Biochar your vegetable beds

I have been gradually furnishing all of my growing areas with biochar. I started with fruit trees, then berry bushes and eventually am covering all of the nooks and crannies.    I just got to a small patch of vegetables this summer.  For 20 years, I have been growing curly mallow, which reseeds itself rather nicely.  It's kind of a wilder lettuce/spinach substitute.  Since I biocharred this patch, they look healthier, I have more plants and they are larger.  They used to show a kind of a disease, which others here warned me about.  They don't show that disease at all after the biocharring.  I am wondering how much of that is just because biochar retains moisture so well, that the plants are less stressed.  Chock up another positive for biochar.

John S
PDX OR

Hi John,
I suspect it is more than just the moisture. Biochar also provides homes for all kinds of micro organisms in the soil. These organisms  in turn help with nutrient availability, which in turn help with the plants health.

John, do you use a certain sized/filtered biochar for your plant application or just add in what you produce how it is?


I've been starting to utilized 'crushed' biochar that I have made by breaking up larger pieces with a stick and adding that to soil. So far so good!

Matt-you're probably right, but it happened so quickly, and these plants don't create as many exudates as a tree, to set up a diverse soil food web.  So I'm wondering if the moisture plays a bigger role here than with trees.

I crush the biochar in a very large 3' x 3 1/2' burlap bag under my car wheels. It gets them to be about 1/4" to 1/2" in size, which is what I'm going for.

John S
PDX OR

Matt-you're probably right, but it happened so quickly, and these plants don't create as many exudates as a tree, to set up a diverse soil food web So I'm wondering if the moisture plays a bigger role here than with trees.

I am far from a soil scientist, and that makes sense too. The added moisture would help on several levels :)

Still... many microbes can double their population in 30 minutes. If you had good soil already and made it that much better... I wouldn't be surprised to see changes in a few days. I'm not sure how fast you are talking about seeing the changes.

Bottom line. Biochar is some pretty great stuff to add to soil :)