Basically, that’s it. You are left with activated carbon like in our smell filters. Raw char grabs smells just like nutrients, terpenes, esters, and thiols. All the stanks.
Technically it’s wood heated without the presence of oxygen. In a pyrolysis oven, but you can get it other ways. It releases the bonded (grown by plant or tree from CO2) carbon in sugars and cellulose to raw carbon. To get the max yield of char per input matarial. Even animal scat can be made into char and dried grasses and coco coir in a pyrolysis oven.
What you want is spongy light coals like popped pop corn. If the charred piece of wood is hard still you just got a charcoal bricket. It didn’t get hot enough to become real char. A few of these don’t hurt because they huegel down anyway. Char persists and does not break down; literally for 1000s of years. See the ancient maya and the “Terra prieta”. Their char still persists in the Amazon and is some of the richest soils on earth.
You only want 10-15% volume in soil or it is too much of a good thing. So in a container it’s about a cup and a half per cubic volume of soil. For say a mix recipie.
The main thing is never put raw char in a bed or container. It will charge itself by stripping the soil of every available nutrient. You have to charge it by adding it to compost a few month during a soil cook or while the compost breaks down. Or also common, soak it in a bucket with compost tea, urine, or a scoop of synthetic nutes. I like to toss some epsoms salts too in a soak.
Let me kjj bc or if this makes sense, I am sure I could add more details. Here is an old thread I participated in about char ages ago:
Currdogg, since you have the correct tools…
You don’t need a retort oven to make good char. Just put on a big fat log before bed and damp down the combustion air intake. Just so it’s cracked. You’ll get a nice bed of coals in the morning (as u know). But then scoop out those coals in the morning instead of throwing on a fresh log. To the metal can and I douse with water. Or if it’s hella cold winter time just let it chill out with the lid on.
Once you’re looking for is the soft crunchy coals that are crunchy like popcorn. If it’s hard nuggets like charcoal brickets it’s not the same. It will just act like wood chunks huguel style.
The only bad thing is you have to Mary Poppins the chimney more. It is worth it to have piles of char.
I love to use use bio char and wood ash baby. I have added uncountable pounds of these materials to my raised beds over the years. They are wonderful and I can’t praise them enough. The wood ash adds potassium and is an alkaline buffer so all the compost doesn’t make your soil too acidic. Especially if you add citrus or citrus peels to your compost. The char acts as a nutrient sink and carbon sink. So all that compost i add to the garden doesn’t wash out with the rain and hose. I have also read several studies done in Yellowstone park that state so thick enough bio char you can make your garden carbon negative. You read that right. Your garden can be pulling CO2 out of the air and into the dirt. Just add char.
Also the mycelium seems to love to go in to the char. If I break open a fresh piece of char a couple of weeks after I turn it under it’s literally covered in hyphae from the mycoboost. The only other thing to add about char is it must be charged first. Or else it will literally steal the nutrients away from your plants roots in the garden. Never put raw char into your garden.
I just flood it in a bucket very similar to the weed soup compost tea. I load my bucket about half full of char and half of the compost. Then I flood it with urine. And put the lid on. And forget about it for at least two or three weeks. If it’s the grow season it stays like that until the crops are in. I have many buckets with lids.
Here are some more observations about biochar. Microrhizae growth blows up. You see hyphae just wrap up the char. It holds moister, yet ironically helps with drainage. Drainage probably isn’t a problem if you have sand. But most importantly char (carbon has 4 unpaired outer orbital electrons) chemically binds nutrients in your soil so they they don’t flush out with the drainage. Especially from the rains off season. Less nutrient (N and P) wash out into river or lakes (or the Gulf of Mexico dead zone). In Washington feed lots and slaughter yards preach spreading fresh unloaded char around the perimeter of fields and penned enclosures. It takes care of livestock “poop” algae blooms (eutrophication) of lakes and streams. I even read about it being added to the livestock feed itself to bind up methane emissions out the backside. Talk about at the source. Carbon loves double bonding to carbon. Then it is spread over field crops. I also read that Warehouser does it a lot too on its tree farm fields out on the Olympic peninsula. Biochar and biosolids from the sewage treatment plant= board ft of lumber. I also read studies in Yellowstone Park using biochar. The results were more plant species diversity the following year and increased soil moisture during droughts. They use it to turn pine beetle killed trees into char. They have a big towable retort oven the forest service uses. So I read.
Yeah biochar👍.
If you really wanna blow your mind go down the “Terra Preta” rabbit hole. The people living in the Amazon in BC era: the Aztecs and Mayans both did this. Some of the best soil on earth to this day. You can literally buy bags of it. They will dig it and ship it to you. Anyway, scientist today still don’t know exactly how they made it. But what so amazing about it is how that soil has stayed loaded fertile for thousands of years. It’s super super rich and black. When every other soil in the Amazon is literally leached by the rain in virtually nutrient void. It’s was the char….
3
1
Hey that’s crazy about the Eagles. I swear we must be quantum atomicly linked. Ha. or something. Because, we have eagles here to this year. I’ve lived here for 17 years this spring. I have never once seen Eagles here ever. At least not in my Greenbelt and personal living area. Definitely in Washington state before.
Anyway, this year we have a pair of nesting eagles. I see them up in the maple trees breaking off fresh branches as long as their wingspan. They’re flying around carrying twigs everywhere. I see them just about every day. My clue is the local crow population. They seem to fuc**** hate the Eagles. Every time there’s a crow ruckus of 100 dB or louder outside it’s always related to the Eagles. There’s a flock of crows in the sky trying to harass the eagle and vice versa. It least the crows are busy now so they aren’t bored; stealing all the tags from my veggie starts and clones.
I oldest son came in last fall around harvest time, and said there was an eagle on the deck rail. He always plays funny jokes so I didn’t believe him at all. He’s kind of a comedian. Anyway I said I don’t believe you and I walked outside. And on the far side of my deck an eagle as big as my chest looked at me and then flew away. Totally blew my mind. Two days later, my neighbors told me about how they were eating dinner and a freaking jet came out of the sky straight down. It was an eagle and it grabbed the bunny out of the Greenbelt.
I think the eagle populations are doing better now for whatever reason. Maybe they just needed warmer winters Ha
Crows are brutal little beast. I have seen on multiple occasions crows coming down two at a time. Picking up baby bunnies by the hind legs. Then flying up to about 30-40 feet and splatting them on the sidewalk. If crows were bigger they would totally rule the world. I heard this god-awful screaming and went out onto my porch. And watched this happen live. I didn’t know a baby bunny could squeal so loud. The ironic part is, the bunnies shred my strawberry plants. I just wish they could take out the bunnies in a more humane way. At least the coyotes snap their necks first.
1
Carbon with 4 unpaired electrons can hold 4 different things at once.
Or it can hold a long lipid chain or enzyme at one of the corners. Or a co2. The beauty is if something gets used up off of the carbon, the carbon will quickly rebined to another element or polyatomic molecule. That’s why it can strip CO2 out of the air, or remediate methane emissions as your compost breaks down from the microbes. Or a cows backend. It’s kind of mind-boggling to think about. Also, the most common way that elements or nutrients get moved out of the carbon bond, is through microbes. Microbes make all the magic happen between the plant roots and the nutrients sinks such as biochar. I can’t preach enough how much I like biochar. I think it is one of the most under utilized and overlooked aspects of all gardening. Cannabis or corn.