Can Biochar Improve Soil, Create Income, & Reduce Carbon Emissions?

[@nchestercountynews4955]

I've been making biochar from woodchips delivered free from chipdrop using a 55 gallon drum and 30 gallon drum, then soaking in chicken manure, grass clippings, LAB, leaf mold and compost tea combination (worm castings).

[@snookmeister55]

Lots of work but interesting work, 55/30 with an Afterburner.

[@thetruemorg]

In so many ways there is so much waste wood that I see in rural Oregon. I'm slowly moving to do homesteading sort of stuff and something useful like this kiln would be a fantastic way to deal with overgrown land I've seen. Really great video

[@liznyp6209]

We’ve made it and didn’t realize lol. We do a burn pile once in a while and get tired waiting for it all to burn to ash. We hose down the pile to put it out and are left with chunks of bio char. I have put some in the garden but didn’t know how much I could use because I also put ash from the woodstove in there too.

[@chickenhawkfarmstead8478]

Been making lots of this with a 55 gallon metal drum. No mods need just got to keep feeding it. Biochar is great stuff

[@ohio_gardener]

I've been using Biochar for years in my raised garden beds, and it has made a tremendous improvement in the health of the plants and an increase in production. I have recently experimented with pulverizing Royal Oak Lump Charcoal and activating it to make more Biochar, and it appears to be working great.

[@SaltyPeace71]

I made a "Fire Ring Kiln" 3'w x 30"h. It worked great. I made about 2/3 of a cubic yard of char in about 3 hours. I had to run the water hose on it for at least 20 min to cool it off.

[@snookmeister55]

Steam activation increases surface area while you douse.

[@MeanOldLady]

I basically turn mine into terra preta pits when I want a new garden spot. We dig out a good-sized pit, usually around 10x10 or 10x20 & fill it full of logs, sticks, free wood chips & broken pots if we've got 'em & burn everything & quench with dirt & fire. We'll do this a couple times a year until it's full & weathers the winter, then we plant in it come spring.

[@itsno1duh]

I was in the Yahoo biochar group with Kelpie back in the day (still am just not active) Love her device! Always improvising! I mostly do leave burning with a biochar focus. Small piles , burn fast, turn a bit and douse. They immediately attract a halo of tiny flying creatures as if an energy magnet! At the end of season I had charred all day but put out the last 3 piles halfburned. Come spring all the charred to completion piles were still loose usable chips of char! great but I happened to kick one of the half burned piles and it was solid, consumed by mycellium and was glued to the woodland floor! All three were like that. My brain said WOW! THAT is what I want! No smoky smoldering piles just fast burn half done WIN_WIN!

[@jamesstidham4191]

I'm a firm believer in bio char I make it myself. I believe it can be used to slow down the loss of topsoil which leads to the land turning to desert. Myself I use the pit method I can make a hundred gallons per burn, a burn takes me about 3 hours and I let my chickens activate for me . do have a bless day.

[@mrbisse1]

Well done! Nice and clear. Also on the part of your interviewee.

[@lovingit1538]

Great video. Ty.

[@tradermunky1998]

Super cool!

[@jeffrobodine239]

You can also grow mushrooms like oyster, shiitake, reishi ect.

[@jbbrown7907]

You are sharing all my secrets. Biochar is the best thing since sliced bread on the homestead.

[@StonerSmurfin]

@RedToolHouse you don't just have to sell it as biochar. It's lump charcoal, so you can also sell in bags for people to use in their grill for cooking during the summer. Lump charcoal is a huge seller and better than those little charcoal briquettes when it comes to flavor on the finished product.

[@cekfraun]

Very interesting video, Troy. I keep hearing about biochar, and have even watched Ben Hollar making biochar on his homestead, but I didn't really understand much about it. Thanks for all of this valuable information!

[@seesafar9912]

Be careful with any "Waste" product. Heavy metals were found in some types of char, any "Char". Check for heavy metals in the "Char" product before use.

[@johnjdumas]

I could regularly water and fertilize my tomatoes because tomatoes HATE irregular care. 5% biochar buffers irregularities and makes me look like I know what I am doing! Put it in with compost to let the volatiles evaporate and the bacteria establish.

[@angelgarcia4848]

Not all chars are equal. Depending on the stock used to make chad it could have a greater or worse affect then other chars. For instance char made from sugar cane stocks has been shown to be the most promising for cherry trees but less effective from just simple wood chars. Also the process of making char is called pyrolysis. It’s basically depriving oxygen to your stock till it crystallizes in texture.

[@itsno1duh]

It is a broad and exciting science once the potential is properly assessed.

[@sunnys3727]

thats snake oil

[@angelgarcia4848]

@@sunnys3727 take it up with the empirical research, I’m not the scientist.

[@integrityboerboelkennels3521]

Troy you asked the question of," how the government maybe involved?" Well here in Fayetteville, NC if you are burning on your property, the County Code Enforcement, the NC DEQ and the EPA all comes out. They ask questions about the material being burned, if it came from your land or brought in from somewhere else. If you brought it in this where the fines begin. Burning debris from another site is illegal. Then they would have you take it to County Landfill and pay to have it disposed of. They will chip and turn it to compost then sell it back to the public.

[@bret354]

usually, biochar is made by heating wood in the absence of air.

[@RedToolHouse]

Crucible method is one way of producing Biochar. That is the process I use to make lump coal for the smoker

[@alexkerpe930]

I not understand the cylindrical system for making the char. MOst of the time you see the cone shape system where you add layer after layer so the layer at 5he lowest not get ir anymore or the retort system. First time i see this one here and would like to know something like efficiency comparrison. Because this one shown here looks very practical. But as i understand you put everything in from the beginning? That would mean the pile wil burn all the way to the lowest zone?

[@koltoncrane3099]

From a pure efficiency perspective skillcult channel did like a six foot trench by four feet wide. Ya add a layer of logs and burn and when its coals ya add another layer of logs until the trench is filled to the top. Then dowse it with water or cover with metal and dirt to put out the oxygen. I’ve done the trench method and burned a large load of wood on a 20 foot trailer. I loaded the trailer up maybe four feet with logs, branches etc and burned in a trench for six hours maybe haha maybe eight. Then I soaked all the charcoal in a large like ten foot round horse water trough. That’s been the most effective method I’ve seen that’s cheap. You could make a large metal tank 30 foot long and then burn natural gas or something and do bulk production. If ya got the money you could just make activated carbon while you’re at it.

[@johnthomas5806]

thanks for this information

[@aspendell209]

I am familiar with making charcoal for fuel. It requires an aenerobic (sealed) chamber for the wood chunks which is then heated from the outside turning it to charcoal and not releasing the gasses and other pollutants into the air. The biochar methods you are referring to seem to just burn the wood in an open pit, exposed to the air (for combustion), and hence releasing all those valuable distillates and gasses from the combustion process into the air. Since you lose all the combustibles from the char, it wouldn't be useful as say BBQ charcoal. But it seems to me that the process of creating the biochar releases as many harmful gasses into the atmosphere as it potentially saves later making it a zero-sum gain. Can you speak to this?

[@RedToolHouse]

You are core t about the crucible method. That is how I make lump coal for my smoker. The theory behind Biochar production in this manner is that waste wood allow to decay in the forest releases 95% of its carbon. Pyrolysis converts some of the wood into active carbon that takes much longer to break down. Biochar suspends carbon release. The wood waste needs to be under 25% moisture content so methane is not released during the burn.

[@jimputnam2044]

My thoughts exactly. Chip it and mix with compost and spread it all the carbon is in the soil.

[@FelonyVideos]

The key here is that the carbon itself is captured and used as a matrix directly in the soil. Composting eventually releases all of the carbon as CO2. (I'm not a greenhouse gas weirdo, and I know climate scientists are lying through their teeth, but chemistry is chemistry, whether you believe the "other" lies or not). When carbon is captured as C2, it stays that way a very long time (hundreds of years), unless you reheat it to many hundreds of degrees to force it to convert to CO2 and CO. That never happens in your garden. In the meantime, pure carbon acts like a perfectly Ph-neutral sponge/matrix that allows all the other great stuff to have a massive microscopic platform to grow on - even water loves to fill in all the many gaps in the carbon and just stay there, slowly releasing as the garden dries out during drought. Much of the carbon retains the original mechanical matrix of the original wood - all the micro-tubules that are in a tree trunk or limb (or even leaf) - you can imagine the water-holding capacity of that structure. And the carbon is so chemically neutral and passive at normal temperatures that it basically has no other effect on your garden chemistry - it doesn't react with and suck out all your existing NPK and other minerals. Well, it does absorb some of them until it reaches it's own saturation level and then stops absorbing, but it doesn't act like a catalyst, continually eating away at the good stuff in your soil. It's some beautiful stuff, and this is coming from a climate-denier, so consider that, too. It's not a scam by the nature freaks, or else I would be railing against it as garbage science. This is the real deal. The South American Indians/Aztecs/Amazons called it Terra Preta (Pretty Earth?).

[@itsno1duh]

There are times and place for the pefectly pyrolised burn but there trully is so much wood trimming out there that it's not possible logistically to get it to a retort and it ends up fire hazard and/or rotting waste. A properly made fire is still pretty air tight with practice and knowledge... When possible a proper retort allows energy utilization and a more directed burn quality but you will find many different settings where this type fire initiates earthlings into making their own char very similar to the great South American communities! Combining char with a community's humanure was probably the catalyst for terre pretta... MHO

[@sumakwelvictoria5635]

When you burn wood about 40 to 50% is turned into biochar. It releases 50 to 60% carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. When biochar is mixed with compost and it matures. It starts collecting carbon and oxygen and other gases from the atmosphere. It slows down the complete decomposition of organic matter to at least a decade or more. So the tendency is that it keeps on collecting carbon mass and builds up soil with a lot of carbon. Every year it traps more than 50 to above 100% in carbon. In a decade it can exceed more than a 1000% of carbon sequestration. That is nigh permanent carbon sequestration.

[@johnjdumas]

It is holes. It absorbs buffers and then slow releases water and nutrients but has none of its own. Similar to Hugelkulture. It is like a capacitor in an electronic circuit.

[@plan_b_portugal]

If I used a ring of fire, I would get into a lot of trouble. Firstly I am not allow to make a fire on our one acre block, and if somebody sees the smoke, would alert the fire brigade, later they would send me a hefty invoice for turning up here and see it is a false alarm. How can I make it without ANY smoke?

[@davidkirkman2223]

So my question is wood that does not burn completely ( the black charcoal looking stuff) would that be biochar?

[@bret354]

yes

[@RedToolHouse]

Yes, the charcoal is the beginning of it. It is Biochar once you put it with nutrients (manure, compost, etc). Ideally, you want all charcoal and not some charcoal on the end of a piece of wood. That is why a complete burn is needed but not taken to ash

[@davidkirkman2223]

For some reason my wood stove does not burn all wood to ashes and I get about 1/6 char and 5/6 ashes, now I can not sift and through

[@jimputnam2044]

Would not chipping and spreading with the manure from your farm not do the same thing. No fire no smoke no carbon released into the air? just wood chips rotting and releasing carbon over time into soil?

[@mbailey12341]

That’s going to be more of a “brown carbon” that will just break down over time. The biochar is going to stay put much longer. The brown carbon would still be better than nothing though although it is temporary

[@HoffAppFarm]

Stellar!

[@stephenmccoy372]

Hey Troy, what is the NRCS? We are an up and coming farm with a mill a couple hours on up in the state from ya. This would way better than just burning or chipping the slats!

[@RedToolHouse]

Link is in the video description. It is the National Resources Conservation Service. Ya'll up near Motown?

[@robertrutter1048]

If you use a outdoor boiler you have access to biochar.

[@priayief]

Am I supposed to believe that using biochar in my healthy garden soil will improve my vegetable production significantly? I have yet to see or hear of a peer-reviewed trial that shows this. I'm not interested in the theory, I'm interested in the results.

[@andrewsusen3154]

Whats the difference between biochar and campfire waste?

[@RedToolHouse]

Nothing really. If you have a good burn on wood that is turned to charcoal, it is the same thing. Campfires tend to burn to ash or burn one end to charcoal and the other is still wood, but you can find good charcoal from a fire that has burned out or was quenched.

[@cekfraun]

@@RedToolHouse That's good to know. I am going to start adding the char left from our outdoor fires up at the lake into my raised garden beds there. Yay!

[@TheSmagzilla]

What's biochar worth in 1lb bag or 5 lb bag

[@RedToolHouse]

Last time a checked a cubic yard of Biochar was $125

[@BS.-.-]

There making biochar out of pallets?

[@zanepaxton7452]

Yes, but it’s potentially toxic depending on how it’s treated, or not. There’s a 2 letter code stamped on them; “HT” is Heat Treated” which is fine. Canada doesn’t allow any chemical treatment of pallets.

[@showaltermicro]

carbon credits came from ENRON

[@bettinaripperger4159]

And we know how their accounting system is

[@charlescoker7752]

Misleading. That chunk of of Charcoal you are holding, only becomes biochar after it has absorbed the microbes, and other organic fertilizers. Someone may put what they think is biochar, and end up tying up the fertilizer for 3 years.

[@22fingers]

and if that someone tried to blame a single youtube video they watched for teaching them wrong i would laugh very loudly at them

[@andyjoubert9410]

Making biochar increases CO2 in the 1st place so?

[@22fingers]

but it locks carbon in the ground you can also produce syngas very climate friendly , i was always taught you garden matter should increase year on year instead of decrease like it does using mineral fertilizers

[@RichSobocinski]

Carbon credits are a scam

[@stevecobb7844]

Can you explain your point of view? Who is scamming and who is the victim? I am just learning about this and want to know your thoughts too.

[@RedToolHouse]

The opinion of carbon credits vary dramatically. Looking at the option pragmatically, however, if a company wants to pay me to process waste material for the betterment of my soil, then I will take full advantage of that.

[@a15thcenturysuitofgothicarmor]

​@Steve Cobb it's the same with "carbon offset" neither has shown any real affect on emissions. But you know what would? Holding the countries that polluted the most like China accountable. But no one wants to actually do that because they love Chinese money...

[@a.m.5439]

​@@RedToolHouse exactly how I feel.

[@Sue-ec6un]

So, we live on Earth. Where does the carbon go when you put it in the ground? Where does the carbon go when you put it in the air? On the same note, what is the water cycle on Earth? If Earth is nothing but closed systems then how do these things increase or decrease ever? Very interestingly, the carbon produced by the world of the dinosaurs is the same carbon governments imagine they can somehow reduce now. Yes, it's a scam. Is there carbon floating in space, polluting, say, the moon? No The carbon they want to reduce are humans, carbon based life forms in general. But it will never be reduced, whether ash or decomposing bodies, the Earth will absorb all that carbon again again.

[@snookmeister55]

Too bad the word activated is being used in reference to charging with nutrients. Activated charcoal and charged charcoal have different definitions, except in biochar world.

[@ryankremer9832]

Isn’t this just about making charcoal and skipping over the biological aspects that make it “bio?” Can’t sell this product as biochar until its inoculated with life somehow, right?

[@RedToolHouse]

Yes. Which we talk about that in the video

[@grantmeyer6097]

Comment

[@joshseigel]

You are making bio char kinda. The real way it's make is without oxygen. Get a 30 gallon drum fill it with chunks of wood. Put the 30 gallon in a 55 gallon drum. Fill the 55 gallon drum with wood. Burn the outside wood it cooks the wood in the 30 gallon drum. There going to be pot ass in your char when you burn it and put it out.

[@joshseigel]

Worms are the way to go with the char. It has to be charged in my opinion or it just takes for the first year.

[@RedToolHouse]

I use the crucible method for making lump coal for my smoker

[@spicyroads]

Burning wood to save the environment

[@BigRigRich]

NRCS?

[@justinnickel6237]

Its carbon with the oxygen burned out of it and basically worthless.

[@ptlmedianowii8141]

carbon as a climate change agent is irrelevant. Greta Thunberg is a climate activist and distant relative of Svante August Arrhenius Nobel prize winner and 'the first to use the principles of physical chemistry to estimate the extent to which increases in the atmospheric carbon dioxide are responsible for the Earth's increasing surface temperature.' it's all in the family so to say.

[@oshitt1]

Biochar, carbon credits my ass

[@thomasfields2082]

Don't burn wet wood she says as the video shows a guy wetting down his burn with a hose. 😂

[@22fingers]

don't burn wet wood is quite different to don't wet burnt wood don't you think haha

[@charlescoker7752]

Seems I can find just as many videos saying it does not work as those who say its wonderful. Usually those who claim it is great are selling it.

[@22fingers]

my suggestion if someone is teaching it for free you wont be out of pocket if you try it and i think while you may find some people claiming its nothing to right home about you will struggle to find anyone suggesting it is harmful, the few studies that have been done are very inconclusive but the research is still very much in early days ,this practice has been done for centuries in australia and africa and probably most everywhere else for a long time

[@patrickcalhoon3512]

It’s charcoal, changing the name adds no benefit.

[@RedToolHouse]

It is biochar once it has been mingled with nitrogen sources like manure. This adds value and makes it more than charcoal

[@thomasfields2082]

Seems like this lady just picked some buzz words and put them together. Biochar, carbon cedits and of course block chain. Lol. 😂

[@georgecarlin2656]

Jesus Christ dude, you sound like an environmentalist working out his carbon emissions grant, not like a gardener who wants to give a good advice to other gardeners. Not to mention that carbon emissions is yet another bogus scam against poor countries because rich countries outsource their dirty industries there.

[@RedToolHouse]

I am no enviro nut but if I can get some of my tax money back by playing what ever game is popular at the time especially if it involves waste material I have copious amounts of, I will do it every time.

[@georgecarlin2656]

@@RedToolHouse I see, but how do you monetize your, say, 20 wheelbarrows of biochar that you put into your orchard? Do you have a gov official sitting there filming you doing it? Or do they believe you just because you said that you added biochar?

[@RedToolHouse]

That is the "Game" part of all of this. The documentation can be a video I create and submit based on specific guidelines. Moisture testing of the starting by products, weighing finished product, etc. It has all kinds of potential issues and opportunity for shenanigans (just like any other gov. program).

[@vanrally81]

Don't listen to these right wing haters. You're disposing of waste, building local ecosystems, and helping the atmospheric composition. They can get all pissy about politics if they want, but it's not relevant. This is about science and survival.@@RedToolHouse

[@XavierIsraelMatamoros]

I could care less about carbon emissions. The premise, the conspiracy theory of climate change is a lie.

[@peggypastime1278]

And? Soooo you care some? ;). This is totally interesting and helpful to improve gardening/farming. Less amendments to spend money and time on! I care about THAT! Thanks for your info, Troy! Appreciate it.

[@XavierIsraelMatamoros]

@@peggypastime1278 Love saving money. Don't buy the carbon lie. Life is carbon based. The agenda is anti-life.

[@stevebreedlove9760]

Climate change isnt a conspiracy theory. Jfc.

[@joeford7350]

BS

[@RedToolHouse]

Care to elaborate?

[@peggypastime1278]

@@RedToolHouse He was saying Best Stuff! He appreciates your info regarding saving time/money on amending gardens/farms!!