Biochar. Best method for producing charcoal for biochar.

hello my friends i'm just gonna make a quick batch of uh charcoal to make some biochar so i thought i'd make a video and show you all what i'm doing and how i do it but uh what you're looking at here is just some branches that fell off trees around the property and i chopped them up separated into small stuff there with the leafs and the twigs off the edge of the branches and the branches themselves and then the larger pieces are separated also so i'll start to fire with small stuff and i'll build it up get the big stuff burning and then i'll build it back down it's very important this isn't like making a campfire or something this is very different so you want to make sure you don't burn up all your small stuff in the beginning in fact you want to burn as little as possible in the beginning get the fire going so it'll burn the larger stuff and then once you're content to how much of that you burned or how much you have or how long you want to take doing it you start building the fire back down with uh smaller stuff and finishing it with the small stuff you have i found that straw or hay is really good just to top it off it burns away uh it doesn't turn to ash if you are careful with it and uh keeps the fire going and everything else turning the charcoal in the heat up it's really great to finish it with to finish with selling green here i got some freshly cut weeds these will go on the fire no problem you can throw freshly cut stuff in there once the fire is going hot enough to burn these things the larger pieces then uh you can burn kitchen scraps all kinds of stuff what i'm doing here is putting in well first of all here's some pieces that didn't quite burn all the way through turn the charcoal i i got interrupted in my last burn by a rainstorm back in june i think was last time we had rain before uh yesterday um i'm supposed to rain again today that's why i'm doing this otherwise it's been really hot there's been a fire ban so i can't make any but i need it so okay eggshells everyone talks about eggshells in the garden crushing them down in the fine powder as you see there putting them in your compost or your garden takes years to break down i'm going to put them in my fire and through pyrolysis the same thing that's going to turn the wood into a nice charcoal to making a biochar is going to turn the eggshells and any bones you got pork bones beef bones chicken bones these things full of bones there's some big bones a dog was chewing on right the act of pyrolysis the high temperature heat without burning everything away [Applause] right burning a high temperature fire without oxygen essentially what i'm going to do is have the fire so the oxygen is only going to the top i'll explain that in a second but the same process is going to turn the wood into nice charcoal to use as biochar is going to turn the eggshells or bones both into uh all the carbon in them is also going to become charcoal but the calcium is also going to become a stabilized form they can be up taken by the uh plants so it's a great way to introduce calcium into your soil whereas just putting these straight in the soil you put too much it'll turn it alkaline because egg shells are alkaline right this process is going to assure you that you don't have a problem with ph and uh these will take years for the calcium become available for plants as they break down in the soil unless you have very acidic soil so this very efficient process of using your uh some of your kitchen scraps your bones and your eggshells turning them straight away into calcium the plants can use incorporate it into your biochar which you're going to incorporate into your soil and tools i used was this fiskars and uh sort of hand clippers for the little twigs and stuff i clipped them off first and the larger pieces with this and if they're too large for that i just use my electric chainsaw which works great on pieces like this chops them all up into that so yeah that's kind of a look of what you can burn now other kitchen scraps are great to burn or like corn husks or something right things that don't decompose quickly in your compost then this is the most important part here you see a lot of videos people making biochar all different kinds of ways but unless you're using a retort method which i don't like because a retort mess that is essentially putting uh what you want to turn in a charcoal into a container and then burning it from the outside with a bunch more wood or gas if it's a big industrial size retort but it takes a lot of fuel to turn what's inside a container in a charcoal whereas mine method i simply dig a hole in the ground this is a conical hole it meets at a point in the middle in the bottom right and the edges are slanted all the way in each direction so it's like a cone the shape of it is very important you can't just dig a square hole or trench or something expect to get the same results and you can't just have a fire on the surface like a campfire and expect the charcoal to be high quality or get very much of it what i'm doing here very simple just dig this out with your shovel right took took me less than 15 minutes find the shovel start digging i have a hole right the shape of it is gonna prevent oxygen from getting down to the bottom of the fire where you're gonna start to fire unlike other fires where you start from the top that's another thing you're gonna see in a lot of videos you cannot make good quality biochar from starting to fire on top of a pile of wood somewhere or on top of your wood piled in a trench or anything like that the fire has to be started in the bottom and then you're going to build on top that's going to deprive oxygen right because of the shape of this hole there's no not going to be any oxygen getting to the very bottom and as you layer it up all those layers everything underneath is going to be deprived of oxygen the only thing they'll be burning with oxygen will be the very top layer so this is in the fire we're going to build up like a tp style or like a campfire or anything like that it's going to be built up flat and on layers and we're going to bash it down as we go right to make sure everything's compacted break it up a bit and everything is going to turn into charcoal from the heat all right it's not going to burn away to ash and pretty much everything that i put in here is going to be a high quality charcoal if it is allowed to burn long enough and it doesn't rain but i'm also going to try to be quick for the video safe so don't bore you all to death but the hole is very important if you want high quality charcoal this is what you need not a square hole trench or any other method this is the only method and i've only seen this twice on youtube there's two people i know a third person very popular youtuber has referenced it but doesn't apply it i don't know why he digs trenches and puts it in there and uh yeah that's another story but if you want the best quality charcoal for the easiest method with the least waste the most volume of charcoal out of the volume of wood or whatever you put in there weeds eggshells bones kitchen scraps whatever you have in your yard that's organic just don't put any treated lumber or painted stuff or plastic or anything foolish it's not a garbage burn all right and of course because uh having a fire you need some water so i got a hose turned on here ready to go and uh it's also important when making biochar i'll show you at the end here why but uh get get a couple five gallon uh pails or some containers filled with water and uh we're not going to put out the fire slowly we're going to douse it quickly with cold water you have ice throw some ice in there the colder the better it's gonna fracture up the charcoal and create more surface area all right well i'm gonna get the fire started and be back with you in a minute right that started up quicker than i thought i just put a few pieces of paper and some uh dried uh weeds in there i'm just gonna start feeding it some of the smaller stuff i wanted to get going pretty good but with the smaller stuff once it gets going pretty good i can uh smash it down in there without putting the fire on to get larger stuff on it if you don't get it really hot right away then it will we get little pockets in the bottom so [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you know let's start mixing it up a bit larger pieces [Music] once it gets going too there won't be much smoke you'll see right now there's smoke so those bashing them down and it's not a visual way for it to burn but that's what you want you don't you don't want it burning all the way you want it to turn into charcoal some of the stuff in the beginning will of course burn away that's why i'm bashing it down to pack it in there that's why it was important to make sure it was going when you start you know just pile stuff on you can pile stuff on now the fire you dig it up you have the core will still be uh completely untouched and if you mix the sizes a bit as you build it up quicker and the great thing about this fire which is partly indeed due to shape of the hole creates a vortex sucks in all the gases you see already there's not much smoke and some of this wood i'm putting on here you can hear the hissing it's fresh some of these branches were on the trees before they came off yesterday and day before we had our first uh rain and thunderstorms which we're coming through today too that's why i feel safe having a fire even though it's been really dry and it's gonna rain tonight because it's a small fire it's in the ground and i have water right at hand so it should be fine and it's burning good because it's nice and dry once it gets going put some more substantial stuff in there this gets extremely hot too from the shape of it it's a primitive technology people are making these conical pits uh thousands of years ago and cooking it too is you get the charcoals heated over up now of course isn't just a small fire for demonstration sake you can scale this up to whatever size you want like i said just cut the pieces to whatever fits the hole so if you want to do like you know whole trees and you're gonna have to build a large cone-shaped hole as you can see it's very efficient and burning didn't take very long at all to get going good i'm burning all kinds of wood here it's popular there's dogwood there's apple tree birch just don't burn anything uh like some thistles or something the smoke is noxious getting your eyes and stuff it blinds you or choke on it or something i'm not entirely sure but i do know some plants so make sure you know what you're burning before you burn it but uh most wood where i'm living in alberta it's not toxic there's no poisons okay so you notice you'll be like all kind of fires you make in there right yeah i have it flat all running one way don't put on another layer flat running the other way if you build it up like a teepee or something or defeating the purpose of the whole thing and you're gonna end up getting a core like i said before of uh unburnt stuff in the middle once it gets larger all the way from the bottom to the top of the tube this is the easiest best one to get the best results foreign it's not a quick process i'm going to be burning a lot quicker than i usually do you would wait till the stuff is caught and then put some more on so that the next layer catches quicker all right so the idea the stuff burning on top it's going to take the oxygen you can see here it all it's uh not that compacted in yet has to actually have a top layer it's burning all the way through it oh i gotta bash it down keep it as compact as you can without putting it out by keeping the small stop around all right almost midway there actually burning pretty good so now yeah the small stuff is great and bring the fire level up keep the larger pieces all right so you do it now you can do it other ways but you're not going to get as much out as you put in as this method no matter which way you do it the retort especially makes really nice charcoal they do it on an industrial scale but you burn away as much or more twice as much to make it this way everything burning is going to turn into charcoal right very hot too hot around the camera yeah at this point now she's burning really good very hot i'm standing well six feet away and i'm feeling uh feeling it i'm upwind from it so at this point you can put in your larger pieces where your previously not completely burnt stuff is good to start putting in now and also your bones and uh egg shells and such [Applause] okay obviously these bones are just going to light up like those twigs did they be caught in the middle of this fire and the heat's going to he's going to turn them into carbon it'll be charcoal just like the wood pieces except very high in calcium so i don't know you can see this very well but you know you can uh keep your eggshells and cook them in the oven so you know you don't get any diseases in your compost and crush them up it's a lot of effort right that's what you get and then this takes years to break down unless you add acid to it like vinegar or something but you just throw them in here without going through all that effort just turn into charcoal you don't have to make some time just get mixed in with your soil [Applause] right so pretty much the midway point in the fire that's when you want to be adding like i said your bones your larger pieces of wood that's what i was trying to do [Applause] [Music] man if it started dying now because you're bashing it down or putting more stuff on it's wet or something let's throw some more little stuff on i'll catch keep in mind too i'm rushing this to uh try to make the video shorter than it's gonna be but it does take a while maybe if you're quick you know maybe an hour it's all not that long eh so i got some larger stuff in there even if it's not on top burning it's gonna burn from the heat which is the process we're looking for want to burn without oxygen i wanted to achieve pyrolysis and then we'll we'll make really nice fine graft graphite quality uh charcoal gonna sound like glass when you drop it and it's going to have a gray silvery sheen a little bit from the small stuff i put on there turning the ash white i don't want to see any of that i don't want to see any light just want to see black and try to keep it flat keep the fire burning as close to the surface as possible and do that by keeping all more stuff you can feed this fire pretty quickly let's try to avoid stuff bunching up in the middle but yeah it burns pretty good you can burn i said bones fresh freshly picked weeds the same day [Music] some corker and bones really any kitchen scraps that's just all all pieces that didn't burn last time had rained on before i was done with it yeah it's uh extremely efficient very simple uh just dig a hole that's cinderella cylindrical it's like a cone at the bottom not a round hole or a square hole or rectangle don't burn on the surface because then all that will be exposed to oxygen will just burn way to go [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] yeah right there's the best way to get calcium into your soil other than buying uh horticultural lime or something but that's gonna be alkaline right there's gonna be a limit to how much you can put in this is gonna get rid of the alkalinity and the biochar made properly and charged properly is going to be a ph buffer so this is the best way best way i've found in 10 years since i or more now since i started looking into these things but yeah in the middle is where you want to burn your large pieces i haven't thrown too many large pieces on there because i want to make this quick and i want to be able to use what i have in there um i could take another hour and be putting large pieces on right now but i think i'm just going to burn some of these smaller medium sized ones and then go back and finish this off for your sake well this is already the gist of it it's going to make sure you start a good fire in the bottom and the whole shape of it creates a vortex right as any other shape won't and uh you can see it's not smoking much and i put a whole bunch of crap in there right bones and eggshells you know hopefully i don't make too much smoke and beehives right next to us i don't want to smoke them out yeah as you can see you can burn fresh cut stuff too and this uh this fire has a good at least foot and a half now charcoal beneath it well you can burn whatever you want on [Music] when it's not smoking like that when it's burning good it's uh not putting off much as far as pollution either only releasing the water and carbon dioxide whereas in a campfire what not be burning all the wood away be releasing everything all the carbon would go into the not just in the form of carbon dioxide i guess it would be what am i thinking it would be more carbon dioxide so by denying it oxygen yeah you're putting off less carbon dioxide but everyone concerned about the environment you want to sequester some carbon right here's how you do it this carbon's gonna be in the stable form most of it will stay on the ground for thousands of years [Applause] yeah just bear with me i want to get rid of these leaves before they turn to seed it's a good way to get rid of anything diseased too anything you don't want to put in the compost instead of sending to the city for recycling or whatever just burn it i mean this fire gets hot enough nothing no virus or anything's going to survive this plant viruses or bacterias that are harmful or funguses any blight or rusts or anything burn it you have weeds going to seed burn it i burned all kinds of stuff then become something beneficial right it comes once this is charged up ready to be mixed in with your soil it's like a permanent fertilizer you can't yeah you can't buy you can't buy a product that does what this does for your garden and you can buy this stuff now is popular enough that has been sold and it's kind of expensive as you can see it's super easy to make it yourself like i said there's the most efficient as far as it's easy you get the highest quality charcoal from this method and you get the most volume out from the volume you put in but the least it's the least wasteful method of making biochar it's a big industrial retort still use gas or something right we're burning gas and all that this is its own feel all right you'll see tons of videos on youtube also where you know you got some rusty old barrels or whatever and uh yeah they put the wood they want to make an hr call which would be a very small amount i'm gonna get the whole wheelbarrow out of this and it's not even as much as i can put in there well you had a retort method just waste uh you have to burn a bunch of wood to heat up the wood inside the container hot enough to reach pyrolysis but all that other wood that you're burning just gets burnt away so it releases pollution and uh you know it serves no real good purpose does it and then the closest thing to this i've seen other people doing is digging a trench killing it full of stuff laying on fire and back filling it in right with compost and whatnot and it probably will be beneficial for a while but is far less effective as making high quality charcoal to begin with and then mixing it properly with your soil this isn't going to be just dropped on top of anything or a hole and filled in or something it's going to be mixed in with the soil changing the soil texture for one thing this is what you want to see you want to see a nice fire on top everything's packed in there pretty good it's extremely hot so that's all i should mention too this isn't this is way hotter than a campfire of that size would be like i said it's got like two feet of uh charcoal in there now and there's a vortex which increases oh spot i can't even okay so let's say you got all your large pieces in there that you want in there any of your kitchen scraps or fresh sweets i still got some of these half charcoals definitely as well [Applause] scraps of wood and pieces that didn't burn last time so all the large stuff the kitchen scraps your fresh weeds whatever you're burning that takes the most uh to burn uh after that point you can start uh scaling back to fire by putting smaller and smaller stuff on and we want to finish the fire with the small stuff you have on hand i found uh hay or straw right like a bale of old horse feet or something that went moldy or isn't being used or you have left over works perfect forms a mat on top and it burns drying everything up keeping everything going but it's thin enough that you can stop it at any time and if you pat it down with the shovel it doesn't turn to white ash it just turns black so it may not make the best charcoal oh and that's something too um there's a lot of things that don't burn very well in here like wood chips you can't just fill a hole like this with wood chips maybe you could put a few in at a handful and at a time with other wood i don't know i haven't tried but yeah wood chips aren't going to burn anything really small won't burn these pieces here i've been using probably as small as you want to go you want it long enough so there's air between them and space between them when they start to burn and you can smash it down after but the stuff on top still has to burn if you just put on a bunch of stuff but it's really small packed together it'll smother the fire and yeah i don't know um what else probably isn't good in here well garbage don't put your plastic and stuff here anything with paint or anything anything you don't want to be eating don't put in there don't burn off most of what's in everything but if something's fall bad or [Music] you know plastic you know who knows maybe it's safe i wouldn't do it so yeah you see there's a lot of white getting on around there i'm gonna start putting on [Applause] yeah you always have a drink too when you're doing this okay so this is why you want to save lots of small stuff from the end i'm going to draw that fire up on top it doesn't take long to burn away i know there's some you know some twigs and stuff in there they'll burn and again you don't want some punching up in the middle if you're doing a longer burn you have large pieces i would suggest giving it a few shovels right in the middle like dig right into it maybe scoop it up and mix it around because i've had a few a few times i've had chunks of stuff not burnt yet there's no problem you just throw me your next fire [Music] oh and when i sampled the wood chips leaves too big bags of leaves yeah big pile of leaves won't work either i'm gonna put some in there mixed up with other stuff [Applause] the leaves still stuck to branches those branches are green right those work already they burn pretty quick well yeah you gotta really watch it now this stuff is small and you'll turn dash okay so the key to keeping the ash to a minimum having nothing elevated that the air can get in underneath it and always have something bearing on top that's why i say straw or a would just be the best you know something like that right or dried grass i had some and i used it and it worked great i'd be putting on here right now right covering it making a cover over it but this is what you want to see you're going to lose some of that small stuff actually it doesn't matter it's the big pieces we put in there the bones and the eggshells that's what you want is charcoal all this white stuff here is very much of it this is little twigs um so and if you've got small stuff you're putting on top to finish it off and some of it doesn't burn all the way or you you're left with some little bits of whatever it's still organic right it's still a little compost down in the mix so it's not a big loss it's just uh if i kept putting on large pieces i'd always have pieces that aren't uh turn to charcoal or i'd have to let the top burn away and turn ash which i don't want to do recover it with a mud casing or something [Applause] yeah i put it out with the weeds [Applause] there we go how not to uh make a fire right [Applause] that's all right that's what i want anyways i want it to go out i don't really want a bunch of crap on top of it though [Applause] yeah i didn't like those weeds i guess [Music] [Applause] so it wasn't part of the plan it'll light up it'll just take a minute [Applause] hmm yeah why not i don't know well figure right see that well anyways when you're finishing the burn cover it with a layer of uh some small pieces or some hay or whatever like i said and uh everything else below is cooking and charcoal ideally uh it would be burning too the stuff on top burn away leaving you with just uh just a black surface but it's not cooperating wow [Music] yeah i thought i'd get away with putting those weeds on there i guess i couldn't oh i should have been satisfied how it was growing okay this is doing the same sort of thing it's just taking longer it's kind of just smoldering on top [Applause] and then i'll just rake off the top i wasn't quite ready to be done with it i'm setting up smoke signals now i'm just gonna grab the rake i think and break the top of that off and be done with it [Applause] yeah i kind of made a mess this stuff wasn't burning [Applause] yeah see what we got going on here it's good underneath i screwed up to put the fire out [Applause] um that's what you get for russian things just take my time and done it right would have been quicker actually waste a video on this [Music] still pretty odd um [Music] just needed some flame not to put weeds on it now we can put it all back on there sorry about that my friends okay you want to finish your fire with the small stuff not put it out with uh wet weeds those pieces i was digging up that weren't quite done yet having a nice hot fire on top is drawing up everything and kick started the process again should be just fine try to look away things are turning white around the edges there i'd say it's cooking good when i dug around it was all pretty loose and uh charcoaly so there's only a few large pieces more recent ones i put on [Music] that that's what the video is about right he's just sharing what i'm doing the good and bad perfect but this is the best method for making uh charcoal you'll get the most out of it that you put in and almost everything that you put in there will come out now some of this stuff's turning white but we'll fix that i got those pieces those larger pieces that weren't burning before burning now yeah it's not the quickest thing to do you can sure get rid of a lot of yard waste with it though you can go way more in there than i did and just continuously feed it even now i could be piling stuff on there now as well keep it burning well with it going out like that was a good example of how little oxygen is getting to the fire i just needed to restart with some flying so this is why hey would be good right now when you covered that with the hey they keep burning nice and all that stuff that's turning white now uh if we kept it covered [Applause] so foreign so [Applause] yeah just let that burn what do you have [Music] gross a lot of wasps around this summer flying in my face right now well there you go start the forest fire light some leaves all firing this fly around okay it's starting to look more like i want it to yeah you put a layer of strawberry so [Music] just gonna give it a few more stirs that's more of a burn off just the larger pieces but great way to get rid of yard waste i went through a large pile is a great way to use the egg shells in your garden is the calcium that's going to be in here is readily available to plants same with the bones too you can put bones in your garden they take years also they are high in calcium but the calcium is on a chemical bond you can crush up the eggshells and add vinegar high high enough concentration acid will break that bond are you just throwing a flyer no effort at all how much effort was it for me right now it's just incorporated as part of the charcoal you can put as much in as you want it's not going to turn anything alkaline like you would if you just dumped you know a whole bunch of it in your garden it's a great way to get calcium in your garden bones and eggshells in a biochar that's also something you won't see in a lot of biochar videos so there you can see even though some of it's turning white getting the ash on it so just a very surface those larger pieces are breaking up now there's a bone just crack in half pretty much this is one big piece [Applause] i don't know if you can hear that one i love that glassy kind of sound already the piece not burnt at all okay so normally keep in mind it would take probably a little longer i would put a lot more wood in here [Applause] my goal today was just to demonstrate it i just wanted to build it up so it can be put in and when to put it in and then build it back down until you get a finished product and again if some pieces some of those larger pieces near the top there if they're not uh cooked all the way through i'll just throw them in the next fire all that talk and i forgot to fill my other bucket okay so you want to have some water water ready to go in buckets you want to put this fire out quickly you want to shock it's very hot right now i wish i had one of those handheld temperature things to tell you how hot it was so you can get as cold water as you can some ice water would be perfect and you're going to shock it you've got extreme heat with extreme cold and it's going to fracture what you want to do is fracture as much of the charcoal as you can it's going to break it apart and the quality of charcoal is measured by its surface area all right so you get the high quality activated charcoals for this or that and your filters and everything else they use this technique albeit on a industrial scale not with a bucket in your backyard it's the same idea so you can put it out with the hose if you want at this point or you don't want to let it put itself out or it'll just keep burning away all to ash so you do definitely want to douse it but the best way to delso to get most out of it is to douse it all at once real quickly thoroughly like just flood it with water right so i have some containers full of water and that's gonna fracture all the pieces apart more so than it would just spraying water on it it's gonna gonna fracture it right down like at an atomic level i'm talking about you know break stuff apart in there and make a higher quality charcoal by doing so you increase the surface area right off the start before we even break it down incorporating our soil it's a real easy step and it's necessary you got to put the fire out anyways maybe be a bit more careful than i was so it doesn't slosh up over the side so [Applause] and of course the larger the hole the more uh buckets you should have if you had someone with you they could pour it in at the same time as the better the quicker you can do it the better and the colder the water the better the hotter the fire the colder the water the more you're going to fracture the carbon okay because you burned away everything you're leaving the carbon it's all still attached to itself so you're using the the energy and the heat and the cold water the reaction is going to break apart bonds all kinds of stuff is going to happen good stuff so this isn't biochar yet all we did was make high quality charcoal to make biochar with using this method you get the highest quality [Applause] highest volume as you can see all that white's growing right so i didn't lose any that was just a thin coating on the stuff that was exposed to oxygen at the very top of the fire did you make sure it's out you won't be leaving unattended fires anywhere but should we do this in your backyard but that's only two i should mention you can do this wherever you have you know it's just two feet across right you can dig down a couple feet at least a foot you know to make a pit but the shape of the pit is the key you have to make it in a cone you can make a container out of metal and a cone above ground and do the same thing they have those hooked up for gas or wood burning but still you need outside source of fuel you simply dig a hole in the ground right a cone-shaped hole your feel becomes your final product like i'm sure i lost to some the burning to the air and a bit the ash there you saw the white so most of it's here [Applause] this is what you get it's turned uh charcoal comes apart it's all the same there's no wood left in there full of water right now but yeah breaks apart you know high quality charcoal so if you watch that to the end there's your charcoal all that's left now is to dig that out of there into uh into a wheelbarrow or a bucket or whatever you're using and uh then it's on to the next step of charging it so i'll make a video on how to do that and also make a video on after it's charged how to incorporate it into your soil so thank you very much for sticking around and watching me but this is definitely the best way to make biochar check that this is the best way to make charcoal for your biochar that i have found i'm quite happy with the results myself um i mean my garden is a testament to uh the value of this stuff but yeah thanks a lot for watching hope you're well wherever you are whenever you watch this peace you

Channel: Half Moon Gardens

Views: 31,520

Keywords: charcoal, biochar, build soil, organic gardener, organic gardening, tera preta, burn brush, yard waste, burn waste, carbon sequester, carbon capture, low emission burn, pyrolysis

Id: bXRosccKtOc

Length: 86min 22sec (5182 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 22 2021