Orchard Design 3 - Biochar Processing in Cone Pit Trench Method
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- Опубликовано: 21 дек 2017
- www.edibleacres.org
After a solid first pass of pollarding and clearing in the new orchard space, it's time to clean up the branches and tops of trees that 1) can't be laid up in piles as a component of hugelmounds or 2) can't be easily woven into the living wall flanking the area.
Using cone pit method biochar production, I'm able to process these tops at a rate on par with what a gas powered wood chipper could do. Modifying the basic shape of the pit to be somewhat more of a trench, I'm able to process branches with less modification. This system produces nearly pure charcoal at the end and can be used to improve soil texture and fertility dramatically. Plus, it's a great way to stay incredibly warm when it's 15 degrees out!
• Simple Biochar Trench ... - Great video by youtube producer 'skillcult' going deep into the concept of trench biochar method. Great channel to subscribe to.
• Biochar - Edible Acres playlist on various biochar production systems we work with.
Thanks for the world wide sharing of your carbon action based around responsible resource management.
May I suggest to quench your char with / in a nutrient rich bath - like "flooding from below" is practiced in the KON-TIKI deep cone kilns.
If you aim to improve the growing conditions of your new orchard trees in a few month from now, it would boost the fertility of the spot very well if you could use animal and human urine to "bath tub quench", alternatively you may like to prepare a fermented nutrient rich brew, say fine Biochar Chicken Manure Tea or a fine grained Biochar Fish Manure Tea - with a nice sweetener added, such as Molasses-Water / Cordial, to kick the microbes along.
Best regards from under Down Under in Tassie - Australia
the home of the KON-TIKI-TAS deep cone kilns (so far mobile 4 models)
producer and user of FRANK'S CHAR branded Biochar products in Tasmania.
www.terrapretadeveopments.com.au
Thanks, great feedback. I have done the nutrient quench in the past, somehow I skipped it this time since I don't think I was organized for it. But it makes a lot of sense. I think I'll go for a larger metal container, perhaps a 55 gallon drum cut off and have a 'bath' of super rich nutrient to be part of the quench. Makes perfect sense. Thanks for sharing your notes with all of us!
Took a minute to look at your website and can I say your designs for the mobile processing kilns look pure genius! Makes me wish I lived closer so I could see them in action, maybe even invest in one! :)
Mmmm Mmmm Chicken Manure Tea. Are you British?
@@edibleacres Thank you for the comment and compliment. We have further progressed our designs and manufacturing for the whole country.
Productive fun at every level and around the globe. Here a link to the great project in Mallorca Spain: circlecarbon.com
You have some quality methods for many of your operations. That little attention to detail on the pit for quenching was smart.
Time well spent, and a yield that will pay off for decades.
Cool, thanks for the shout out. I've never tried to run one continuous like that. I make my trenches about 10 feet long for all the long limbs I've always got. I envy your locust :)
My pleasure, you put out good content, and its nice to have our communities get to know one another (although I suspect a ton of overlap already). 10 foot trench sounds appealing, although my site is pretty small for such a large flame. I may extend it a bit for the next run, and it really seems promising to extract finished char from one side and quench it and then keep running the system. The char quality came out incredibly high and I was able to get a lot processed in a smaller pit.
Wondering if biochar can be used as a fuel for blacksmithing or cooking then use to amend garden?
Denis
The char already is the endproduct you dont want to burn it. But you can make it as a byproduct from cooking with this ruclips.net/video/gViTUz3vSF0/видео.html
If you want fuel, make charcoal instead (i.e. don't inoculate it with compost et al).
@@denislosieroutdoors if you snuff the char / carbon without moisture it will be useful to you blacksmithing and cooking.
Skill cult is awesome. I love his channel
You have to charge the bio char, soak in a compost tea, or put in a compost pile, or even pee on it. If you put it in the soil uncharged like that it will have a detrimental effect initially. You have to charge the cation exchange sites before you put it into the soil. First time to channel I think you got a solid plan, thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the additional thoughts and info here.
G’day, great work area set up.
Great method in exhausting the volatile organic matter by agitation.
I would just like to share some experiences and safety with open flame top kilns no matter the design or technique employed.
Fire permits are required most of not all the time where I live.
Water for fighting a fire outbreak is needed.
Open topped water filled 44 gallon drums with hessian bags wet ready for fire fighting use only.
Hose from the house if possible.
Independent powered pump with hose to area.
Land clearing tools to fight fire on the ground.
Have a pile of loose dirt that is easy to shovel near the kiln so that if needed it can be used to cover the kiln with 10cm / 4”.
You never know what things can happen that require you to walk away from your job.
Clear the immediate area around the kiln.
I like putting a slightly raised edge around the perimeter of the cone. It helps create the vortex and control the abuse of the crosswind on your flame curtain. Note to self: the flame keeps oxygen from reaching your Char .
Please note the soil in the area of the heat zone of the kiln is now devoid of all life. This is something to consider when choosing an area to put an earth kiln on your property. Otherwise use a purpose built kiln that is above ground.
Kiln safety.
If you can feel the convection currents with your face you are too close. You may be breathing in toxins that cold harm you or make you pass out. Note to self: you cannot see the exhaust gasses.
Any pine or green timber will produce smoke from moisture or oils. If you are producing black smoke it’s best not to use this material for this method. Prepped and dried timber that is down to 10 percent moisture is your ideal feedstock.
WARNING: NEVER USE TREATED OR PAINTED OR SUSPECTED TREATED TIMBER. EVVVVVVV-VER.
The toxins will stay in the Char.
If you have larger pieces keep dragging them to the top so you can see them break down and they are in the heat zone.
Outside of what Frank Strie’s comments on inoculation there is something else you could try during the process
Of pyrolysis!
Your soil, from the immediate area where you intend to plant get a small pile of finely graded soil. As your kiln is working sprinkle some of this in lines from the centre or just off toward but not to the outside edge. (Keeping the flame curtain is your goal in life.) In quadrants like an orange or a clock-face. Just sprinkle in lines or it will dampen your flame. Unless you need to dampen your flame. This will change the microstructure of the surface of the Char.
Please note that a flame topped cone kiln in the ground is no place for children to be around supervised or not.
This is my desired recommendation.
Now go and play safe.
All the best.
Joel - Man Of Char-in development.
Australia 🇦🇺
Friday 19th Of April 2019
LOTS of excellent points and observations, suggestions, etc. here. Thanks kindly for taking the time on this. I'll re-read before the next burn as you clearly have a lot of experience and I love deeper perspective when I can get it! Thanks again!
Great video. Thanks for letting us watch!
Thank You Loader. I've been just toying with the idea but you got good results. I'll try it. Thank you very much.
Skillcult does fantastic work... So do you!! Cheers!
Thanks. Yeah, it felt like it was high time to call out his work on this channel!
Very simple and effective. Great job.
keep up the good work. i am putting in a new orchard area this winter. will be making bio char and large planting holes based on my past tree experiences coupled with skillcults experience as well as what i am seeing you and many others doing.
Thats great!
thank your for all the natural ways. thank you
And you managed to do it on the solstice - good job :)
Wasn't intentional, but it made for a nice day!
Skillcult is so, so much more than biochar. He's a great and knowledgeable ax man. Makes his own handles. Knows a crap load about building and maintaining roads and apple orchards. Tanning hides and making glue. If you like this site you'll like his too.
He sure is. I just mentioned him here because of the great videos he does sharing experiments on biochar methods.
Thanks for another interesting and useful video. I'll be burning slash on my land most of the winter and will now apply these methods, just so you know the idea's spreading.
Thats really great to hear. I think you'll love the process. I'd encourage you to make the first session with a smaller hole and smaller amounts of material so you can get a feel for it, then you can scale up to the size you need. Get friends and make a few holes, make it a full day/evening of fun and hold onto all that carbon! Be safe and have a blast!
Will do! Thanks again :)
I think you want to place Biochar a foot under your soil surface. The wood chips go on top as a mulch.
Great content he has. I'm really happy to connect to his channel. Someday hopefully we can do some collaborating.
Awesome video !
Very cool process. Still not sure if this is something I should do with all the small branches I have / will have from clearing. I own a small chipper, so I'll probably just use that. :)
At some point I'd like to make a video of a head to head comparison of chipping vs. charring... I think the charring will win. Plus the pulverized charcoal is so insanely useful and persistent...
Brilliant as usual. It's great to see this project. I've been out of action for awhile, but looking forward to catching up on your progress. This looks like an excellent alternative to chipping, which I stopped doing, but I've got lots of piles of trimmings and trees that I now have an alternative to simply leaving them to slowly decompose.
I really enjoy how thoroughly and effectively this process can deal with some huge piles of slash and debris.
I have used this method to clean up the brush from a few acres and made 8 to 10 cubic yards of charcoal so far. It is fast, simple and cheap with the bonus of a valuable soil amendment.
I dig a vertical sided pit, 3 foot wide by the same deep, 8 to 10 feet long. It handles long branches and small trees without the extra work of cutting every piece to fit. I can fill the pit in 6 hours of dragging and tossing. That is a lot of brush considering charcoal is about 25% of the volume of wood.
Even if you don't use biochar in your garden, spreading the charcoal back into a forested area improves the soil and plant growth for the next few millennia.
I love this! A couple questions 1) how has it worked out subbing this char for the perlite in your potting mix? I’d love to use things that I can make instead of buy. 2) do you think it would be easy enough to build a sugar syrup evaporator rig over this so that I can harvest the heat to make syrup? I’m doing lots of research into ways to use wasted heat in this process and also try not to waste wood to cook syrup. Thanks!
1) Char for perlite... Works pretty well, but I wouldn't say it's a perfect replacement. Perlite is able to really keep open and light no matter what, char will take on water and get heavy over time. Very different that way. I think the char really helps with porosity and flow, but it isn't a very light mix. I still think I'd like to continue to phase out the perlite, though!
2) possible to build that, I'm sure. I haven't done enough maple syrup to give any real ideas. But it is a ton of heat, so why not? The trick is that this fire needs a lot of poking/feeding/agitation/etc. It is a bit tricky that way, but if you can design with it I bet you can make it work. Make char a number of times first and then see how to phase in the additional layers I'd think.
It always cracks me up when you say Huegel-mound ... with Hügel (the german origin) already meaning mound in that context, so its moundmound :D
moundmound gardens!
Maybe I missed it in the video, but why put the charcoal on the north side of the trees?
Not any particular or specific reason, just using the piles to mark planting sites for the future.
Would you ever eventually be able to fill the pits up with soil and plant into them? I want to make bio char but my space to make a pit is limited.
That could work nicely I suspect.
Would of like to Eden the removal of the boichar from the pit. Do you let the wood burn all the way down before removing the char?
A little confused with the question. But I quench it before it converts to ash if thats the question.
If you let it burn all the way down, it becomes ash.
When the yellow flames are gone, all the wood gas and volitiles have been consumed. At this point, all that is left of the wood is carbon. No flames or blue flames means carbon is being burnt.
So when the yellow flames are gone, you need to either add more wood or lots of water to quench the fire.
You could cover the pile with dirt to smother the fire but this doesn't work very well. It mixes dirt into the charcoal which you may not want, it is very hard to get completely coverage so you have to keep checking on it or it will keep burning, and it takes 2 to 3 days to cool off. My experience is that water is faster and easier.
Please explain why bio char is beneficial, I have much to learn. How is it used and why, and which plants need it most?
I would encourage you to look that up since thats a whole lot of explaining for a comment section! But I would argue it is very worth the effort after 5 years of working with it.
It acts like a carbon filter in the soil. It allows the soils to absorb and hold more nutrients and water.
When we want to pour charcol to the land, should it be chased or just pour it on?
Chased? I'm not sure I understand...
The charcoal needs to be mixed into the soil. You can till it into a large area. You can mix it around the root zone of individual plants when you plant. You can drill holes around established planting and fill the holes with biochar (vertical mulching). You can spread biochar 3 or 4 cm deep over an area and cover it with mulch (let it slowly enter the soil).
Do you think that pollarded trees like this could take the place of fence posts on a sheep farm? Stretching fencing in between the pollarded trees?
Its a good thought but I personally wouldn't do it. The trees grow/expand/go upwards... It would put stress on both the fencing and the trees and something would fail. Perhaps a temporary fencing for a year or two would be reasonable but any sort of investment I would use heavy duty locust posts set in the ground...
Thank you for your response. What about weaving hedgerow cut willows in between the pollarded locust?
That sounds like a lovely and natural way to make fencing that would last a little while. I'd hope you experiment and share notes!
Sorry to be so late but densely planted coppices have been traditionally used as the basis for thick fencing, with small woven fences filling in the small gaps between
I gonna do this...
Go for it!
Can we replace wood with rice husk? Thanks
I believe so, haven't tried.
@@edibleacres in Indonesia we mainly use rice husk Charcoal, because it's easer to get and quite cheaper
i love biochar videos
Yeah, me too :)
But you didn't show how you harvested and quenched the coals.
Time to make more char and document it I guess!
@@edibleacres well at least you don't dump water on it and smother the neighbors with a smoke bomb like others do.
You gotta inocculate some logs with some oysters and reishi!
The bummer is none of the species I have here are great candidates for that.
EdibleAcres do sweetgum grow in your zone? I would plant some of that based on its growing speed and oysters love it. And it has medicinal value!
Oh yuck. I would never willingly invite gum trees on my land. They spread like invasive weeds and never die.
you gotta get a tripod man!
I have one, I just never seem to remember it when I go out to work. I always have the phone on me though so thats pretty much how my videos get made :) I'll try to use it more.
:)
heating the soil so close to the roots of those trees - not to mention the death of the roots and soil microbes.... couldn't you have chosen a burn location away from tree roots? or is it your goal to not only pollard, but kill those trees?
I haven't seen any trees die off from doing this... I don't think it had an ill effect. Point taken, but this was the most open area in the woods that I had so I'm not sure how else I could have done it..
What you did and the way you did is inadvisable and extremely dangerous.
I think you want to place Biochar a foot under your soil surface. The wood chips go on top as a mulch.