Biochar

[Pops]

I tried to google why 1 would add this to a soil but coulsnt find any info. What are the benefits of this, I'm so curious now lol

I use it to feed the plant, by way of micro in the soil, as how it is broken down. that's for someone with much more info then I have. I know it helps and has been working for me in my grows.
there are more people here at AFN that use, all kinds of things to get micro's in soil.

@Pops

 

[Pops]

i mix baby food rice cereal in my soil.
@Pops

That's way we are all here to pass ideas back and forth to get new info and use it or not. This plant can be cut, bent, soil, hydro coco, through it all the plant we all love still grows.
@Pops

 

[Dudeski]

Withstands some abuse! A 4 ft tall plant that's called dwarf. Now it's got a broke neck

 

[Dudeski]

I have no idea what I did to get so much spacing between nodes

 

[MickJ]

I have no idea what I did to get so much spacing between nodes

I got one doing that now lol, I should have got the light closer I think.

Sent from my comfy chair.
[emoji16][emoji41]

 

[Dudeski]

At times mine were very close, just not directly over the main cola .

I'm very happy today, got my basalt and a book to read! The Intelligent Gardener. Pretty sure it wasn't named after me

Thanks KIS

 

[Rev. Green Genes]

I toured a local biochar facility not long ago with the county extension agent. It was pretty awesome. The machinery was beautiful, it's a four colum pyrolosis machine that intakes wood debris, pallets, chips, sawdust, etc. and it goes through several rounds of pyrolisis. It produces several outputs. 'red diesel', biochar, and graphene. Red diesel is a red colored biodiesel fuel requiring no extra processing, but currently people won't buy it because of its color. (go figure, it's America) Graphene is nano material which is comprised of tightly bound 1 moelule thick chains of carbon. It is used for making semiconductors, but it is an amazing carbon source for soil.

put the biochar through one more circuit, you get graphene.

 

[thetreeman]

 

[KIS]

I used it as a feed for fungi, sprinkled on top of the soil then spraying on myco wettable powder and molasses. Actually no I used ground barley malt. The baby cereal was suggested and I used what I had and it worked. It's an easily -available food source for microbes I guess.

One thing that was floating around the Compost Tea community a few years back was to use "Baby Oatmeal" or oat flour as a way to increase fungal growth. Tim Wilson did some microscope work on this and we were unable to determine if the fungal hyphae it fed were beneficial or not but at the very least you would see an increase in bacterial feeding nematodes and flagellates, so it was still worth trying out.

Just one thing I wanted to mention too, if you can put the mycorrhiza right in the root zone that's really best. It's a root symbiont so it needs to come in direct contact with roots. Trying to get the spores to make it down through the soil to the rhizosphere is just an extra step and you'll have some spore loss. Hope that helps!

 

[Jraven]

One thing that was floating around the Compost Tea community a few years back was to use "Baby Oatmeal" or oat flour as a way to increase fungal growth. Tim Wilson did some microscope work on this and we were unable to determine if the fungal hyphae it fed were beneficial or not but at the very least you would see an increase in bacterial feeding nematodes and flagellates, so it was still worth trying out.

Just one thing I wanted to mention too, if you can put the mycorrhiza right in the root zone that's really best. It's a root symbiont so it needs to come in direct contact with roots. Trying to get the spores to make it down through the soil to the rhizosphere is just an extra step and you'll have some spore loss. Hope that helps!

what I was doing was using the fine ground "flour" as feed for an introduced myco product. Flour sprinkled on the soil, then myco powder mixed with water and a little molasses sprayed on the soil surface. Then, when the hyphae were developed on the surface , turning it all in. This is in the 20 gallon totes my soil is stored in. Does that make sense lol.
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