Ben Zumeta

For the most part I topdress with compost in the spring and fall, but I also time it around weather and planting. I try to time it for before a rain to get the microbes and humus integrated into the soil. I also try to avoid spreading it when the compost is particularly wet and heavy. I will spread it with cover crop mixed in, below, or on top depending on seed size and germination preferences. When transplanting trees and perennials in the fall-winter or spring annuals, they get a compost extract root dip and top dressed with compost.

I also try to do a fall compost tea spray on all my perennials bark and falling leaves, and another in the spring around bud break until first leaves. This ensures my Johnson Su compost’s microbes have a pioneering advantage colonizing the plants and soil. I give everything a compost extract spray in the Spring before a good rain as well. I do this with 2gal of compost in an aerated, elevated 50gal barrel, or a proportional amount in an IBC tote, and gravity feed through a 3/4 garden hose with a simple valve I adjust to get a coarse droplet and try to hit every plant and bed.

Wind is better deflected and dissected than attempting to block it directly, as the OP seems to appreciate. I would aim for defense in depth, with many layers. Any given layer blocks at most 60% of the wind, with many diffuse corridors diverting and bifurcating it with each layer. Making air turn 90deg reduces its velocity by 1/2, and its ability to carry sediments and dessicate or erode land is exponential relative to velocity, much like with water. A forest dissipates wind through this diversion and bifurcation, and can reduce wind and dust to a tiny fraction in a 100m of depth. I would aim to replicate this, using earthworks and stone in the first layers if necessary and plausible.

Hiking 60mi and many thousands of feet of elevation gain alone through 4ft of snow, the last 15mi with a torn groin, climbing over post fire deadfall. This was through the only section of the Pacific Crest Trail that I had to skip in the summer because it was on fire, so I came back after getting to Canada and helping with a friend’s wine grape harvest.

Welcome Kristoffer. I have lived in the PNW most of my life, and while I love travel, can’t imagine wanting to live anywhere else. I would recommend a road trip from Bellingham, WA, (a very cool place worth checking out), around the Olympic Peninsula to Eureka, CA (I think of the PNW coast as encompassing the Coast Redwood and Sitka Spruce rainforests northward). This is a worthwhile trip in its own right with many amazing National Parks and nice towns. I really like Bellingham, Olympia, the San Juans (especially Orcas) Port Angeles-Sequim, Brookings, Hiouchi/Gasquet (my area), and Arcata.

I would recommend strongly considering fire risk and how these may be realistically mitigated. I’d also try to gauge your tolerance for long periods of dark rainy weather in the winter. Having snowy mountains above the clouds nearby to ski on or go east of into a rain shadow is a nice way to mitigate this light deprivation. The ability to choose your own weather 3/4 of the time is one of the best parts of where I live in Del Norte County (far NW CA), with Hiouchi being the closes town. If you’d like any more info for around here, PM me. I know a good local realtor with permaculture values and homesteading experience.

John, this is why I would use compost extract instead, bubbled while applying right away just to keep it mixed in a 50gal container elevated above biochar pile. Extract is more diverse and resilient than tea, as it has not been adapted to being fed or aerated. I only use tea for foliar applications, as its main benefit is natural glues for sticking to plants (based on my interpretation of an Elaine Ingham paper). The carbon and most nutrients are in the char along with N in the air is abundant microbe food. This also selects for microbes that can acquire these on their own. Charging with Nitrogen will reduce the amount of N fixators, and Phosphorus will reduce P accumulators etc.

For soil amendement biochar, I inoculate when the quench is down to 90F with Johnson Su compost extract that has been supplemented with fish hydrolysate, rock dust and kelp for a diverse compliment of microbes and nutrients. Sometimes I add some dynamic accumulator weed infused apple cider or white wine vinegar at 1/1500 dilution. This usually gets mixed into new compost piles or layered with aged compost during topdressing. I also add the extract inoculated char to my chicken bedding, which then goes into my Johnson Su compost. For water decontamination or filtration biochar I just use no manure Johnson compost (except worm castings). I am open to learning better alternatives.

Eino Kenttä wrote:

John Suavecito wrote:Interesting idea, Jay. I have heard of biochar/charcoal being used as a filter for liquids many times.  It does seem to lower the stench of something like manure, but there seems to be a liquid factor.  My apples are in a non-air tight shed, so I don't think it's a big factor in my case.  

I seem to remember reading something somewhere here about storing apples in wood ash to make them last longer, because wood ash either absorbs or breaks down ethylene? Since char contains some ash and is also very porous, maybe it could work?

I read about storing cabbages in wood ash in Sepp Holzer’s book. I would also think some calcium is inherently going to be applied with biochar as it usually has some ash content. My understanding of how biochar works would make it reasonable to infer it’s improving the distinctive flavors of varietals much like how wines express themselves in different terroir. The biochar provides homes for diverse microbes and holds nutrients, so when the plant needs a particular thing it just needs to exude sugars (30-50% go into the soil, especially during fruiting) and microbes use that energy to acquire and process nutrients that become available to the plant. A bit like how a person can be their best self when they have a community support system with positive feedback providing what they need when they need it in return for what they contribute.

Dolly will be dearly missed by people of all stripes, and that reflects a life well lived.

This song by Boy Golden is by one of my favorite recent discoveries, who put on a great show at High Sierra Music Festival. It is both incredibly catchy and the lyrics uncannily sum up this moment in time to me:

https://music.apple.com/us/album/suffer/1834678403?i=1834678412

I think the main thing most misunderstand about how this works is the way above ground pruning causes roots to die back proportionally and decompose, enriching the soil from above and below. In the past, large herbivores and ecosystem engineers like elephants, elk, bears and beavers would be common enough and their movement unrestricted to find early succession forests and do this work of their own accord. Now we must do their work and help them return.