Biochar Mycorrhizae and High Nitrogen

This is getting off track, but I wonder why there aren't more ecologists, botanists, environmentalists, etc. that are heavily practicing permaculture. I mean, I would have thought that people who focus their careers around plants and ecosystems would be leading the charge when it came to organics, permaculture, natural farming etc. Anyway, I wish permaculture was a fixture of major universities.

John Elliott wrote:

This is getting off track, but I wonder why there aren't more ecologists, botanists, environmentalists, etc. that are heavily practicing permaculture. I mean, I would have thought that people who focus their careers around plants and ecosystems would be leading the charge when it came to organics, permaculture, natural farming etc.

Maybe I'm a little cynical because of my career. The interesting problems never got funding, and the ones that pushed the status quo in a more dangerous direction did.

Dudes - so I was about as cynical as they come for a long time. The hope is in getting young people to FORGET about things like going to big universities. Ecology and Biology require direct observation and participation. Its an applied science. The university system is bought out and corrupt to the core. no debate.

Motivated folks always find a way.

John Elliott wrote:
Maybe I'm a little cynical because of my career. The interesting problems never got funding, and the ones that pushed the status quo in a more dangerous direction did.

May I ask, what you are researching? I'm a biologist, too...

Landon Sunrich wrote:Can you elaborate on impractical and ill advised? I have my own thoughts on that but I'm curious as to yours.

I will admit one of the most attractive things to me about a carbon based currency is that it would pretty much instantly up end and overturn the power structure associated with all major resource extraction companies and big industry who I feel have an undue influence on national and global political systems.

All of a sudden the resources we have already out of the ground (we have more resources to work with than at any time in history) take on a whole new value and we have to learn to live within our means. I bet google searches of "Zebbaleen" would triple!

Margie Nieuwkerk wrote:

Also, I wondered if I could "Breed" these various fungi, by taking living root tissue, coating it, letting it do its thing, and then cutting the roots and putting those on top of/touching other roots? And just keep trying to breed more? Or could I just use the soil around areas which I've inoculated and make it into a "John Elliot Drench"?

I'm not science trained or educated, so I'm hoping I don't sound too off the wall.

Landon Sunrich wrote:So I have noticed on several occasions (too many to be a coincidence as far as I'm concerned) Whenever I burn slash (I hear you judging) the shaggy manes go nuts. Most dense around the burn pile and spreading much farther on the downward slope. I eat a lot of shaggies. I've tried moving my burn this year. I think they're going to follow me. Taking bets.

I'm thinking of planting a fruit tree in the clearing the burn pile made, maybe trying to throw some morels into the mix.

Also

John Elliott wrote:

This is getting off track, but I wonder why there aren't more ecologists, botanists, environmentalists, etc. that are heavily practicing permaculture. I mean, I would have thought that people who focus their careers around plants and ecosystems would be leading the charge when it came to organics, permaculture, natural farming etc.

Maybe I'm a little cynical because of my career. The interesting problems never got funding, and the ones that pushed the status quo in a more dangerous direction did.

Dudes - so I was about as cynical as they come for a long time. The hope is in getting young people to FORGET about things like going to big universities. Ecology and Biology require direct observation and participation. Its an applied science. The university system is bought out and corrupt to the core. no debate.

Motivated folks always find a way.

morel. ive never gotten fresh morels before but id love to rase some

http://www.thefarm.org/mushroom/morel.html
is one of the few places that seem to explain it pretty plane.. i think using apple wood, and some rice hullchar would work really well (mix with other stuff) i wish i was still at uni.. or id try it out

Landon Sunrich wrote: So I have noticed on several occasions (too many to be a coincidence as far as I'm concerned) Whenever I burn slash (I hear you judging) the shaggy manes go nuts. Most dense around the burn pile and spreading much farther on the downward slope. I eat a lot of shaggies. I've tried moving my burn this year. I think they're going to follow me. Taking bets.

I'm thinking of planting a fruit tree in the clearing the burn pile made, maybe trying to throw some morels into the mix.

Also

John Elliott wrote:

Maybe I'm a little cynical because of my career. The interesting problems never got funding, and the ones that pushed the status quo in a more dangerous direction did.

Dudes - so I was about as cynical as they come for a long time. The hope is in getting young people to FORGET about things like going to big universities. Ecology and Biology require direct observation and participation. Its an applied science. The university system is bought out and corrupt to the core. no debate.

Motivated folks always find a way.

? wrote:

morel. ive never gotten fresh morels before but id love to rase some

http://www.thefarm.org/mushroom/morel.html
is one of the few places that seem to explain it pretty plane.. i think using apple wood, and some rice hullchar would work really well (mix with other stuff) i wish i was still at uni.. or id try it out

Margie Nieuwkerk wrote:ok, I have a question for you who are knowledgeable on biochar mychorrizzea.

I'm planting about 100 shrubs and trees in my backfield this spring, and I'm also beginning to wintersow lots and lots of seeds in the coming weeks. I really want to establish the mycorrhizal network in my field and saw the following 2 products on Ebay UK, (I'd have to have them sent to me in Bulgaria.)

very basic mycorrizal fungi inoculant
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/261128888854?var=560170366320

and a product with trichoderma and bacteria)
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/251185045350?var=550197140517

for me, the amounts I would need would be probably above my budget, but I thought if I could make biochar in the next weeks, and then make a bucket similar to how John Elliott did with his chicken stuff, and made it into a drench, do you think I would get more out of the product? I wrote to the supplier and they said for a bare root tree would use a tablespoon full, and 200 grams is about 13 tablespoons full. So 13 trees.

Also I thought could maybe order a smaller amount of the stuff with the trichoderma, just for my peaches, because we do get peach leaf curl here a lot, and I thought it might help?

Also, I wondered if I could "Breed" these various fungi, by taking living root tissue, coating it, letting it do its thing, and then cutting the roots and putting those on top of/touching other roots? And just keep trying to breed more? Or could I just use the soil around areas which I've inoculated and make it into a "John Elliot Drench"?

I'm not science trained or educated, so I'm hoping I don't sound too off the wall.

I really like that this product seems to have a whole assortment of the beneficial fungi and bacteria. And I'm wanting to protect my shrubs in the backfield. From middle of July to Middle of August can get very hot and dry here.

Beneficial Indigenous Microorganisms(BIM) is a fermented microbial solution that can be used for many applications around the farm. It is loaded with microbes, and is a cornerstone of Gil’s Natural Farming method. It’s an incredible tool with a myriad of applications, some of which are discussed below.

How to Make:

The idea here is to collect microbes from natural healthy ecosystems. Different areas have different types of microbes in the soil – for example an old growth forest will have microbes that grasslands don’t and vice versa. To get the greatest diversity of microbes, you want to collect them from as many different habitats as you can. For starters, at least get from forest, grassland, and the boundary area between them.
TIP: Plant-specific microbes! If you are growing vegetables, find areas where natural veggies are thriving. If planting ornamentals, look for areas where wild ornamental type plants are. Also, target nitrogen-fixer plants since they have rhizobium bacterial strains present – legumes, as well as some other plant genuses such as Alder or Bayberry fall into this category.
Here’s how to collect microbes and make BIM:

Cook a carbohydrate source to use as the attractant. Rice, barley, wheat, oats, etc should work no problem, most often rice is used here in Asia.
Get a wooden box or perforated plastic box and fill bottom with rice. The rice should not be too deep, around 1 inch usually, otherwise it will take too long for all the rice to become infected. Don’t pack the rice, leave it loose to allow airflow. The whole idea is to create more space for the microbes to infect – the surface area of the rice.
Mark side of box with date and intended location.
Cover box with something that’s breathable – nylons stretched over, or newspaper, just something to keep big critters out – secure with string around top of box.
Dig a little depression in the desired location, a place with undisturbed soil where a healthy population of native microbes is likely to flourish.
TIP: In forest, look for areas where leaves build up and mold. In grassland, look for areas where grass is most thriving.

Place the box in the depression and loosely cover with the dirt and leaves around it.
After 5-10 days (depending on temperature), the first colony of microbes you will notice are white molds. Then different colors like yellow, green, black, etc if you leave it much longer. Generally we harvest when it is in the white mold stage. Disregard rice if black molds have formed on it, this is generally a sign of non-beneficial microbes. In nature when there is plenty of food the beneficial microbes dominate. When there is less food, the opportunistic, non-beneficial microbes tend to dominate.
At this time, remove container from habitat and transfer rice to a plastic container/jar, and mix with sugar
Mix 1:1 with sugar. E.g. 1kg cooked rice with 1kg sugar/molasses(molasses is great and cheap)
Mash up the mixture with gloved fingers until it’s mashed but don’t overmix or you’ll destroy all the mycelia
Cover this mixture for 3-7 days.
When it is quite liquid, add 3 parts water.
TIP: 1kg=1L, so if you start with 1kg cooked rice, you’ll add 1kg sugar and then 6L water to that

Leave this diluted mixture for 7 days. Cover the top with something air permeable just so animals don’t get to it – cheese cloth, nylons, newspaper, etc
You should end up with a mud-like juice. Strain the liquid out of the mixture into a glass jar but don’t seal the top – let it breathe until bubbles in the bottom stop forming.
After you stop seeing bubbles forming in the jar, seal it up
Now you have your microbial inoculant for that ecosystem
Repeat the above steps for each area you are collecting microbes from. The more ecosystems you collect from, the better!
To make the final BIM product, combine all your microbial extracts. To increase efficacy, combine this concoction 1:1 with lacto serum. Lacto is the workhorse and is good to have in combination with other microbes. Now you have created your BIM inoculant!

How to Use:
This is a powerful tool in the natural farming arsenal, with a myriad of applications! It’s a microbial inoculant, so it can be used wherever you are trying to increase/establish populations of microbes – the most basic level of a healthy ecosystem!

Add 1-2tsp per gallon of water.

Plants

Apply as a foliar spray or soil drench. Greatly enhances growth and health of plants by establishing a healthy population of microbes in the soil and on leaf surfaces. Check out the benefits:

Transports food to roots
Builds a healthy ecosystem from the ground up. This is an invaluable job and the greatest benefit of this serum.
Aids disease resistance – fights pathogens, occupies spaces that could otherwise go to harmful bacteria/molds.
Aid composting – massively enhances compost – there will be a whole separate post on this concept
Aid organic fertilizer. Add to your nutrient solution, microbes break down organic nutrients into bio-available forms that plants can utilize directly. Another key feature
Animals

This can be used the same way as lacto, but it is a more diversified solution.

Boost growth by enhancing digestion
Inoculate farmyard (spray ground) where animals occupy to maintain healthy microbial system.
Aids disease resistance. Fight the bad bacteria!
In aquaculture

Add 1L BIM per 700m3 of water containing fish(pond, lake, aquaculture tank, etc). Lacto works in this application also, though not quite as well as BIM(less diversity).
Example: You have a pond that averages 20m wide by 30m long by 2m deep. So, 20 x 30 x 2 = 1200m3. In this case you would add roughly 2L of BIM or Lacto (you can dilute the 2L in a larger amount of non-chlorine water if you want more even application). No need for exact measurements, more or less won’t affect it (to a point obv)
Benefits are built by the microbes:

Microbes digest fish wastes, cleaning up water and improving water quality.
Allows fish to grow larger due to digestive efficiency
Allows higher population of fish in the same amount of water! Literally, increases the carrying capacity of your body of water! This is awesome for aquaculture setups

John Saltveit wrote:Thanks Dan and John,
That's great how to info. I wanna go out and do it soon.
John S
PDX OR

How to Make:

Get container, fill halfway with rice-wash. Rice wash is the water leftover when you rinse fresh rice. For example, go buy rice, whatever kind, bring it home, put it in a pot with warm water, swirl it a bit and then drain the [now milky colored] water. The water is now a rich source of carbohydrates. In this step, you can substitute rice with another carbohydrate source if you don’t have rice, as long as it is complex (don’t use simple carbohydrates like sugar, honey, syrup, molasses, etc). You can use wheat, barley, kinoa, other carbohydrates as the base to make your carbohydrate wash. This wash will attract microbes from the air, among them lacto bacilli.
Cover loosely and let stand for a couple days to a week
When is it done? When you see a light film on top (molds) and it smells a little sour and forms 3 layers. This is indicating the rice wash is infected with various microbes. This happens more quickly in warm temperatures because microbes are more active. Thus it is all relative since we don’t do this in controlled laboratory conditions.
The layers are distinct
Top layer: floating carbohydrates leftover from fermentation and possibly molds
Middle layer: Lactic Acid and other bacteria (cheese buffs will recognize this as a makeshift “rennet”). We will use this layer.
Bottom layer: Starch, byproduct of fermentation
Extract the middle layer using a siphon. This layer contains the highest concentration of lactic acid bacteria and lowest concentration of the unneeded byproducts
Get a new container, larger than the first. Take the extracted serum from the last step and mix it with 10 parts milk. By saturating with milk (lactose), we dissuade other microbes from proliferating, leaving L. bacilli. E.G. if you have 1cup of the serum, mix it with 10cups milk.
TIP: The best milk to use in unpasteurized natural milk. However, any milk will do, even powdered milk. In our experience, the best is unpasteurized natural but just use what is available. We just want to saturate with lactose to promote L. bacilli bacteria.

You want to keep this stage anaerobic as much as possible. You can use something like rice bran, barley bran, wheat bran, etc sprinkled on top of the milk. I use a sealed container with a one-way valve.
After about 1 week (temp dependent), you’ll see curds (made of carbohydrate, protein, and fat) on top of the milk. The water below will be yellow colored – this is whey, enriched with lactic acid bacteria from the fermentation of the milk.
NOTE: Microbes like L. bacilli are more active in warmer temperatures. The curds you see are a byproduct of the fermentation process. Fermentation is generally associated with microbial processes under anaerobic(no oxygen) conditions. Now, L. bacilli is a facultative anaerobe, that is it can live and work with or without oxygen, but less competition in anaerobic conditions.

The water below(whey+lacto) is the good stuff. You want to extract this. You can either skim the curds off the top, pour through a strainer, or whatever other methods to accomplish that
NOTE: Remember the curds, or byproduct of milk fermentation by L. bacilli, are great food. They are full of beneficial microbes like L. bacilli. Feed the curds to the soil, compost pile, plants, animals, humans – whoever wants them! They are full of good nutrients/microbes. No waste in natural farming.

To preserve at room temperature, add an equal part sugar/molasses to the serum. So, if you have 1L of serum, add 1kilo sugar or 1L molasses. Otherwise store in fridge to keep.
Example Recipe:

1 L rice wash
10L Milk
10kg sugar
After rice wash and milk remove curds – around 1L
= 20 L lactic acid bacteria serum

Alder Burns wrote:I think the key is right there in the abstract "during the 4 week timescale of our experiments" They didn't let the char and the nitrogen mellow long enough in the soil.