Man, you can't make too much biochar!
Introducing biochar to your compost pile is absolutely the best way to "inoculate" the biochar with your flora and fauna.
While with the scale that I used to make compost, introducing biochar, was just not going to happen. My biochar compost piles were much smaller, most people here would still consider them quite large, usually about 12yds. The ingredients for those piles were a bit more specialized for an intended purpose. Depending on the time of year, the majority of the ingredients could be garden waste or harvested cover crop material. My cover crops were picked for not only what surface material could be grown, but also taking consideration the massive root structure from the material and also nitrogen fixation in the root structure . Most of the manure for this compost was from small animals and goats and sheep. None of that was from any sort of commercial operation, just people I knew that had animals. The manure for my large scale composting came from dairies, one chicken farm and various people that raised horses in my area. All were picked for their organic growing in their animals.
The fully finished biochar compost would be applied early in the spring and directly incorporated into the soil where the plants were going to be planted. The large scale compost was mainly used as a mulch for weeds.
In the early years of my organic program in my "little" garden, a few acres, You could very easily see where these specialized biochar compost was utilized when the winter crop was sown.
Back then, the only purchased inoculate was what I used to inoculate the hairy vetch seeds for them to fix nitrogen. All bacterial inputs were native and what were already in the soil. Fungal inputs were derived from me hunting leaf litter, logs and the sort.
I found very nice half gallon cans to make my Biochar in. At first I only used hardwood that I actually chipped myself. That was just way too much work, so I just started using the wood chips that the tree trimming company would dump on my property. Way less work intensive and it was something I already had on hand. I had plenty of trees lining the creek running through my place that always had some dead trees for bonfire material. Usually the cans would last about four burns before they got holes in them. Still will work but less efficient.
I still use biochar. I don't make it anymore. I've got a product that I have used on my yard that worked extremely well. it's a product made by the Andersons that is a 50/50 Biochar/humic acid product. It is micronized and then pelletized for ease of application. As soon as water hits it, it completely disintegrates. This is great when using in a lawn. You can topically apply it and it will breakdown and slowly migrate into the soil and inoculate itself as it migrates. As long as you don't work it into the soil, it's not going to tie up anything.
I just throw it in my media when I am amending new media or re-emending used media and letting it cook over a few weeks time. Like with what you did above,, they micronized biochar will be inoculated with the bacteria over that period of cooking time.
Check out my questions or proposal I posted on Tom's thread. Tell me what you think time !
Introducing biochar to your compost pile is absolutely the best way to "inoculate" the biochar with your flora and fauna.
While with the scale that I used to make compost, introducing biochar, was just not going to happen. My biochar compost piles were much smaller, most people here would still consider them quite large, usually about 12yds. The ingredients for those piles were a bit more specialized for an intended purpose. Depending on the time of year, the majority of the ingredients could be garden waste or harvested cover crop material. My cover crops were picked for not only what surface material could be grown, but also taking consideration the massive root structure from the material and also nitrogen fixation in the root structure . Most of the manure for this compost was from small animals and goats and sheep. None of that was from any sort of commercial operation, just people I knew that had animals. The manure for my large scale composting came from dairies, one chicken farm and various people that raised horses in my area. All were picked for their organic growing in their animals.
The fully finished biochar compost would be applied early in the spring and directly incorporated into the soil where the plants were going to be planted. The large scale compost was mainly used as a mulch for weeds.
In the early years of my organic program in my "little" garden, a few acres, You could very easily see where these specialized biochar compost was utilized when the winter crop was sown.
Back then, the only purchased inoculate was what I used to inoculate the hairy vetch seeds for them to fix nitrogen. All bacterial inputs were native and what were already in the soil. Fungal inputs were derived from me hunting leaf litter, logs and the sort.
I found very nice half gallon cans to make my Biochar in. At first I only used hardwood that I actually chipped myself. That was just way too much work, so I just started using the wood chips that the tree trimming company would dump on my property. Way less work intensive and it was something I already had on hand. I had plenty of trees lining the creek running through my place that always had some dead trees for bonfire material. Usually the cans would last about four burns before they got holes in them. Still will work but less efficient.
I still use biochar. I don't make it anymore. I've got a product that I have used on my yard that worked extremely well. it's a product made by the Andersons that is a 50/50 Biochar/humic acid product. It is micronized and then pelletized for ease of application. As soon as water hits it, it completely disintegrates. This is great when using in a lawn. You can topically apply it and it will breakdown and slowly migrate into the soil and inoculate itself as it migrates. As long as you don't work it into the soil, it's not going to tie up anything.
I just throw it in my media when I am amending new media or re-emending used media and letting it cook over a few weeks time. Like with what you did above,, they micronized biochar will be inoculated with the bacteria over that period of cooking time.
Check out my questions or proposal I posted on Tom's thread. Tell me what you think time !
