"Biochar aggressively sucks all nutrients from the soil and thus should never be used before infusing it with a nutrient solution"
Biochar is pyrolysis-created charcoal that is used as a soil amendment. That's all. It's ground-up charcoal.
Charcoal's main molecular feature is that it slurps up small molecules around it like an ultra-dense black-hole-like sponge. Except, unlike a black hole, charcoal
does have an upper-limit to how much it can suck up.
Once it sucks up as many nutrients as it can hold, then it plateaus out and then begins to degrade again - slowwwwwwly releasing those nutrients into its surroundings.
It's why you see 'biochar' also being sold as 'activated charcoal for plants' - because that's exactly what it is.
By putting charcoal into your compost pile (or into a bucket of nutrient slurry), you can ensure that the nutritious molecules that fungi and bacteria need to enrich your soil are
held in place, by being captured inside the
carbon structure of the charcoal. Instead of being washed out by the rain, the charcoal is a slow-release reserve of nutrients. Then, when the bacteria/fungi finish processing their meal and poot out a little bit of slightly-more-broken-down molecular food, nearby plants get a very steady stream of bioavailable nutrients - and the excess nutrients the plants don't use are sucked up again by the carbon shelves of charcoal that were recently emptied by bacteria/fungi, until the shelves break down entirely.
Basically, Charcoal is a molecular pantry.
You 'Charge' it, or 'Stock' it, and turn it into biochar by soaking charcoal in nutrients that microflora crave.
This stockpiles nutrients in a place that won't rinse away as easily as free-floating molecules would.
Pretty much all charcoal, molecularly, can become biochar. (Charcoal is wood coal &
ash, not to be confused with
coal, which is a burnable rock mined from the ground)
Wood becomes charcoal when you heat it up to high temps when there's little to no oxygen. The wood partially combusts, removing water & other stuff, leaving behind nearly pure carbon.
By putting un-stocked/un-charged 'biochar' (aka charcoal) into your garden, the charcoal shelves stock themselves by sucking nutrients out of nearby soils - usually depleting them entirely. (ouch)
That's why we soak it in compost or nutrient solution first.
Personally, I don't call it 'bio-char' until
after it's been soaked in compost or whatever nutrient slurry you want to soak it in. Before that, it's just fine wood charcoal for MAKING biochar.
Selling charcoal & nutrient solution separately, and calling the former 'biochar' is like selling a betty crocker box of dry cake mix and calling it a wedding cake, and then reminding you to also buy eggs &
milk as if it's an aside rather than a key ingredient of, y'know, having an edible cake in exchange for money.
1
