Applying Biochar to the Garden

Back in February, we made THIS POST to show how we were making biochar for the garden.  You can click on the link to learn how we do it and why we do it.  It is very beneficial for your soil.  Today I want to tell you how we inoculate the biochar and apply this to the soil.

A quick recap.  We start a big fire going with all the sticks and branches in the yard.  I did this back in February on a very cold day so it was NICE to stand by the fire and warm up.  Except, just when the fire is burning good and there is gray ash on all the sticks, you do the unthinkable on a freezing cold day.  You drag a water hose and completely put the fire out!

This stops the burning process and keeps it from turning to just ash.  When the coals are cool, I shovel them into a big tub.  I'll use a shovel to chop up the coals into 'nickel-sized' cubes.

I regret to inform you that I don't have photos of the next steps in the process.  I think I can describe it, though, but you'll have to use your imagination.  Now that I have a big tub of what is essentially homemade charcoal, it is time to inoculate it.  The microscopic holes in the charcoal needs to be charged with good bacteria to enrich your soil.

In order to do that, I'll grab a five gallon bucket of cow manure and scoop it on top of the biochar.  Then, I'll fill the tub with water and stir.  The biochar and cow manure mixture makes a slurry.  Now, we just let time pass.  I let the mixture sit in the sun and ferment for two weeks.  At the end of two weeks, I'll get my shovel and dig a trench about five inches deep between each garden row.  I scoop up the bacteria charged biochar and shovel it into the trench and then cover it back up.

Then, we plant rows on either side of the inoculated biochar trenches.  The plants will grow and their roots will extend and will feed on the the biochar.  I call it beneficial bacteria 'condominiums.'  We'll do this on alternating rows each year until the entire garden is seeded with it.

It is a long process and, to be honest, I'm not sure how you'd do this on a large scale.  But it works in our garden.  Biochar, amending the soil with tons of organic matter, incorporating compost, and earthworm population growth has definitely made our soil more healthy and rich with each passing year.  It was once compacted and had no earthworms, but has really changed.

Where There's a Will, There's a WHEY (to make Ginger Carrots)!

In an earlier post where we were talking about separating curds from whey and how whey is a natural preservative, I promised that I would show how we use whey to preserve foods.  Lacto fermentation is a good alternative to freezing or canning.  We like to use a combination of all three food storage methods.  We generally ferment vegetables and make sauerkraut with cabbage and kimchi with bok choy.  Those are both good.  But my favorite lacto-fermented food item (and it's not even close) is Ginger Carrots.  We make this every year when the carrot crop comes in.

                                                                          

The recipe comes from Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions Cook book and it is very easy to make.  This dish is chock full of beneficial bacteria.  The bacteria that aids in digestion.  So what you are supposed to do is eat a bit of this just prior to your meal.  It’s also great for snacking on.  It is cool and tangy.  The ingredients to make 1 quart is as follows:

4 cups of grated carrots

2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger

2 teaspoons sea salt

4 Tablespoons Whey

We generally make a gallon at a time.  .  So here’s what you do:

First, cut the tops off of your carrots and peel the skins off.  This is a good use for all the ‘baby carrots’ that we harvested this year.

Getting the baby carrots ready

 Then process the carrots in a food processer with the grating blade on.

Processing the Carrots

We love ginger, so we grate the fresh ginger into the big mixing bowl where we have dumped our grated carrots.

Grating fresh ginger root

We add some sea salt…

(If you don't have whey, you can simply add more salt)

And then we add the whey that we reserved from the curds the other day.  We generally have a jar of whey in a jar in the back of the fridge for this purpose.

Adding the whey...

Now comes the fun part.  After mixing the shredded carrots, grated ginger, sea salt and whey up, we use the head to a tenderizing hammer to ‘bruise’ the carrots.  We pound and pound and pound.  It is a great stress reliever and exercise.  Pounding on the carrots cause the juices of the carrots to flow.

Pounding it out

Next we spoon the carrots into quart-size mason jars and tightly pack it into the jars until the carrot mixture is an inch below the top of the jars.  We put the lids and rings on the jars and set aside on the counter tops out of the way.  The orange color lights up the kitchen!

Beautiful!  But now we have to wait - 3 days, then 2 to 3 months.  (Patience is a virtue!)

We label the top of one of the jars with a sticky note.  You want to leave the jars at room temperature for 3 days and then we move them into the refrigerator.  The sticky note reminds us when to put them in the fridge.

A helpful reminder

We’ll ‘forget about them’ for a couple of months.  We find that they are at the peak flavor at around the 2-3 month timeframe, so at that time we’ll pull a jar out of the fridge and have a serving as a side dish or salad prior to every meal.  I never would have thought that I would’ve liked this, but I do!