Why No Clay? Manure? Sand? Forest Mould?!

greasemonkeymann

Well-Known Member
Hi Everyone! What a great thread! I'm a big fan of biochar. You can soak in any high-N material. You can consider soaking in a microbial tea of some sort to pre-innoculate microbes, but that's not what I do, since microbes will reproduce and start living in the biochar right away. No need to pre-innoculate for microbes. Fresh biochar will hold N like crazy, but release it later.

It's a great aeration amendment and holds water also.
this is a great thread!
So do you use an alfalfa tea? Some use urine or high nitrogen guano?
What about a lite nitrogen manure like rabbit?
I'm kinda liking the idea of alfalfa, EWC, and some rabbit poo
 

cannakis

Well-Known Member
Rrog is making his own. He's using a 35 gallon steel drum inside of a 50 gal. I'll shoot him a text and see if he can pop in here and school us.....
Haha awesome! I would love that! I want to make my own charcoal too... I remember seeing something like you stack it three feet high and wide and like I don't start a fire on the sides or middle I don't remember exactly, but then throw some sod, mud or something over the pile... And you have to watch it because a small flare up and especially using Pine the wwhole pile will be lost and go to ash.
 

cannakis

Well-Known Member
Next year we'll have a drum circle or something. At least cook a bunch of BBQ
Haha I don't know what this is in response to yet but I Am down! I have gotten addicted to True smoked pork with real Apple Cider Vinegar and just salt! Mmmhhmm damn it has changed my life forever! A Whole Real pig over charcoal All day! And I used to Hate BBQ.
 

greasemonkeymann

Well-Known Member
Those are all excellent N sources. I'd make a slurry so it's wet. Let the char soak a few hours.

Or you could do as St0w's wife insists- pee right into a bag of Cowboy Charcoal. Why do you think they call it cowboy charcoal?
hahaha, that's good stuff, just right into the bag, eh?
I think we (RIU) may need to add a biochar sticky, a vermicompost sticky as well as a SST sticky.
this is some good shit
 

cannakis

Well-Known Member
You can buy a bag of natural charred wood (like Cowboy brand) and use that. Break it up in to 1/2" ish chunks and soak it in a high N teal for 24 hours like an alfalfa tea to charge it. Otherwise it will rob your soil of all Nitrogen

edit. @Rrog is a good guy to talk to about this
why does it rob nitrpgen? sorry if this already answered going through thread now.
 

greasemonkeymann

Well-Known Member
oh
Haha I don't know what this is in response to yet but I Am down! I have gotten addicted to True smoked pork with real Apple Cider Vinegar and just salt! Mmmhhmm damn it has changed my life forever! A Whole Real pig over charcoal All day! And I used to Hate BBQ.
ohhh man, I make a damn tasty pulled pork, get a 4 lb shoulder, some apple cider vinegar, some pineapple juice(a natural tenderizer), some pineapple rings, and an orange for zest. mix the zest, the vinegar, the juice and marinade the shoulder, and before bbqing get some toothpicks to hang the pineapple rings all over the shoulder. This recipe also kicks mucho culo on half hams too.
 

cannakis

Well-Known Member
i'

im gonna go strain some of my EWC and make a molasses tea, get a bag of the charcoal, and go to town... I have some extra pots that are empty, course i'd like to re-do ALL my pots but that's a bitch... especially the 40 gallon air pots.... makes my back hurt just thinking about it.
I really like the idea though, and the more I research it, it seems for a no-till setup it'd be almost crucial, my thinking anyways
haha i hear ya! free exercise is how i look at it. fuck paying to work out. get paid to workout.
 

Rrog

Well-Known Member
Fresh biochar will have a + charge and be one of the few items that holds Anions like N. As the biochar ages in the soil (1-2 years, as I recall) the charge changes and it becomes a more traditional Cation binder
 

cannakis

Well-Known Member
oh

ohhh man, I make a damn tasty pulled pork, get a 4 lb shoulder, some apple cider vinegar, some pineapple juice(a natural tenderizer), some pineapple rings, and an orange for zest. mix the zest, the vinegar, the juice and marinade the shoulder, and before bbqing get some toothpicks to hang the pineapple rings all over the shoulder. This recipe also kicks mucho culo on half hams too.
Nice! Does sound good, but I Am much more of one for the simple things! Like chicken pastry needs to be literally Just chicken, water, salt, lots of salt, and pastry. For me just a good ole pig, charcoal/wood, salt lots of it, and pure unpasteurized apple cider vinegar. The flavors you get from that alone is insane! As Pliny wrote over 2,000 years ago, no other food provides over 50 different flavors!
 

cannakis

Well-Known Member
I'll be working on this a lot closer, since I'm looking to tweak this biochar maker (retort) design so that anyone could just follow the measurements, build a retort, and get the results. I have high temp probes to set in the actual burning chambers to monitor temps. The trick is to modify the ventilation so it burns at a certain temp. Once I have that ventilation dialed in, this could be reproduced cheap and more people can make the char in volume for cheap / free.

The trick is for biochar, we'd like a lower temp pyrolysis. More neural pH and may be better AEC (Anion Exchange Capacity)
awesome!!! dial it in! let us know!!!
 
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