Thanks for that Craig. The Vermicompost version has around 70% cow dung. 20% powdered biochar and the remainder is just microbe inoculation and some weeds for the worm bedding. But could also have an effect. I am amazed how good the vermi mix smelled after inoculation and that the worms are now eating it too. The consistency is much more like compost so that is perhaps another reason the worms are happy. Plus with actual bacteria feeding nematodes in there it seams quite alive. From what i can tell so far, the main problem with the recipes is not so much the correct ingredients, even though they do help a lot. It is more the way it is made. People have added those exact materials but have failed to make real terra preta. It has to have the ability to stick around for a long time and grow. Adding the E.M. probably only make any real sense if it is turned into bokasi first before feeding it to the worms. But the "super charged" hay infusion is something I can't wait to try soon. So if you happen to hear of anything that might be worth to try here in the tropics to make the terra preta. Then do let me know :)
My untested recipes depend on whether amendments are made in a village or field. :) In village areas I think most of the material is cooking & construction material burnt and then thrown into a hole, garbage or compost pile. I haven't seen any baked soil layer in photos that would be reminiscent of growing on top of a fire pit. But I haven't looked hard. Materials including wood ash, charcoal, and large bones & egg shells were likely cooked with fire. And although it takes 842C to create calcium oxide, cooking can help expedite the breakdown of the bones that then form an excellent soil amendment. Any cooking liquid waste like from tea, soup, broth can go on the pile too. Humanure and urine? It was probably then left to compost with animal carcasses, plant material, worms and all their clay pottery failures! Basically the bulk of waste material the villagers would have created in daily life. How much if any processing like your jar rolling of the material was done is a good question, or the kind of domesticated animals they may have kept too. Maybe they ran the animals over the burnt wastes to crush and inoculate it with manures, or collected the manures for the waste pile? However they did it, they likely had a variety of ground charcoal and rockdust for decorating themselves and their environment somehow, so I've included those. My Village compost recipe: 20% Ground Charcoal, 15% Woodash, 5% Pyrolyzed Calcium (Bone, egg shell, etc), 50% Assorted fresh plant and animal material waste for microbes, 10% Ground Clay+Rockdust, Optional: River silt. +Cooking & water waste.
Ha yes, that would describe the way people used to live in those settlements quite well and definitely will try out your recipe ;) One thing they also did was to bury large amounts of pottery vessels. These were airtight. Inside they found mainly human feces and charcoal. Probably this was done to ferment the material and kill of any parasitic worms etc. So was recently thinking cow dung (OK not human feces, but hey) + charcoal + airtight containers then worms. That is what I feel like trying next. Am only just playing around, to see what works and then I will try if it can be replicated, if I manage to get it right the first time, that is. But it makes sense that all those ingredients have a part to play. But often times it is also the method that one needs to get right too.
Craig Overend , do you think river silt from a brackish river can work? I have tons of this sludge but was afraid to experiment because of the high concentration of salt...
Vava, brackish water typically contains between 0.5 and 30 grams of sodium chloride (a salt) per litre, and it could accumulate even higher in the silt. Plants that are sensitive to salinity typically only tolerate up to 2.5 grams per litre but there are plants that are tolerant of 10 grams per litre. www.fao.org/docrep/r4082e/r4082e08.htm Having said that, soil salinization is a reversible process under fresh water irrigation with efficient drainage. Washing the silt with fresh water should flush the majority of sodium chloride. You could try growing a small trial of sensitive plants in a washed and unwashed silt mix and then water the plants with fresh water and see how they grow if you are concerned.
I started composting mixed grass from meadows with guinea pig's manure. One warm day just noticed that only manure spontaneously started to 'produce' white mycorrhizal fungi. I'm growing guinea pigs outdoor in cages on pasture. Cavia porcellus are domesticated in South America very very long time ago. Perhaps you should try it? Mycorrhizae are the reason how life was grown over land
Ha Carol, thanks for the complement. Keep staying young. Mind you I feel old with nearly 40. Remember when I was 20 and read a sign saying lordy lordy look who's forty and thought wow now that is very old.
WoW I gots both of you beat I'm 78 years young And I make my own BioChar with worm castings, Bat Guano and Bull CaCaPooo. oh and urine my own ;-) Grow Fuyu Persimmon trees, about 19 Fig trees, Mostly Texas Everbearing with grafted additives from friends on-line, 5 Fruiting Mulberry with grafted Pakestiane Fruited cuttings, White Oak trees from Davy Crockett National Forest here in Texas and last but not least I'm growing 11 Black Walnut trees (some nearly 20 feet high)All in all I enjoy my work Oh and btw I collect Rain Water off my buildings ;-) Great videos fella Keep 'em comin" Cheers'
I let my biochar fire burn under green grass clippings, they turn to char too whilst restricting the air flow in the pit. The variability in the size of the biochar is also a good factor. You can fungally activate it or bactirally activate it, kommt auf an! You should really think about regreening the deserts, so should I for that matter :)
Nice, looks like fun. I might try that, too. I am making bokashi myself, but terra preta is even better. So thank you for this introduction. Also I love your words of truth. Yes, we must change our ways and I just love seeing people actually doing it. One by one we will change the world
Thank you for a very informative and fun video. I'm just beginning my Biochar from blackberry vines experiment. I have some great alpaca compost which I love to add to my future Terra Preta. Thanks so much!!
Fine ground material compacts and needs to be tilled which is why I leave chuncks of char and pottery that is at least the size of a cherry some pottery is larger. You want dried uncoated pottery. It absorbs water and slow release over time. The chuncks should be at least the size of a 🍒 and up to the size of an apple. I do not water or till my soil and ppl come from all over to see my crop. I was doing this technique before I heard of this method
Am finding that to be true, it is because we need them microbes to start growing :) Then the worms start going for it. So far the worm compost is the best I have ever made and if I may say, have had a lot of wormeries over the years. Not just from the smell and the look of it. Just found some bacteria eating nematodes in it last week.
Like your videos and things u r doing. I'm on similar path. But what I'm doing for the most part is mixing in few items with char first. Then just adding directly to worm bins. Worms are thriving in mix. When adding to my soil / dirt. I garden fork down as far as possible. Pry in some, and add the "castings Biochar" as deep as possible. Arizona clay is lacking organic matter. So I want the organic nutrients as deep as possible.
That sounds really cool. Great way not to disturb the soil structure to much but yet getting it all down there. Do you powder down the char so it can pass through the worms.
I vaguely recall that terra preta contains soil, biochar, small particles of fired clay, and organic materials such as what you might find in a compost pile.
I ground my biochar into fine powder, unfortunately made it into 100% biochar. When I mixed water in it - it became black clay. I used mostly mango wood. So it means the type of biochar is a big factor. It retains water too much. Which means it is good to mix in soil with poor water retention. Anyway - hope this helps people avoid just one type of biochar from one type of wood.
I live in Florida and plant right into the sand and get amazing results. When I would use manure, peat and other additives during rain season I got root rot. So the main question is, does the seasonal condition effect the soil to growth combination. I watched a special on this that led me to this amazing scientist here but is that soil good for all locals is important.
You shure about powdering everything as fine as possible? I mean I use carbon as a filter for water.. charcoal has lots of pores,stuff gets stuck inside those holes. If you powder charcoal to dust can it still hold the nutrients? I will test it in my industry waste soil in Riga (Latvia) .. just want to know your experiance about this))
A bacteria is between one to ten microns in size. A charcoal particle that you can see with the naked eye is a lot bigger. The human eye can not see below 40 microns. Nutrient particles are even smaller. Also nutrients adhere (adsorb) to the charcoal through cation exchange to the powdered charcoal dust. The reason I powder it down is because the worms can eat it and also because it will spread in the soil out more. But truthfully I am not sure about anything, as there are to many factors to know anything 100% for sure. But that has been my experience.
Grasping the conductivity of the soil is also key to understanding how this works in nature.. The clay helps to spread naturally occuring electrical force in the planet created by thousands of lightning strikes per min in a curcuit between Earth and Ionosphere. (Tesla and Phil Callahan) . Standing stones worked as a system to direct the flow of this, but the type of stone is important since some are better conductors than others..Creating a geometry which encourages the spin of waves will hugely amplify growth, and promote life force in general. (Pentagonal lines create phi ratio, optimal for growth via dispursal of charge..Hex = preservation of charge as in bee hives etc) Read Phil Callahan's research papers and books dor more info..along with John Burke - Seed of Knowledge, Stone of Plenty....both have measured and proven this.
1:40 in and you told me your opinion on the secret of this, thanks, you're awesome, I happen to agree, I think worms are the true source of the fat. thanks for great content
Thank you, appreciate it. I have learned since that all manner of insects and microorganisms, down to the smallest bacteria, that eat organic matter, are also very important for the end result. Worms are just really good at turning out compost though. Also more bacteria come out of a worm then went into one. This is because the bacteria multiply in the intestines of the worms, it being an amazing home for the time they are moving through it. Bacteria are needed to turn nutrients into water soluble forms that plants can get after.
I learned as well thank you, OneYardRevolution is another youtuber who made worm farms and it seems they are the key, I think the biochar mainly adds retention properties
Could not agree, as it would be way to much charcoal. When you add the mix to the soil you should only need around 2% charcoal / biochar in the top horizon. Of course you can always add more if you can get it, but it does not mean that if you add twice as much you will get twice the results. Same with organic matter where the amount of organic matter should be between 6% - 12%.
No idea, but could be a good thing. You just never know right. E.M has some 80 different micro-organisms in it, included in 5 families. All are working together and separately to keep bad guys out and also decompose organic matter really well. Both very important in the process of making compost. If Kombucha can do that then great.
Work With Nature thank you for your answer, this EM sounds like really amazing stuff. kombucha has very small microbial diversity (2 or 3 strains) but it has both bacterial and fungal component which {should} be useful for decomposition. I wonder how it will amend the soil if at all, and if anyone ever tried it. I have overproduction of kombucha so can really spare some and experiment but wanted to check out if anyone tried it before.
We are of one mind on this biochar stuff. I live in northern Ontario in Canada, so don't have to worry too much about the oxidative process, but I find that the biochar still helps my plants. I did a small test with biochar and had some interesting results ua-cam.com/video/q77gxzoCr3w/v-deo.html As you note, charcoal is EXTREMELY dusty - I think you're breathing way too much it - I figured out how to crush it without making dust. I haven't made it as fine as you have, but I could get closer with more work, and still no dust. I purchased high quality hardwood BBQ charcoal with no amendments in it, placed it into a plastic "burlap" bag and immersed it in manure tea for one month to allow it to charge. I don't consider it biochar until it has been biologically activated. Up until that point, it is just plain charcoal, not biochar. I then put a large tarp under my shredder and loosely tied it up around the unit to catch all the bits. Then I put the soaking wet charcoal through the shredder and out came pretty fine material. It isn't as fine as yours, but I'm happy enough with it to add it to my garden. Most everything is smaller than a pea. I suppose I could make it finer by putting it through the shredder again, but not sure that is going to gain me much. Happy gardening! Great work you are doing helping others learn. I've been using no-dig for five years now, and very happy with the results. It's a really great method for "old-timers" like me (I'm 72 years young) who don't have quite was much energy as we used to :-) but it makes sense for gardeners of all ages.
@work with nature , do you think it''s necessary to make biochar using vermiculture ? Not trying to be contentious at all. I just like to take the path of least resistance - read least work - Once I have my biochar, I just throw a handful in each potting hole and figure that in time, i will have inoculated the entire garden.
@@garthwunsch not necessarily. The Indian Amazon people did not used vermiculture. In fact I never heard anything about worms in any of the videos about Terra Preta.
Saw dust is even better as worms will be able to gobble it up after the fungi had a go. Make sure it has been outside of some time to get rid of any essential oils and harmful natural resins that the trees may have to protect themselves. Very common here in the tropics. When fungi start growing on it it is usually OK to use.
I think you working to hard !! as far as I understand what the indos did ( and I don't think they used any science ) was to take all the wast from the village and pile it up until it had rotten down to use on there feilds may be they did make there own charkohl to cook with ? or it was the rest of the wood that they use to cook with All the west world are trying to reprobuce these soils but they schould be looking at what they were eating and how they lived on these piles of compost was all the waist from the vilage wood ash ,a lot of wast from the fish and ducks but also the human manure they didn't have cows only limas but I think alot comes down to the bacteria in the fish waist that produce oxigen that the other bacteria helped to grow one will never know as we or we say the Spainyens killed them
Lots of ingredients to those recipes David! I had to write them down to understand them. :)
Vermicompost version:
Micronized biochar 20%,
Cow manure,
Worms,
Weeds,
Soil,
EM,
Compost
Optional mentions: Bone meal, Eggshells, Milk, Pottery shards, Clay fines, Cow urine
Mulch version:
40% Cow Manure,
60% Aged wood shavings,
2 cups Micronized Biochar,
1 Hand Wood ash,
Clay fines,
Water,
Microbes (EM, soil, compost tea),
Sugar (jaggery, molasses),
Cow urine.
Optional mentions: Fish fertilizer, Soy protein, Bran
Thanks for that Craig.
The Vermicompost version has around 70% cow dung. 20% powdered biochar and the remainder is just microbe inoculation and some weeds for the worm bedding. But could also have an effect. I am amazed how good the vermi mix smelled after inoculation and that the worms are now eating it too. The consistency is much more like compost so that is perhaps another reason the worms are happy. Plus with actual bacteria feeding nematodes in there it seams quite alive.
From what i can tell so far, the main problem with the recipes is not so much the correct ingredients, even though they do help a lot. It is more the way it is made. People have added those exact materials but have failed to make real terra preta. It has to have the ability to stick around for a long time and grow.
Adding the E.M. probably only make any real sense if it is turned into bokasi first before feeding it to the worms. But the "super charged" hay infusion is something I can't wait to try soon.
So if you happen to hear of anything that might be worth to try here in the tropics to make the terra preta. Then do let me know :)
My untested recipes depend on whether amendments are made in a village or field. :) In village areas I think most of the material is cooking & construction material burnt and then thrown into a hole, garbage or compost pile. I haven't seen any baked soil layer in photos that would be reminiscent of growing on top of a fire pit. But I haven't looked hard.
Materials including wood ash, charcoal, and large bones & egg shells were likely cooked with fire. And although it takes 842C to create calcium oxide, cooking can help expedite the breakdown of the bones that then form an excellent soil amendment. Any cooking liquid waste like from tea, soup, broth can go on the pile too. Humanure and urine?
It was probably then left to compost with animal carcasses, plant material, worms and all their clay pottery failures! Basically the bulk of waste material the villagers would have created in daily life.
How much if any processing like your jar rolling of the material was done is a good question, or the kind of domesticated animals they may have kept too. Maybe they ran the animals over the burnt wastes to crush and inoculate it with manures, or collected the manures for the waste pile? However they did it, they likely had a variety of ground charcoal and rockdust for decorating themselves and their environment somehow, so I've included those.
My Village compost recipe:
20% Ground Charcoal,
15% Woodash,
5% Pyrolyzed Calcium (Bone, egg shell, etc),
50% Assorted fresh plant and animal material waste for microbes,
10% Ground Clay+Rockdust, Optional: River silt.
+Cooking & water waste.
Ha yes, that would describe the way people used to live in those settlements quite well and definitely will try out your recipe ;)
One thing they also did was to bury large amounts of pottery vessels. These were airtight. Inside they found mainly human feces and charcoal. Probably this was done to ferment the material and kill of any parasitic worms etc.
So was recently thinking cow dung (OK not human feces, but hey) + charcoal + airtight containers then worms. That is what I feel like trying next. Am only just playing around, to see what works and then I will try if it can be replicated, if I manage to get it right the first time, that is. But it makes sense that all those ingredients have a part to play. But often times it is also the method that one needs to get right too.
Craig Overend , do you think river silt from a brackish river can work? I have tons of this sludge but was afraid to experiment because of the high concentration of salt...
Vava, brackish water typically contains between 0.5 and 30 grams of sodium chloride (a salt) per litre, and it could accumulate even higher in the silt. Plants that are sensitive to salinity typically only tolerate up to 2.5 grams per litre but there are plants that are tolerant of 10 grams per litre. www.fao.org/docrep/r4082e/r4082e08.htm
Having said that, soil salinization is a reversible process under fresh water irrigation with efficient drainage.
Washing the silt with fresh water should flush the majority of sodium chloride.
You could try growing a small trial of sensitive plants in a washed and unwashed silt mix and then water the plants with fresh water and see how they grow if you are concerned.
Thought-provoking as always. Great work and thank you for sharing your experiments.
I was wondering if you could do a follow up to let us know how it worked several years later.
He left India and stopped posting new videos, unfortunately.
@@georgecarlin2656 Bummer. BTW, RIP. You were my favorite comedian.
@@wesbaumguardner8829 Not that kind of left. No R.I.P. needed.
I started composting mixed grass from meadows with guinea pig's manure. One warm day just noticed that only manure spontaneously started to 'produce' white mycorrhizal fungi. I'm growing guinea pigs outdoor in cages on pasture. Cavia porcellus are domesticated in South America very very long time ago.
Perhaps you should try it? Mycorrhizae are the reason how life was grown over land
Three things the world must have to survive and we are killing off… bees, earthworms, and fungi.
Great video!
One the best videos ever, straight into the matter at hand no fluff intros👍
He's adorable and funny. If only I was 20 years younger!
Ha Carol,
thanks for the complement. Keep staying young. Mind you I feel old with nearly 40. Remember when I was 20 and read a sign saying lordy lordy look who's forty and thought wow now that is very old.
your 25 at heart brother ;)
WoW I gots both of you beat I'm 78 years young And I make my own BioChar with worm castings, Bat Guano and Bull CaCaPooo. oh and urine my own ;-) Grow Fuyu Persimmon trees, about 19 Fig trees, Mostly Texas Everbearing with grafted additives from friends on-line, 5 Fruiting Mulberry with grafted Pakestiane Fruited cuttings, White Oak trees from Davy Crockett National Forest here in Texas and last but not least I'm growing 11 Black Walnut trees (some nearly 20 feet high)All in all I enjoy my work
Oh and btw I collect Rain Water off my buildings ;-) Great videos fella Keep 'em comin"
Cheers'
Carol Freeman was trreert
Hope you feel better soon. The terra preta soil looks like a good mix. Thank you. E :)
I let my biochar fire burn under green grass clippings, they turn to char too whilst restricting the air flow in the pit. The variability in the size of the biochar is also a good factor. You can fungally activate it or bactirally activate it, kommt auf an! You should really think about regreening the deserts, so should I for that matter :)
You made this video really really well!!!
Looked at that video David, very interesting indeed found out so much. Thanks for sharing mate.
Nice, looks like fun. I might try that, too. I am making bokashi myself, but terra preta is even better. So thank you for this introduction. Also I love your words of truth. Yes, we must change our ways and I just love seeing people actually doing it. One by one we will change the world
Thank you for a very informative and fun video. I'm just beginning my Biochar from blackberry vines experiment. I have some great alpaca compost which I love to add to my future Terra Preta. Thanks so much!!
Fine ground material compacts and needs to be tilled which is why I leave chuncks of char and pottery that is at least the size of a cherry some pottery is larger. You want dried uncoated pottery. It absorbs water and slow release over time. The chuncks should be at least the size of a 🍒 and up to the size of an apple. I do not water or till my soil and ppl come from all over to see my crop. I was doing this technique before I heard of this method
Yes. You got it right on the pottery size & effect. Most don't.
You need to allow the mixture to rest for about a week covered in moist conditions before placing it into your garden or planting anything into it.
Am finding that to be true, it is because we need them microbes to start growing :) Then the worms start going for it. So far the worm compost is the best I have ever made and if I may say, have had a lot of wormeries over the years. Not just from the smell and the look of it. Just found some bacteria eating nematodes in it last week.
:)
Like your videos and things u r doing. I'm on similar path. But what I'm doing for the most part is mixing in few items with char first. Then just adding directly to worm bins. Worms are thriving in mix.
When adding to my soil / dirt. I garden fork down as far as possible. Pry in some, and add the "castings Biochar" as deep as possible. Arizona clay is lacking organic matter. So I want the organic nutrients as deep as possible.
That sounds really cool. Great way not to disturb the soil structure to much but yet getting it all down there. Do you powder down the char so it can pass through the worms.
I vaguely recall that terra preta contains soil, biochar, small particles of fired clay, and organic materials such as what you might find in a compost pile.
A really really nice video.
I ground my biochar into fine powder, unfortunately made it into 100% biochar.
When I mixed water in it - it became black clay. I used mostly mango wood. So it means the type of biochar is a big factor. It retains water too much.
Which means it is good to mix in soil with poor water retention. Anyway - hope this helps people avoid just one type of biochar from one type of wood.
One question: Do I need to divide the material into as fine pieces as possible? And do i need to mix them all really, really well?
I live in Florida and plant right into the sand and get amazing results. When I would use manure, peat and other additives during rain season I got root rot. So the main question is, does the seasonal condition effect the soil to growth combination. I watched a special on this that led me to this amazing scientist here but is that soil good for all locals is important.
And gardening in sandles is epic
What part of Ireland did you escape from ?
That's a great introduction. Many thanks.
Nice video,
Thanks for information,.
COOL, have you ever tried some stomach bio drink powders.
What if you used a water borne plants like algae and microbiome from fish. The plants next to rivers are very dense.
You shure about powdering everything as fine as possible? I mean I use carbon as a filter for water.. charcoal has lots of pores,stuff gets stuck inside those holes. If you powder charcoal to dust can it still hold the nutrients? I will test it in my industry waste soil in Riga (Latvia) .. just want to know your experiance about this))
A bacteria is between one to ten microns in size. A charcoal particle that you can see with the naked eye is a lot bigger. The human eye can not see below 40 microns. Nutrient particles are even smaller. Also nutrients adhere (adsorb) to the charcoal through cation exchange to the powdered charcoal dust. The reason I powder it down is because the worms can eat it and also because it will spread in the soil out more. But truthfully I am not sure about anything, as there are to many factors to know anything 100% for sure. But that has been my experience.
You have to think Microscopic here where Microbes and Bacteria are concerned.
Thanks for reply! I'll try both))
It is,teirra preta is that healthy microbes have a good home in charcoal or chards of pottery isn´t it?
Update? :)
What country was this filmed in? The background noise sounds like paradise :)
In Kerala India.
so great videos and have Lucy day
You too :)
Amazing
Grasping the conductivity of the soil is also key to understanding how this works in nature.. The clay helps to spread naturally occuring electrical force in the planet created by thousands of lightning strikes per min in a curcuit between Earth and Ionosphere. (Tesla and Phil Callahan) . Standing stones worked as a system to direct the flow of this, but the type of stone is important since some are better conductors than others..Creating a geometry which encourages the spin of waves will hugely amplify growth, and promote life force in general. (Pentagonal lines create phi ratio, optimal for growth via dispursal of charge..Hex = preservation of charge as in bee hives etc) Read Phil Callahan's research papers and books dor more info..along with John Burke - Seed of Knowledge, Stone of Plenty....both have measured and proven this.
1:40 in and you told me your opinion on the secret of this, thanks, you're awesome, I happen to agree, I think worms are the true source of the fat.
thanks for great content
Thank you, appreciate it. I have learned since that all manner of insects and microorganisms, down to the smallest bacteria, that eat organic matter, are also very important for the end result. Worms are just really good at turning out compost though. Also more bacteria come out of a worm then went into one. This is because the bacteria multiply in the intestines of the worms, it being an amazing home for the time they are moving through it. Bacteria are needed to turn nutrients into water soluble forms that plants can get after.
I learned as well thank you, OneYardRevolution is another youtuber who made worm farms and it seems they are the key, I think the biochar mainly adds retention properties
@@smolboyi The biochar is like a sponge alright. Its nutrient holding capacity is very very good.
Hii Dave!Are you in kerala now???
I think we could use some old or broken furniture that made by wood to make biochar ?
That wood likely has a toxic finish on it that you probably don't want in your garden or in the air.
Any updates? How did it work out?
i read 1:1 to organic compost to biochar ratio
Could not agree, as it would be way to much charcoal. When you add the mix to the soil you should only need around 2% charcoal / biochar in the top horizon. Of course you can always add more if you can get it, but it does not mean that if you add twice as much you will get twice the results. Same with organic matter where the amount of organic matter should be between 6% - 12%.
Can kombucha be added instead of EM?
No idea, but could be a good thing. You just never know right.
E.M has some 80 different micro-organisms in it, included in 5 families. All are working together and separately to keep bad guys out and also decompose organic matter really well. Both very important in the process of making compost. If Kombucha can do that then great.
Work With Nature thank you for your answer, this EM sounds like really amazing stuff. kombucha has very small microbial diversity (2 or 3 strains) but it has both bacterial and fungal component which {should} be useful for decomposition. I wonder how it will amend the soil if at all, and if anyone ever tried it. I have overproduction of kombucha so can really spare some and experiment but wanted to check out if anyone tried it before.
I love experiments like that :) Be sure to let me know what you find out.
howd it go
Travis Robinson I didn't try it, I adopted a bunny and have been mixing in bunny poop instead, with great results! Can't praise bunny poop enough!
Instead of cow manure, can I use horse manure as well?
Yes any animal manure even human works.
We are of one mind on this biochar stuff. I live in northern Ontario in Canada, so don't have to worry too much about the oxidative process, but I find that the biochar still helps my plants. I did a small test with biochar and had some interesting results ua-cam.com/video/q77gxzoCr3w/v-deo.html As you note, charcoal is EXTREMELY dusty - I think you're breathing way too much it - I figured out how to crush it without making dust. I haven't made it as fine as you have, but I could get closer with more work, and still no dust.
I purchased high quality hardwood BBQ charcoal with no amendments in it, placed it into a plastic "burlap" bag and immersed it in manure tea for one month to allow it to charge. I don't consider it biochar until it has been biologically activated. Up until that point, it is just plain charcoal, not biochar. I then put a large tarp under my shredder and loosely tied it up around the unit to catch all the bits. Then I put the soaking wet charcoal through the shredder and out came pretty fine material. It isn't as fine as yours, but I'm happy enough with it to add it to my garden. Most everything is smaller than a pea. I suppose I could make it finer by putting it through the shredder again, but not sure that is going to gain me much.
Happy gardening! Great work you are doing helping others learn. I've been using no-dig for five years now, and very happy with the results. It's a really great method for "old-timers" like me (I'm 72 years young) who don't have quite was much energy as we used to :-) but it makes sense for gardeners of all ages.
@work with nature , do you think it''s necessary to make biochar using vermiculture ? Not trying to be contentious at all. I just like to take the path of least resistance - read least work - Once I have my biochar, I just throw a handful in each potting hole and figure that in time, i will have inoculated the entire garden.
@@garthwunsch not necessarily. The Indian Amazon people did not used vermiculture. In fact I never heard anything about worms in any of the videos about Terra Preta.
Jozz...
sir can saw dust be used instead of wood chips
Saw dust is even better as worms will be able to gobble it up after the fungi had a go. Make sure it has been outside of some time to get rid of any essential oils and harmful natural resins that the trees may have to protect themselves. Very common here in the tropics. When fungi start growing on it it is usually OK to use.
Are thaton indonesia ?
More Jam Jar science.Good job.
apakah anda tinggal di indonesia,
Graham Hancock brought me here
This guy is a bit of a cowboy, like me!
Isso é brasileiro falando inglês?
are we 100% sure these are man made? biochar can occur when forrets burn down and then the soil regrows even greener plants
Mainly ash is left over in a forest fire. We are sure these are man made.
Seems like a lot of steps; a bit complicated . . .
It all depends...
No! if it is to small you will have less oxygen get into the soil. Big particles will allow air to get in
We have sand.
I think you working to hard !!
as far as I understand what the indos did ( and I don't think they used any science ) was to take all the wast from the village and pile it up until it had rotten down to use on there feilds may be they did make there own charkohl to cook with ? or it was the rest of the wood that they use to cook with
All the west world are trying to reprobuce these soils but they schould be looking at what they were eating and how they lived
on these piles of compost was all the waist from the vilage wood ash ,a lot of wast from the fish and ducks but also the human manure they didn't have cows only limas but I think alot comes down to the bacteria in the fish waist that produce oxigen that the other bacteria helped to grow
one will never know as we or we say the Spainyens killed them
And so the modern man said... I know everything...
primitive labor agriculture soil creation europe class terra примитивный труд сельское хозяйство создание почвы европа класс терра .
Organic matter doesnt last thousands of years.