Fertilizing biochar with urine
I've
discussed the benefits of
biochar before, but as I did more research, I realized that
gardening with biochar isn't as simple as taking charcoal and throwing
it in your soil. Instead, you need to prepare the charcoal a bit
to get best results. The first step in preparation is soaking the
charcoal --- charcoal is naturally hydrophobic, so you have to overcome
that barrier to water. The second step is to add some kind of
high nitrogen input to the charcoal to give the first microorganisms
something to eat. You can do both preparation steps at once using
urine.
I
filled a four gallon bucket with biochar and poured a gallon
of urine over top. The charcoal chunks snapped, crackled, and
popped just like rice cereal as they soaked up the liquid, and only a
scant half cup was left in the bottom of the bucket a few hours
later. I'll apply the mixture to the garden soon and hope that
microorganisms get to work on the fertilized biochar in time to see
results in this year's garden. (Much more on biochar to come in
next week's lunchtime series.)
| This post is part of our Urine in the Garden 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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