THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO BIOCHAR: how to make it, how to use it, and why it's important

Hi my name is Paul Morris and I'm a restoration  ecologist and my partner Sophia is an agronomist   and we're going to be talking about  biochar and how to make biochar so   we're going to go through that process in  our first video we're going to be talking   about how to do it with a contiki and how to  do it with an oil barrel biochar is actually   a substance used by indigenous peoples in  places like the amazon and they found in the amazon and it was biochar basically  incorporated into the soil mixed in with a   bunch of different things and what they  found is that that soil was super rich One of the reasons that we're making biochar is  climate change. What we're doing is burning the   woody material which is about 50% carbon so that  50% carbon goes back into the soil once you put   it into your gardens and into your growing beds so  taking that carbon out of the atmosphere the trees   the plants they bring it into their system and it  becomes fixed carbon so when we burn it it becomes   inert and then once you put it in the soil it  will last hundreds and even thousands of years   so just doing that process we're reducing  the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and   we've been continuously extracting and extracting and  taking the carbon out of the soil and so we need   to be putting that back into the soil so that we can reduce the carbon in the atmosphere. small scale we're not doing a lot but i mean pile  after pile of this stuff we're putting into the   ground you're increasing the amount of organic  carbon in the soil you're increasing year   after year because we're finding with the biochar  that we're putting into our gardens year after   year it's enriching more and more. You find the  first year you have a little bit of stimulus in   your growth but by the third year we're  getting vegetables that are double the size. In   the Yuctan, the Mayan people  were growing squash and they're about yay big  (15cm) but after three years we were growing the exact  same squash and they were huge much larger size  (30cm) and our neighbour was completely surprised when we showed it to him. We have corn you know they're   getting Mayan corn about yeah big (20cm) and our corn is  about this big (30cm) theirs is growing about yay tall  (1.2m) and ours is growing almost twice the height (2m) in the  biochar so this stuff is really improving   the soil and really enriching the soil so  instead of the nutrients just washing   through with heavy rain it's being trapped  into the soil, the moisture is being trapped   in the soil from any sort of moisture that comes down. We're holding all this stuff there.   It's got good aeration because all this  carbon has a lot of air space in between.   As you can see it's very friable and the  microorganisms can just go right through it.   You see once it's fully colonized you'll  open it up and it'll be white inside   because the microorganisms have  penetrated all the way into it.   Overall it's an excellent system we put it into all our mediums in my nursery for restoration   and putting it into the nursery medium in the garden. I'm putting 10 percent into the garden   You know just everywhere. When we plant trees  we put it into the holes for the tree planting.  We're using everywhere to get more and more  carbon into the soil more and more nutrients   richer soil. We want all this stuff  because we want nice healthy plants, we want less   carbon in the atmosphere so it's a win-win situation. Here we are we have the oil barrel   and we've loaded it up. You want to take a  look inside. We have some bigger material   on the bottom and then we have some smaller  kindling and then we have this lighter stuff   on the top and a bit of paper, that's just to  get it started. Here we'll just get it going here we go and again here's your white smoke starting to get it going. Here we are we've got the contiki started  and we started the barrel at the same time   so at 10 o'clock we started everything  and so far the contiki's burned down   about halfway through our pile and as you can  see the smoke that comes out is fairly clear   so it's burning fairly clean because of the the  motion that's happening here with the air currents   and if we take a look over here at the barrel which was started at the same time   you can see it's a little bit right now it's not  smoking too much it's gone to its clear phase   but initially, it had a lot more white smoke it's a much faster process actually.   we've already got it started we've started  adding some big material into it whereas   the contiki because it's, we started at  the top it's slowly burning down and it hasn't   we haven't even started adding more big stuff  to it. This is more like a rocket it's faster. Here we go you can see this is what happens when  we get to the the stage just before adding   another layer so you can see that it's starting  to just have a light cut covering of ash on there   and what we want to do is add another  layer to that and then once you add the next   layer it cuts off the oxygen to the layer  below and it'll stop turning to ash. This is ready to go okay so we're about 70  percent done the barrels filled to about there.  As you can see i've started adding smaller  bits of wood because we want it nice and hot   at the top and we want them to burn fast  we used a lot bigger wood further down   but at the top you want the char to burn  really fast so we can finish it off nicely   and everything gets burnt really well  so that's the barrel and then over here   we're still doing small stuff we're doing large  stuff so you can do much bigger pieces in the contiki. I'm just going to give you a quick  evaluation of this barrel on barrel method (TULD) this is a method that you can use for making  biochar but i don't recommend it because it's not great. You get very little biochar out of it  the other processes that we showed you   are much more efficient in giving large  volumes of biochar. What we have here   is a larger barrel so we have the same barrel  we used in the in the other biochar burn but   you can see it's got holes in the bottom here  and it's got holes on the top so what happens   is it has a smaller barrel on the inside and  a larger barrel on the outside and you fill   the smaller barrel in the inside with wood and  then you fill the outer barrel with wood as well   and then you burn the outside barrel and that  heat from burning the outside wood   carbonizes the smaller barrel on the inside  and then you get biochar but   as you can see on the inside so it has a  chimney system on the top for getting a hot burn   and then you can see here's our barrel on barrel   so you've got this barrel here that  you're filling up to the top with wood   and then the outside barrel you're putting in wood  on the outside but what happens with this burn   all the wood on the outside burns down to ash and  the stuff on the inside burns down so that you're   only getting maybe a third of the biochar up third  of the volume biochar and from this smaller   barrel so the efficiency of the burn is much  less and it's a lot more effort to do it this way so in the long run i think the other  system where you're just having   a single barrel like we were using before you're  getting a lot more biochar you're doing   a burn without oxygen and you're getting  a lot more biochar because you can still add   material back into it and as it drops down  then you're still getting a lot more biochar   in the finished burn so that's just  a quick evaluation of what we've got   for different techniques it still works you still  get biochar but the volume is much much less   and you're also wasting all this the outside  barrel's material so it doesn't turn into biochar. Okay so here we are we finished it we filled it  up with water as you can see the water is right   here at the surface so we filled it right up  and the biochar is floated up just a little bit What we're going to do next is we got some  urine here high in nitrogen excellent source   of nitrogen and we're going to be charging  so we use roughly a half bucket of urine   is what we're going to be putting in here okay so we've added the urine to the biochar and so this is basically going to sit here  overnight and what that does is the the   activated carbon that we've created with the burn  will suck up all the nutrients from the nitro all   the nitrogen from the urine and it'll activate  it. Here we are on the final burn for the   contiki and you can see we're just  mixing it around to make sure we   have a good burn it's starting to get a  little bit of char of ash on the outside   so this is essentially done okay so we're  gonna put the biochar out you can see it's   starting to get a lot of ash on it so that's  the time we have a few big pieces that we   pulled up from the bottom that still didn't  burn but that's okay we'll get them next time be really careful of the steam it can burn you. Here we have the biochar from the contiki  and we've got the water we filled it up with water to stop the burn it's floating a little bit.  You can't completely  fill it up like we usually do Once it's nice and wet it's cool now,  from the temperature we started. We add our urine what that'll do so we got a whole  bunch of other containers here   What that will do, we leave it wet so that  stops the fire stops the burn and so it stops   it from turning into ash so if you leave any  little bit burning still it you'll come back in   the morning and your biochar will have  turned into ash. This has been sitting   overnight ever since we did it you  can see water is just down here this is full of water right now  and it had the urine in it but you smell it you're  smelling the carbon now it's all been absorbed in. That's what you're getting that's your carbon  product. Now conveniently this has a drain on it then we're just draining all the water off (usually we save the water). Then we'll empty, the machine weighs  a ton right now so we're dripping out all the water   and we'll take off these  shields that are on the side show you that this is just a  shield on the side helps keep the   the temperature high insulates it also protects  you from the heat and it also it creates that   air vortex that you want so it comes up on the  outside and then it comes in with a little vortex   the biochar oxidation to keep the oxidation low so we'll just drain that down and then we'll  dump it out. We'll show you that next.   This has been sitting overnight we  burned it yesterday and this is what we've got   you see it sucked up a fair bit of the water  here it's gone down about 15 centimeters   and that's like a perfect home for your bacteria  and your fungus to grow in which will and then   what we're going to do next is we're going to  drain this out and because these are like little   sponges it sucks up so much water it's a huge  amount of water that's being sucked up in here   and so we're not going to dry it out we're just  going to lay it out and we're going to crush it   a little bit and then we're going to add our  different components our manure our molasses   that sort of thing to get the process  started to absorb into this activated carbon.   We're going to just take it  out and we'll lay it out because we want to   lay it out nice so when we put our manure  down it's a little easier to work it in as you can see those is really heavy full of water here we are we've dumped the kiln out  and you can see this is our volume   biochar here and you see there's a  few bigger lumps are pure carbon   and over here where we dumped  out the biochar from the the drum this is the amount of char that we got. We've spread the biochar out   as you can see and you can see there's some  big pieces here that we want to crush them down.  We don't want to turn it into dust we  just want to break up the big pieces   so it's a little bit easier to  distribute so we have this roller the carpet carpet roller You can see we're not turning it to dust  or turning we still have some nice pieces   in there it allows the fungus and the different  bacteria to have a little home to colonize   rather than having it super fine and then  you're not you know giving them a little   bit of a home to establish themselves in so then  they can spread out from that piece and colonize.   Also the next phase that we're going to do we  have a whole load of cow manure. This is nice stuff   it's got a lot of bacteria in  it. You can see these white spots You can feel the heat off of it  and it's still steaming so this is good rich   cow manure you could use a little less straw  and that would be easier to mix around but   i mean if you don't have the fresh  stuff you can always use store-bought   and so we're going to also be mixing in a bit of  leaf compost, compost from the from the kitchen,  you can put in chicken manure you can put in  all sorts of things you want things that are   super rich so when you put it  in there it's rich in nutrients   it's got all the all the elements  that you need for a healthy garden   to feed the plants but also the main  focus is to feed the microbiome   You want to get all the nutrients that you need  and we're also going to be putting in some sort of   a sugar substrate, a carbohydrate substance you can  use molasses, blackstrap molasses is really good   That's what we've been using mostly but you can  also use old flour, sugar all these sort of things   that have high carbohydrates and it's  basically food for all the bacteria and fungus   in there and that's going to get all mixed up into  here and then we're it's going to be supercharged.   We're going to leave it for about three months  in bags, you can leave it in bags or in a pile In the Yucatan, we put it in a pile here we're  putting it in bags and stick it in the barn Basically that's what you've got once you've  mixed all these components together you need to   to cure it for the three months so that it  turns from this which is your activated carbon   and then into your biochar by mixing all the  elements together. What we've done is we've got   a layer of biochar that we spread out and  crushed it and then we added a layer of   manure it had a fair bit of straw in it which  isn't ideal for turning and then we added   a good layer of leaf mulch a leaf compost onto  there so we're spreading it all out as you can see   and then we started the process of turning it so  we're going to turn it all mix it all together   and so that'll allow the activated carbon to mix  with the manure and then we have the the leaf   compost so all these good nutrients in there and  it's really going to make it a nice rich medium.   Hi I'm out in the greenhouse here and I'm just  going to give you a quick introduction to our   our super-powerful brew that we've created. In  here you can see it's we've got a bubbler in here   so this keeps it oxygenated  so that it doesn't go anoxic   and inside here what we have is we put in a  fair bit of manure, we put in compost we've got   urine and we've also got rock dust a bit of  sea salt and we mix all that all together.   Over time we also put in different mycorrhizae  microorganisms, a bit of soil, so all these things   the compost, the manure, the mycorrhizal  solution all this stuff is adding more and more   bacteria, fungus different things  into the soils to make it alive.   We're using this is our fertilizer mix  so it's got high nitrogen, high potassium, high phosphorus and so that then this has everything  that it needs plus all the micronutrients plus   all the all the bacteria and the fungus that  makes the roots healthy and so we put this on   and you can see we've got a nice green color  on our plants and we fertilize this regularly and it just makes a really  rich solution for your plants.   Mixing it with the biochar we also  add this fertilizer mix onto our biochar   and we'll do another video where we actually  go through and we make another barrel of this. Well we're almost finished we've taken  our compost, manure and our biochar we've   mixed it put it into a big pile here so  that we can ferment it, compost it together   and the biochar will be activated.  The carbon will suck in all the nutrients.   What we've got here is our active component. This is our super brew. What I've   got is I've taken one half bucket and then  i've split it into two and added water to help to   move it around more so it's more dilute. What  we're going to do is we're going to pour that on so that'll absorb into the mix and i've got  two more buckets here that'll add on as well to  making sure it's distributed nicely. and this we're going to cover with a tarp to  keep it nice and moist and it's in a nice big pile   we get a lot of heat  activity in the microbial action   and we don't want it to get too hot and kill  itself we wanted to cook a little bit so the   microorganisms get into the biochar  the nutrients get into the biochar   and then in about three months after leaving this  working for three months sometimes a little bit   faster in the Yucatan but here probably three  months to get the different organisms growing.   Then this will be super concentrated all your  nutrients, all your micronutrients and have your   your biochar that's a nutrient holding and  it'll have all your microorganisms and your fungus   Later on we're going to talk about how to  incorporate it into your soil into different mixes.   I use it in my nursery, I use it in my garden and  there are so many applications so we'll go through a   bunch of those. This is going to get tarped over  after and we're just going to leave it for a while As you can see making biochar is not  a simple process it's fairly complex   but once you have the biochar in the soil   it's going to last for a thousand years  because it's carbon and it's inert.  It's not going to go anywhere so it's acting  like a sponge in the soil so it's slowly releasing the nutrients when you add more nutrients  and compost on the top instead of   the nutrients running through the soil the  carbon will hold on to it for you and slowly   release it back so we're holding this for a couple  months we've got it tarped up and it's ready to go. Okay so this biochar has been  sitting here for about a month   and different creatures have started to  inhabit it we've got snakes have come and shed their skins here they've got mushrooms  that have come up so it's just full of organisms   and let's take a look what  it looks like after a month. Look at that You can see it's not hot anymore it's not  steaming so it's finished it's rapid breakdown   so now the microorganisms are inside the biochar and a lot of nutrients have gone in there  but we still want to leave it for another   couple months because it's going to still keep  absorbing those nutrients and we want it to   do the absorption process here before we put it  into our field look at that that's beautiful now   so it's all nice and mixed in together it's really  doesn't have any smell so yeah that's good stuff   and you can see all sorts of little  creatures are working away inside here they run away as soon as they get into the  light but there's a lot of them in there you   can see them going they're all breaking down the  the manure and the compost that we put in there   so they're having a good time  this is their habitat now   Our next stage is we're just going to  put this all into bags and we're going   to stick it in the barn for a while  and then, later on, we'll be able to use it   I'm here in the greenhouse and I'm just  taking a look at some of the root system   What we've got here and if you look carefully  you can see i'll just pull one off the top here   we've got biochar mixed in here and we've  got about, we put in about 10% biochar   into our soil mix and so that's  adding different nutrients to the   to the soil adding the microorganisms  to the soil so it's like an inoculant   and as you can see we've got really good root  growth coming out the bottom nice healthy plants These plants are doing really well and  we put it into all our soil mix that   we're putting into these greenhouses for habitat  restoration and these are our vegetable plants.   We're also putting it into our garden and one of the  most effective ways we find is actually putting   it right into the pot, right at the root zone so  the microorganisms are all right there right at   the beginning and so when you move the pot outside  you're actually moving all the microorganisms with the plant so then you're putting it in  the garden as well and we'll go over to   the garden in a minute and we'll show you how  we've used it over there. About 10 percent   and we mix it all in we've got our organic mix  and then i use probably about 50 percent sand   because I like a little better drainage and then  about 10% biochar so mixing all that up together   makes a really strong very solid nursery mix  for growing your plants. We're out in one of   whole villages gardens and this is a recently  established bed it was full of weeds before   so what we did was we solarized the bed with  black plastic/tarps we left that on for about a year.   What that does is kill all the different  weeds but it also affects the bacteria in the soil.   We need to put the bacteria that we want  back into the soil, the different funguses   that make healthy soil and so what we've done  is we've added about 10 percent of the biochar   you can see some of the pieces here. We've added about 10% of this biochar   on to the bare soil we put  the biochar we put a little bit of wood   ash for some more potassium and we've  also added a lot of this leaf mulch   well composted leaf mulch which they had here  so you can use different things for mulching   straw different things like that. You can also add  compost onto here. Once the bed's established   then you can dig into the garden and typically when you plant you want to get past the   mulch down to the bare soil so we've got about  five to ten centimeters of mulch on the top of   here and then you can as you dig down you'll be  able to see some of the carbon that's down here   put about 10% carbon so one of these beds we put  in two bags, two feed bags full of biochar.   Spreading it out evenly on the top. We didn't  bother to incorporate it. Over time the different   worms and different creatures in the soil will  move it around and incorporate it into the soil   and we put this nice leaf mulch on top. It's  well composted leaf mulch over the top. What it does is   mulch to hold some moisture onto the soil and  help suppress any weeds that might come up we are   still getting a few weeds initially but they're so  easy to pull out because they're just in the mulch   and they're not very strong. But over time  as i think i've said before this is going   to mature more and more. This is year one so it  won't be quite as vigorous in the first year   but by year three you're going to be seeing the  plants growing super vigorous and really healthy. In conclusion, I just want to say we're here,  we're available, if you have questions please   ask questions in the comments or other different ways  of contacting us, our facebook page or our webpage   and we'll put that into the information at  the bottom. Be curious ask questions   we're here to teach and to share I mean I've  got 25 years of doing ecological restoration   and Sophie's also got more as an agronomist you  know she's been doing the same amount of work   just working with these systems and  understanding them I can't say that I've   got all the answers but I'm curious and open  to learning and that's the most important step   is just being curious. So ask questions we're  here to answer. We'll mentor people   we're happy to do that. We've had volunteers in the  past and interns and lots of interns as well so   just ask your questions  and be with us thank you! I just want to say thank you to everyone for  coming out, if you want to find out more about   Acorus Restoration it's AcorusRestoration.com  if you want to find out more about our work in the   Yucatan it's EarthConnection.center and you can  also support us on Patreon on our Planet healers page and if you're interested in  coming out please come out   and enjoy this place whoel village  in Ontario thank you very much!

Channel: Planet Healers

Views: 52,084

Rating: 4.8877106 out of 5

Keywords: earthconnectioncenter, biochar, how to, gardening, plants, home, sustainable living, compost, nature, ecology, science, learning, biology, TULD, Con-tiki, contiki, char, charcoal, microbiome, charging, fertilizer, superbrew, nursery, garden, manure, urine, guide, no-till, permaculture, ecological, restoration, generation, carbon, sequestration

Id: 0_IdgPmnbRU

Length: 33min 14sec (1994 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 05 2020