Amy Gardener

I'm new to biochar and probably just over the experience level of the kids at your school orchards. I do have a 20 gal dark green garbage can on my south wall that is full of biochar and the special liquid inoculant that I have concocted. Any floating char is weighed down with a smaller garbage can lid with a rope for pulling the lid out. I don't rinse the biochar with water; just mix the dripping stuff into the garden.
The liquid is not freezing on our mid-twenties Fahrenheit nights. This could be because I followed your suggestion to add fermentation liquid to my inoculant which probably has a little alcohol in it (rotting fruit from my fruit trees and unusable corn) thus lowering the freezing temperature slightly. But mostly, I attribute the no-freeze results to the very dark 20 gal garbage can. Even on a cold day, the dark container absorbs the heat of the New Mexico sunshine so by late in the day, the container body is actually quite warm to the touch. Like you John, I harvest the biochar at the end of the day with the heat radiating from the south wall.

Thanks to all the volunteers!
Like Douglass, I donate excess produce and I'd like to participate in some kind of community with human contact. In addition to reading the permie experiences that are shared here, I learned so much from the experiences given in the ~half hour documentary, Together We Grow: The Story of Common Unity by Happen Films.
This window into the lives of volunteers and recipients was mind-expanding and very moving to me. The film also offers an alternative model - The ReMakery - to traditional food banks.
IMO, well worth watching!

Thank you for your suggestions, John and Doug. I am integrating the ideas offered and appreciate your thoughtful replies.
Consistent with Doug's experience, I did harvest abundant corn, beans, and squash from last year's 200 sq ft garden next to this new 200 sq ft plot, despite the high ph. The soil with added horse manure compost (soil organic matter) has produced well. This new plot will have biochar and compost so I am interested in comparing the results.
The older garden did require an exceptional amount of water so I hope that John's experience with the water holding capacity of biochar comes true for this desert garden.
I'm learning more each season!

Congratulations on your efforts to bring down the ph in your fields Doug. Your dedication to testing, recording the inputs, testing again, then recording the soil changes are really admirable.
Now I am wondering about the scale of our respective projects and how that influences choices to achieve our goals.
Reading your posts, it sounds like you are running a real farm and working to amend previously farmed soil that may have been depleted or changed. Soil recovery sounds like the dream of the professional organic farmer and you are achieving that vision. Your clear guidance will help all readers optimize their outcomes with a land recovery goal. Your solutions are elegantly direct.
In my case, I am working a 1 acre property with a desert garden that is 200 sq ft. After clearing the dead saltbush in this area then burning them, along with some fruit tree trimmings, to char, I realize that I need some kind of living inoculant that can populate the micro-pores of that charcoal to achieve a living soil. The inoculants for biochar may come from decomposed horse manure but I thought, maybe, adding something extra (I'm thinking about a very small and local scale) could help build a tiny island of living soil that now includes little bits of charcoal. So the question arises, what can I add that is readily available in my local environment that could add life to my wanna-be biochar and, ultimately, the soil? It is a meandering journey! I'm using up the debris on the property and trying to reincorporate it into the land as biochar. This approach is really an extra step to contemporary land recovery: why even bother with biochar?  Well that's the funny thing: I'm super curious what I can do with the stuff that is already here in the yard.
In my case, I have a bag of soil sulfur sitting in my garage that came from the local feed store a mile away. This probably is not really a locally produced product but it is one that I happen to have and I'm wondering if I could amend my soil with that and do no harm. Alternatively, I could try some other household (homemade) acidifying compost additives that others have mentioned but have no real data or long-term experience to show results like those that you have achieved with the Blackearth humic/fulvic acid and/or gypsum.
What I've learned here is that we probably need lots of options to repurpose the products that accumulate over time in a semi-suburban consumer culture. The farmer may have the best options with the most data supporting the professional choices. But there is a delightful challenge in the smallest scale experiments to improve a little garden using what shows up.

Hello Pearl.
Your grocery puzzle has occupied my mind all morning while doing chores. Thanks for the brain challenge!
What appeared to my mind’s eye is a long teeter-totter-slide that runs next to the stairs. The slide is made of a long aluminum ladder gifted to you from the local fire department for saving a cat. Over the step-rungs are lightweight round repurposed PVC pipe pieces that form moveable rollers. At the street end of the slide, is a long narrow crate large enough to hold the bounty from your weekly shopping trip.
Now, for purposes of health and wellness, you opt to gently walk up the stairs.
Here at the top end of the slide next to the stairs, you have secured an empty light-weight water tank that can tilt without spilling to accommodate the slope of the hill when being partially filled.
Effortlessly, I see you grab the garden hose and fill the tank until the water weight exceeds the grocery bin weight and the groceries roll to the water tank near your front door. You then empty the grocery bin and take a well earned break.
A little later, I see you attaching a garden hose to the tank then turning the valve so the water refreshes your beautiful garden until the street-side end of the teeter-totter drops and the empty bin rolls down the slide.
Suddenly, you roll down the slide yourself, hop into your car then speed away.

Thank you all for your replies John, Les and Doug. In my case (as John alluded), the land and ground water have an excess of calcium as well as magnesium (limescale everywhere). Sulphur without calcium is necessary in my case but other readers without the excess may like the gypsum option.
Doug, the background that you provided is helpful in expanding my knowledge of options (apparently Northwestern New Mexico is a humate mining region). I will look at the viability of local sustainable options. Thanks for expanding the possibilities.

Working on a 200 sq ft garden over alkaline (ph 7.8) silt-sand, I just covered a 2" layer of 50/50 silt-sand biochar mix with a 4" layer of composted horse manure. The resulting planting mix is probably high in salt and ph so I'm interested in reviving this thread.
My plan is to hose the bed down (we only get 11" rain per year), then let the compost filter into the biochar for 6 months of inoculation. About a month before planting, I intend to add soil sulfur to bring the ph down then use a broad fork to blend the top 12". My goal is neutral ph.
Anyone see a problem with this approach or have suggestions to optimize results? Thanks for sharing any experience!

I'm so happy that you brought this topic up, Jen! The extensive use of plastic in "organic" gardening is really heartbreaking to me. I too am experimenting with other approaches.
The posts here have given me an idea....
In addition to needing a liner, I cannot seem to get most of the burned wood trimmings tiny enough to be useful in compost. I have a lot of burnt wood that is too difficult and time consuming for me to smash with a heavy sledge hammer or a tamper. The wood is not beautiful as in the video Greg linked in. But this scrappy pile of burnt branches and roots could be perfect for a liner or base layer to my new strawberry bed. Critters and ants seem to avoid burnt wood. With respect to lining raised beds, I will use permaculture's "the problem is the solution" approach to repurpose overly chunky biochar. Thanks for all the great ideas here!

Judith writes,

As a possible preventative, I have, just this fall, cleared an area a foot or so from the trunk down to bare dirt and will try to keep it that way...the idea I read was if you could keep the larvae in the soil stirred up they wouldn't make it to the trunk? doubtful but not a lot of effort to do.

I have had good luck clearing away the debris about half way to the tree's trip line to keep borers away from peaches, plums, apricots, cherries and almonds. My understanding is that the peach tree moths lay eggs in and around the lower part of the trunk throughout spring, summer and early fall. Removing the ground litter near the trunk gets rid of some of the eggs, though the base of the tree remains vulnerable to borers under the bark. Carefully examining the base of the tree while the ground is cleared allows me to see if any sap is running. When I do see a bubble of sap, I assume a borer is at work. I pull the sap away and use a heavy duty stainless steel basting syringe (cooking gadget available at Walmart) to inject neem oil into the hole.
To further protect the ground, I plant garlic around the base of the tree in autumn since I'm clearing the ground anyway and garlic is generally a good bug deterrent. Pulling the garlic in spring is another opportunity to clean up and poke around for signs of larve.
Since using this approach for about 20 years, I have never lost another stone fruit tree. I hope this works for you Judith!

One of the best decisions that I made last year was to invite Stephen out for a few days of work on my acre homestead. I've never met anyone more willing to experiment with vernacular permaculture methods and learn about ancient techniques than Stephen. In addition to following the old ways, he's got plenty of new ideas and perspectives to contribute.
Sorry to those who are hoping for more time in week 3 but I'm looking forward to hosting Stephen again out here in New Mexico.
Thanks for all your commitment to the art and practice of permaculture, Stephen. Your dedication to the craft inspires me to continue.