clippings, and leaves that I had stockpiled the previous fall. I also make charcoal during the growing season, adding it to the compost pile. I run my small Mantis tiller through the pile several times during the season, mixing the accumulated materials. I let the decomposing compost inoculate(activate) the charcoal.
Your pit method seems to be working well for you. I like the particle size you end up with, and your method of activation.
I've collected some small cookie (biscuits in UK) tins to use as retort chambers in making charcoal. I load them with sticks & twigs, wood chips, pine cones, make sure the lids are tightly in place, then set them atop a hot fire. Three small holes are drilled in the lids to allow escaping gases to burn off. When no more gases are seen venting from the holes, the tins are removed from the fire and allowed to cool completely. Like you, I crush the charcoal into smaller particles.
I think your method of adding charcoal to the compost pile as you build it up is probably the best way to get it into your soil. The cookie tin method is a cool one as well, especially if you regularly have fires for other reasons.
Great info, i just saw in another video that you can pee on the charcoal and its collect the nitrogen ;)
I like this technic because it is very simple and eco friendly
🙂
Man I love these gardening experiments. Great channel I really appreciate your work.
Skillcult has a good video series on biochar. Worth a watch
Skillcult is great!
I just love watching this guys’ videos. Well said well made and shows what he is talking about with results,
Thanks!
You're a madman! I'm so happy I stumbled across your channel!
LOL - glad you found it!
I appreciate the concentration of knowledge. Well done
Thanks.
Really interesting and informative, thanks for showing
Glad you liked it.
Subscribed immediately.
Thanks for the detailed information. I am starting my own biochar right away.
Awesome! Thank you!
@@REDGardens Please very quickly, I have already 5ft by 7ft space dug for refuse by the fence side in my farm garden.
Can I use same to burn my biochar as it's also 5ft deep and plastered round. Hope the fire won't have effect on the fence?
Thanks
Great work. I like that you're using a simple, low-tech method. I will have to try it myself.
Thanks. I figure it is better to start simple, rather than jump straight into more equipment.
looking forward to seeing the results from the trials!
Yeah, so am I ... haven't been able to start them yet, though hopefully soon.
@@REDGardens LOL
Hello from Co Leitrim. We harvest rainwater for household use, presently I buy in biochar to use in the filtering system so this method will be helpful for us, thank you.
Hope it works for you.
What a great video!!! Gonna try it in my backyard
Thank you for this very informative video!
I can suggest you two things to improve your biochar making: the first is to put a metal pipe rght down the burning charcoal and using a funnel, pump all the water from bottom to top untill water gets on the surface and let it cool. This will ensure you to stop any burning.
Second tip is about grinding the char. I use a meat grinder and even if it's a bit slow it works. Also it can be automatized (big funnel with more biochar on top and a drill connected to the crank).
Hope it can be helpful.
Thanks for the suggestions!
always interested in your low tech approach to gardening methods.....keeping it simple is usually the best way......
I really like the lower tech options, at least to start.
A retort can produce biochar more efficiently than the method shown, and with fewer emissions. There are also questions of economy of scale. Can enough biochar be generated from waste cellulose for a small site doing what is shown in this video? I don’t argue with small scale efforts that are less efficient. There is value in doing what is currently possible rather than waiting for large scale production of biochar using a retort. I believe, however, that a retort designed for the needs of multiple gardens is the end goal.
@@DovidM Good questions and ideas. I think that this pit method is suitable for people with small scale gardens or explorations. And it also fills that gap that you mentioned about waiting for the large or more sophisticated equipment to be developed or become affordable. That was a big benefit for me. It also allows people like me to produce some char without any upfront costs, so that I can do some explorations about how useful the biochar could be within my context before I start to upscale. I imagine if things go well I will transition to using a retort of some kind, just as you mentioned.
Yaye, I'm gonna try the cone pit today! That makes sense!!! Thank you 💗
You are a man with a lot of energy! Just like the Energizer Bunny.
Excellent video, thank You!
:)
Great experiment, looking forward to seeing what results you get.
Thanks.
Thank you! Gonna do it the same way!
Hope it works well for you.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR EXPLAINING IT VERY EASY! Congrats on your successful experiment! Hoping to hear more updates soon!
You provide an excellent overview of your video's content, good or bad!
Glad you like them!
Solid video, thanks. Thorough and well researched, yet still open and skeptical.
Love it. That's my winter weekends booked in then
Have fun!
Very keen to see how this goes! I'm so grateful you're testing this out.
Cool. I hope to have the first initial trials done by late spring.
Brilliant dude! I was wondering how and what i needed to make this. I was pretty certain the amazonians didn't go through the fancy systems i see people making. Great explanation
Thanks! Yeah, they probably used a simple method, but not sure it would have been this method.
@@REDGardens how has it been working for you? Is there a follow up video?
@@brianalt3912 Sorry, no follow up video yet. Hopefully this year.
I have a similar fire pit in my yard that after summers use in enjoyment with family I utilize the it as my compost pit throughout the winter. Throughout the season.. turn.. turn.🎵🎶
Cold winter mornings find it steaming.😁 Undoubtedly it is imperfect and I use the contents sparingly with other compost and potting soil to coax my hard pan clay into better production. I could probably produce some lye from the pit for soap making as it is at times way past biochar. It's Amazoningly incredible what we learn when observing nature! Thank you!!
Nice multi-purpose pit. I was thinking of setting up a pit like this with a few chairs for sitting around the fire when I just want to relax/cook, and tools use it for biochar at other times. Hadn't thought of it as a compost pit, but might also work, especially with a cover to keep the rain off.
Pleasing voice and intelligent research, thank you.
:-)
You sound like mixed Canadian and Irish accent! Very cool voice!
Yep, that is the mix! Glad you like it!
Any update on how well it helped the soil?
Benefits of adding biochar into garden bed will increase your plant air intake upto 400% and it also increase water holding capacity of your soil it's magical gift to your plant my brother 🇮🇳🙏
@@Broad-Spectrum or it’s all bullshit and clickbait, who knows ?
@@superresistant0 it's not you little measley rat, look up terra petra
Good idea.
Thanks for the helpful video!
Thank you! Looking forward to watching more of your informative videos. 👍
🙂
YES!!!!!!!been waiting for this.
Yay!
Me tooooo! Yessss
@@REDGardens Hii Red,
try a good effective way to make biochar while making wood vinegar.. wood vinegar is very good, it can dischourage pest thinking fire (get away) and i found out plant sprayed with very diluted wood vinegar (after filtering tar away), make healthier plant.. very obvious. as i believe these wood vinegar has got la lot of plant "essence" in it.. or even hormone (guessing)..
andrew ysk It would be interesting to explore the possibilities of using wood vinegar.
I'm so glad I just found your channel. I'm going to join your patreon.
This is they second video of yours that i have watched. You are incredible!! You do full research prior, then you show all aspects of what u did. You are one of the best youtubers!!! New sub over here!! :)
Ah, thanks. That kind of comment means a lot. Glad you like my work.
I agree!!
Excellent video, simply explained Great to see you back.
Thanks.
I saw a RUclips video where they ground up their biochar using a heavy duty kitchen garbage disposal mounted in a hole in a table & draining into 5 gallon buckets. Smart idea, I thought!
Power Biochar!!
I use a Weber kettle BBQ to char rose prunings. I have found that feeding the fire as fast as I can without smothering works,though the fire does get rather big. When the char stops flaming I put the lid on to smother the fire for about a half hour and then douse the fire to put out any smoldering material. I get a good amount of char and little ash.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I want to experiment with a bigger burn where I add material faster, but first I would want to move the pit cone further away from anything that could burn!
Made the same experience with the grill. Works perfect !
Thanks for the video. Great stuff. One thing I've found is inoculation with half n half good compost and worm bin castings. The worms seem to love char. I've also used moringa tea and worm casting tea. Seems inoculations can be achieved but the follow up study I've never really kept track of.
I do know stuff works very well.
Thanks! The use of worm castings makes sense.
Good ideas here, thanks for sharing!
Very interesting video! I’ve never actually heard of biochar before. I’ll be looking forward to see how it affects the crops in your trial runs.
Thanks. I'm looking forward to it as well.
A great TV program on biochar can be seen at: ruclips.net/video/0Os-ujelkgw/видео.html
Great idea Sir
Good stuff! Here in indonesia we have lots of clay and volcanic sandy soil so finding good amendments are always a plus!
With other people's research and experiments, it seems like biochar may not be worth the effort if your garden soil is already rich in organic matter and fertility.
But it totally makes sense that if you have poor soil, it could greatly improve it over time. That is exactly what it did to the poor Amazonian soil.
So informative. I have a conical fire pit my sons built for me from stone that will work perfectly for this. Thank you for sharing I will try this soon.
Hope it works for you.
Best video on biochar
Thanks@
Thanks for posting this vid! I have been looking for efficient ways to produce charcoal!
Great - I was also really glad when I discovered this method.
Make sure and build yourself a johnson su bioreactor. The fungal based composting system really seems to help build alot of biology in the soil and is another fun experiment. Great videos!
Thanks for sharing this video.
You are a very hard worker Bruce.
It seems like you need a lot of wood to make biochar.
It takes a fair amount of wood, and I don't think it is really useful unless you have access to a lot of wood.
I suggest for an experiment, you can make charcoal in different ways and different sizes, and inoculate them with similar dosages. Then you can prepare different beds for each type and garden them with a same method, then just report results with time. Great video, btw, I didn't know about this type of charcoal making before. I'm planning to try this method in the future.
That would be a great experiment. Just need to find the time :-)
I'm really glad I found your channel! It is very educational. This is just the second video I've watched, but I can already tell that I'm going to end up starting from the beginning of your catalogue and viewing every one while taking lots of notes.
Very cool! Hope you enjoy(d) my other videos!
It’s a huge effort - it’ll be interesting to see its effects on your crops..
Yes, it will be interesting!
thank you,
you made it seem so simple ... definitely gonna give it a try..
It is pretty simple, once you get the hang of it.
Funnily enough, I had just watched Edible Acres take on producing biochar. Using a 1/2 SS euronorm food container with cover. He used his house wood stove, and mostly scraps trimmings and off cuts. Seemed to work well and easy to control, the small batch size balanced by the more intense heat which gave a fast, simple and controllable burn. He reported up to 4 burns per evening.
Thanks again for showing us your experiments.
I hadn't seen the Edible Acres video on biochar, thanks for the pointer. If I had a wood stove in my house I would definitely use a similar method, to make good use of the heat. A good way to burn smaller material as well, and an option if I used a wood chipper to manage the bulky pruning material.
Both are legit ways to create biochar. This video shows a really amazing way to produce biochar with the 'feed stock' he has available which is a huge pile of loose, small branches and finer wood. Cone pit can process mountains of 'slash' and prunings in a crazy effective way. The wood stove style I use is excellent for small offcuts from a wood shop, or sweepings, or nutshells, or other smaller, more uniform material in a slower, more controlled way.
Whats so great about this cone pit style is it really stands as a potent argument against needing to have a wood chipper. @RED Gardens - I would suspect you found a similar outcome, that cone pit really can process branch wood as fast as a small chipper!
@@edibleacres Good input about the different options for different feedstock. Yes it is fast, and I would definitely prefer to tend a fire than feed a noisy wood chipper.
Nuts! We have almost as many pesky squirrels as nut trees. We get few nuts, but lots of shells, finally a good use.
Do they smell nice when being roast by the fire?@@edibleacres
We started doing this a few years ago, with a long rectangular bed. We put manure on top and planted pumpkins. I was thrilled to get about 30 pounds of pie pumpkins from 4 plants. The next year (which is when I heard the biochar really takes effect), we got 175 pounds from 4 plants, with what was supposed to be an 8 pound max in each, producing 20+ pound fruits. We still do it, but the deer discovered the patch. This year we are covering the patch with row cover, on the theory that if the deer can't see the plants, they won't eat them...
Wow, that is quite a yield! Hope the deer cover works this year!
You might be able to use a cement mixer to break up the charcoal into smaller pieces. Rock is broken in mining operations like this using mills. If the material breaks on its own or can break other particles, it's called an autogenous mill. You could also try adding grinding media, like steel balls, to the mix to help break the material down.
Exilent video, really well explained 👍
Thanks. glad you liked it.
great job, man
Thanks!
The good thing is that biochar also readds carbon to the earth, in larger quantities, you could store more CO2.
Pretty neat version with the cone. :)
Carbon sequestration is definitely one of the benefits of biochar, and i hope to do a video soon looking at how much is sequestered.
I'm looking forward to your trials and updates on using this biochar in the garden.
Yeah, sorry, I didn't get to those last year. Hopefully this season.
Brilliant
I get both wood ash and char from my wood stove over the winter. Apple and cherry wood is saved for the smoker
Do you add that to your compost or direct to the soil?
Thumbs up. Thanks.
Great video.
Thanks.
Thanks for explaining the cone burn. Interesting to see so many people struggling with this new/old resource. The Amazon people did not have modern factories to process theirs. Today the commercial makers wish to control. Odd nobody has shown the actual terra preta soil close up. How big are the pieces in it? What is the range/average etc? Here we are today taking baby steps to master this ancient craft. I have large trees to process so the cone doesn't look right for me. Hope you follow up. We need intelligent open people working on this. We need to understand what we are really trying to do.
Howzit! As usual, a very informative presentation of the data. I think we have been thinking and playing with biochar from a similar perspective. The car lasts 1000 years so application is probably more important than precision. To a degree. "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler". It made a significant difference for radish planted in a fine grain inclusion into a clay loam soil. I made a video where I demonstrate my double-barrel TLUD design and I wrote a short post about the method and construction with some discussion. I have since moved to the Kontiki style drum. I use a 350L steel pressure vessel which is cut in half. I welded the ends closed and now it sits on an old wheel rim. I can easily create 100L of biochar and because the vessel is sealed I can use the quenching water during the "charging" of it. Reduce the total water usage in the process. I try to make a batch per bed. About 70L int 7.5m2 beds mixed with compost and dug in initially. My TLUD video - ruclips.net/video/PBfij8SM02U/видео.html
Thanks for the comment and the link.
I've been using an old concrete feed trough as a burn pit; it's about 5' long, 3' wide, 2' deep. I tried some smaller sizes before, but didn't like all the extra labor involved to cut the prunings down to fit. With a large pit I can just throw on bundles of long limbs, then push whatever sticks out the end further into the fire as the rest of the limb is consumed. Another perk with the large size is that there is so much material piled in, the weight of the mass does a nice job crushing the lower layers of char into small bits.
Afterwards I pile the char in layers with fresh cow manure and a bit of soil for microbes, then leave it for a season while the manure composts and leaches into the char.
Sounds like a great system. The bigger, or longer pit makes a lot of sense, and I am planning to scale up for my next few burns. Thanks for sharing your experience.
I forgot to add that the fire is slowly destroying the concrete (turns it back into lime and gravel) so after a few dozen more batches it will probably be too cracked to use. I'm happy with this b/c I need to remove the trough anyway, and this is easier than sledgehammering it. I won't need any more biochar for years afterwards, but for a new pit I might see if I can find an old junked metal watering trough and bury it part way.
Good luck with your research!
@@toddgillespie8165 Interesting way together rid of a concrete trough ;-)
Synergy!
This is great info as usual. I am experimenting with Mel Bartholomew's square foot gardening method and believe the gardener could profitably replace the coarse vermiculite with charcoal.
Thanks. Replacing the vermiculite with charcoal could be a very interesting approach, so long as the char was adequately charged. I have been dreaming of building a rooftop garden one day, and think biochar could make a great light weight component of the growing medium.
Recently in Zambia ~ central Africa, i was able to access fine charcoal in good quantities, which I added to 200 liter drums of pelletised chicken manure soaking in water. No exact figures for pellets, about 10 liters, and from under trees and shrubs decomposing leaf litter. The idea is to produce char with all the components that symbiotically produce plant growth and health.
It is very informative & interesting, but I think also a little complicated & time consuming. Must be an easier way to do this.
Great video. You make great instructional and informative videos. Thanks alot.
Thanks. Glad you like them.
I use the same easy and low tech method to make biochar and it works really good.
You can crush the charcoal with a stick while burning, just before adding the new layer of wood.
Going this way, you avoid most of the dusty part of the job and get the perfect particule size!
Good idea about crushing with a stick while burning. Glad to hear it works for you.
Thanks for the good information breakdown.
:)
This is it! :)
Made some trials myself following the instructions of the Ithaka Institute. If anyone experiments with urine try to inoculate the full bottle/can whith some drops of buttermilk against the ghoulish smell that develops. It takes just some weeks to ferment to a sour and sweet smell.
Interesting point about the buttermilk and the smell. Thanks.
for a couple of years now i have been using the dark carbon rich soil from spots where i had made bonfires on the ground, in my opinion it grows better plants
That is a very interesting observation.
Ive been doing the same - the plants love all that free carbon
Thanks for the info
interesting the way you explain this made it so much cooler!
I have just recently found you and have really enjoyed your videos! However, I quite like THIS one, especially 😊 I have used an old roaster in our fireplace to make biochar following the method EdibleAcres used in his videos. But I have never tried his method of the cone pit. After watching this though, I might re-watch this one a few times and his videos again and give it a try! I like the amount of charcoal y'all are producing!
Glad you found my channel. The method that EdibleAcres uses is great, especially if you already regularly use a wood stove. This cone pit method is great for bulk material and lighter stuff.
The best video!
🙂
Very much looking forward to your assesment down the line.
Biochar to me always sounded quite homeopathic and frankly unscientific, but i trust your judgement and scientific mind and am ready to be convinced by actual results.
It is interesting how we can perceive things differently depending on where were come across the information. I fist was introduced to biochar by through the scientists studying terra preta, and other agronomists, so I feel it has that scientific foundation. But lately I see biochar based content all over the place, and often not well supported or documented, with lots of wild claims, and I can easily see how people could suspect the validity of its use.