Mike Farmer

The "fluffing up" must reposition things in a way that makes additional passes more effective. Makes sense that after driving over a bag of biochar it gets "mushed" together in a way that more pressure just doesn't help. Moving around the pieces creates nice fresh edges and angles for more crushing.

John Suavecito wrote:That sounds very efficient in an unusual sort of way!

John S
PDX OR

Yes, the "harvesting" was really quick. The 10-12 buckets probably took me maybe 30 min of going back and forth between water source, fire pit, and chicken run in a little circle.

I'm sure this mixed a bit more ash in than many other methods, but up here in the northeast our soil is very acidic so getting it into the mix will help even out the soil a bit, while adding plenty minerals.

I was at a local non-profit farm where I'm on the board today doing some odds and ends. I knew their fire pit was a bit full of char, so was planning to clean it out. Folks had put more wood and sticks in there, and it's been damp lately. I started a fire to clean it out, but it was obvious that if I was going to burn through the residual char I'd be there a while.

So, instead, I found a metal bucket and filled it with water. I scooped out hot char and quenched it. Once it was cold out and fully saturated, I repeated the process. Probably did about 10-12 of those small metal buckets full to get the char in the fire pit down to a reasonable level.

The wet char then got added to the compost chicken dome to get charged in advance of the compost harvest in about a month. The compost/char will get worked into garden beds across the property.

As I was wrapping up, it started to rain pretty hard, so I  felt extra safe adding the char to the chicken system since everything was going to continue to get a good soaking at least through tomorrow AM.

Maybe a non-traditional way of making char, but it worked and stacked functions in that it cleaned up one area to soak up nutrients in another (chicken compost system) to eventually share those nutrients with a third space (garden beds)

Yes, lots of methods is the way.

Making lots of biochar is better than making a little biochar, but making a little biochar is better than making none.

Making a little biochar every day doing something you do anyway (like running a wood stove) is great!

I think the original video that David refers to is on the "Live On What You Grow" Youtube channel. The two crimped cans.

I've also had had good luck in a fire pit or wood stove making biochar with metal paint cans (with a few holes poked in them) or hotel pans.

As others have said, the high moisture content of seaweed would suggest that composting may be better than char.

I've also read about potential heavy metal and other contaminants...so batches would need to be tested first, especially if it was to be used on food crops.

Could be another good argument to include bones in your biochar. Also, as a chicken owner, I happen to have 40 lb bag of crushed oyster shell right near where I make biochar. Might have to throw a scoop into the next batch!  

Any char I make goes right into my chicken coop or run. The flock has free choice of if they want to consume any or not. We compost right in the run, so it get inoculated in place, crushed by my footsteps, and eventually gets harvested with the chicken run compost.

Is it the biochar the dog wants, or the inoculant? Raw charcoal is probably fine, but depending on what you inoculate with, that could be good or bad, I suppose. Would the dog eat raw charcoal if offered?

My guess is that once the scientists are doing sciencing, the detractors are done detracting, and the disagreers are done disagreeing, we'll find that a mix of sizes is good for most all applications.