Biochar in the backyard
I've been intrigued by terra
preta
ever since I first heard about it, and am equally intrigued by its
modern grandchild, biochar. Last year, Mark and I attended a
workshop on biochar and came away with a lot of information about how biochar is
used in large scale agriculture.
I resolved to put biochar to use in our 2011 garden, then got bogged
down in the details of how to tweak the technology to fit the backyard
scale. Did I need to build a special piece of equipment to make
the biochar? Did I need to grind the biochar? To charge or
activate it? Is biochar compatible with no-till or does it have
to be worked into the soil? And what exactly happens when you put
biochar in the soil?
In this week's lunchtime
series, I do my best to answer those questions. I delved into
several books and websites in the research process, but the ones I
think you'd enjoy the most are:
Lehmann, Johannes, and Stephen
Joseph. 2009. Biochar
for Environmental Management. Earthscan Publications,
Ltd., London.
| This post is part of our Biochar in the Backyard lunchtime series.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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