Douglas Alpenstock

One thing I've noticed at big box stores is the better quality grow mixes loudly declare a percentage of biochar in the mix.

I don't buy this stuff, but I like how it normalizes and promotes biochar as a premium soil additive. It's like a kind of brand recognition in the public mind, regardless of the company selling it.

Hi John S. This is behind a Google login wall. Can you give a few excerpts?

I think the OP should be commended for salvaging as much as possible. Most people would throw the whole works in the dumpster and be done with it.

It's the person on the scene who ultimately gives these items the "sniff test" and decides if they're too far gone for human consumption. If the oils have gone rancid, there isn't much more that can be done.

Hey Palle St Cyer. At first glance, this looks like an amazing resource.

Pardon the reticence of forum members to give "likes." Various schemes come through here daily. It might be an altruistic gesture, or it might be a hook. So it's fair to ask how you pay the bills to host your site, and what your ultimate objective is?

Sometimes things walk away…

WalMart would call it "shrinkage" -- a.k.a. theft.

It's frankly demoralizing to see this at an honour stand. It's not like it's set up in the roughest part of town where people are desperate for food, so you could understand their actions. Nope, this is theft by people who almost certainly have the means to pay but choose to be a-holes. Teach your children better.

Yes, all the literature seems focused on "how to fix acidic soil with biochar."

My searches on "how to reduce biochar acidity / pH" basically boil down to "add elemental sulfur." Which helps me not.

I wonder how the source above came up with their information. Some more details (or links) would be very helpful for those of us trying to reduce pH in our soil.

EDIT: I mistyped above -- my goal is to increase biochar acidity / reduce pH. Apologies for being unclear.

What caught my eye was this:

"Biochar's pH can vary more widely than charcoal, typically ranging from slightly acidic (around 4.6) to moderately alkaline (around 9.3). This variation depends on the feedstock used and the production temperature. "

Creating a low pH (acidic) biochar would be extremely useful. But what feedstock? What temperatures?

Up to now, our electric kettle was the clear winner in both speed and energy efficiency. (Our electric cooktop is lousy for quick jobs.)

However, I recently scrounged a single burner induction hotplate. With the right heavy pot or kettle, I think it may beat our electric kettle for energy efficiency and be fast enough to be convenient. More experiments needed.

I'm afraid I cannot validate or invalidate your numbers. When I plug the same data into three different calulators I get three very different answers. Obviously a lot of assumptions in the models are at play in the background.

Personally, I refuse to panic on the basis of CO2 numbers alone. Sometimes these can mask a more three-dimensional view of problems and solutions.

Urban dwellers, for example, are not required to account for the embodied energy and emissions in their water, sewer, road and concrete sidewalk systems. Nor for the transportation systems that deliver their food. This leads to creative accounting.

I think country dwellers have many more opportunities for common sense offsets and lifestyle choices even though on the surface our CO2 numbers may appear to be higher. For example, I wonder about the impact of all the biochar I have made and incorporated into living soil over decades. And all the wood heat I used instead of natural gas. So I begin to think the downstream impacts over time make my numbers look better than the calculators would have me believe. My 2c.

I would also respectfully note that a lot of brands with secondary manufacturing sources have stepped up their game enormously over the last decade.

Case in point: Henckels International started off as offshore crap many years ago. (I'm a knife sharpener, and I see this stuff as it crosses my workbench.) But through its many iterations the quality has improved to the point where I will happily pluck this brand (knives, steels) out of thrift shops and garage sales.