Making Biochar

I was reading about something useful to the soil in the garden that I had never heard of and decided to give it a shot.  Biochar.  Have you ever heard of it?  Biochar is simply charcoal that is stored in the soil and used as a soil amendment to benefit your plants.  Sounds interesting.  I'm always looking for ways to make my garden soil better.

We have tons of sticks that fall from our trees so we have the basic raw materials for making biochar readily available.  Biochar added to the soil does several things. The charcoal is full of holes and crevices that serve as a habitat for soil microorganisms.  Think of it like an artificial reef serves as a habitat for fish, biochar serves as an 'artificial reef' for soil microorganisms that benefit your plants. It also helps the soils retain nutrients and water.

Sounds good to me.  Today I'll make some.  It is easy enough to do.  First I built a fire using sticks from our live oak and pecan trees.  I kept feeding the fire with sticks that were all roughly the same size until I had a nice blaze going.

Once the fire had subsided and there was nothing left but coals in the fire pit, I did something that seemed an odd thing to do with a nice coal bed -

I put it out!  I simply sprayed down the hot coals with a water hose to stop the fire from consuming the sticks and turning them to pure ash.

After saturating the coals with water, this is what I have left.  It looks like real wood charcoal.

I loaded up the biochar in a bucket and walked it out to the garden.  I dug a hole between the bean rows and emptied the bucket of biochar into the hole.

Then I covered the biochar in the trench with dirt and that finished the job.

I will continue doing this between all the garden rows, adding biochar from our burn piles and covering with dirt.  Hopefully we'll see a difference in soil fertility. Scientists have found evidence that people living in the Amazon many years ago covered smoldering organic material with dirt and found that this is greatly improves soil productivity.

Biochar isn't new, but it is new to us.  We'll see if we can tell a differennce.