biochar user experiments

buildasoil is expensive charcoal & inferior imo , it's ceder & beetle killed trees very soft
never again , shipping was high
i use & went back to using after the buildasoil fiasco , Whole Foods Cowboy charcoal 100% hard wood around $6 a bag then some maul work with a old rug on top of the bag . the Cowboy is zee best imo
best you charge charcoal yourself

NaturalFarmer said:

rice Z was6yuahull is cheap as dirt depending where you are. I would think hardwoods would be best?

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Nah the grain hulls break down to a more atomic scale quicker, which i like. Also easier to just drop a sack of CRH (carbonized rice hulls) in a bed vs crushing carbonized hardwood. Well, if you have a rock crusher i guess the hardwood would be pretty dope since you could grow a weed like bamboo and carbonize it for cost of labor.

DonBrennon said:

DIY retort chamber.......................... a lot of work for not much char, LOL, if you can buy good hardwood charcoal, I'd go with that, it's very cheap and easy
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Thank you db for this attempt at least. Good to see real experimentors following known teks. Does it reduce in size or something? Bigger drum? Try leaves packed in like leaf mould

iHearAll said:

Thank you db for this attempt at least. Good to see real experimentors following known teks. Does it reduce in size or something? Bigger drum? Try leaves packed in like leaf mould

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Yeah, at a guess, it reduces by about 30% just eyeballing it. I'm not planning on making or using any for a while, I've got loads of soil already loaded with good amounts of biochar for my future canna grows, which I'll just keep re-cycling.

But.................'IF' we get confirmation that we can keep the pen/allotment that I share and we can start growing some fruit and veg again, the burner will be going into full action again.

ps.........I like the idea of leaves as the feed stock, I'd probably have to experiment with the packing a few times to get the gases escaping correctly, but it'd probably take less burning materials to get it cooked.