From scratch only! No premixed bottles of "stuff"
- Thread starter iHearAll
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calliandra
Well-Known Member
So as I understood from the unconventional farmer, the charring process helps bring out the calcium in egg shells.
So since bone is so much heavier on phosphorous, may be a good to keep that step in the process?
It sucks that I have zero patience for chemistry
lol
So since bone is so much heavier on phosphorous, may be a good to keep that step in the process?
It sucks that I have zero patience for chemistry
lol
iHearAll
Well-Known Member
if you extract first, the material breaks down easier later but with less of the desired elements in solid form BUTt you would have a nice liquid extract waiting around to help.So as I understood from the unconventional farmer, the charring process helps bring out the calcium in egg shells.
So since bone is so much heavier on phosphorous, may be a good to keep that step in the process?
It sucks that I have zero patience for chemistry
yea you're probably right... i need more chem practice myself. i've only been through a few college chem courses and never really practiced much outside of home electrical experiments and alkaloid extraction. right now im screwing around with a hemp skin to activated carbonization process. H2SO4+h2o+hemp skin autoclaved @350F for 24 hours turn it into biochar. then the biochar needs to be "activated" with a hydroxide molecule so im using NaOH to permeate into the carbons of the biochar but i need to blast 800-900C while completely removed from any combustable gasses like oxygen. so im pausing right now and trying to get creative here. the lab write up says to use argon flow and a hydrolysis chamber but i dont own anything like that im gravitating towards CO2 since its also inert and i can produce my own from biological sources. the heating step is going to be crucial tho.
my previous failures with this resulted in me making a sodium lamp by accident haha
i mixed the biochar and NaOH in a copper dish and left an arc of plasma to burn between the biochar and a graphite electrode. this made a monochromatic yellow light. i contained this in a glass vacuum chamber and pumped out as much air as my crumby neptune dyna pump (old as hell vacuum pump). well it was cool looking but didnt get the entire pile hot enough to turn into activated carbon so im looking at a large induction coil to heat up an iron chamber or just mix ferrous powder into the biochar/naoh. the ferrous powder will react to the switching magnetic fields of the induction coil and turn molten.
just fucking around trying to manipulate existing proceedures to see if im on the right page.
squirrel
calliandra
Well-Known Member
Haha! That's waaay over my head, good man! sorry
Sounds like mad scientist kind of fun tho!
calliandra
Well-Known Member
Well thanks for sharing it anyway -- now we know that of you
haha
Orphan Crippler
Well-Known Member
I just bought a 4kg bag of restaurant grade hardwood charcoal chunks 
Making my own seems like quite the process and considering my lab/playing with fire and explosive stuff ex is rather low at the moment I think ill leave this to you guys.
Making my own seems like quite the process and considering my lab/playing with fire and explosive stuff ex is rather low at the moment I think ill leave this to you guys.
iHearAll
Well-Known Member
you just going to crush it down?I just bought a 4kg bag of restaurant grade hardwood charcoal chunks
Orphan Crippler
Well-Known Member
Yeh I use a mortar and pestle to crush the chunks into a chunky powder.
I will be adding some to my soil mix that is currently composting in a rubber maid. I have about 50L of mix in there and my question is how much of the char should I use? a L or 2L?
I will be adding some to my soil mix that is currently composting in a rubber maid. I have about 50L of mix in there and my question is how much of the char should I use? a L or 2L?
iHearAll
Well-Known Member
i use up to a third the final desired volume. soooo 2L is the closest to that. a qtr the total volune is pretty standard and you can reapply the same amount every crop rotation. but thatd be if you skipped out on leaf mold or peat or perlite all together. AND you would need to reapply compost+vermicastings. just like making a new base soil but using the previous biochar soil as the sandy loam part. you'll end up with dark sexy wonders of fluff after a few years.
ex for veg seedlings/base soil is 1pail biochar 1 pail compost 1 pail sandy loam 1 pail vermicastings. ammend with rock dust, bokashi, and whatever else you can or want to formulate into it in terms of powdered or compost types. maybe you make some seaweed conoist and add a half pail of that and reduce the other type of compost by half.
basically im just saying you can add as much as you'd like and id recommend more than less.
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DonBrennon
Well-Known Member
How are you 'charging' it?.....................I'm sure you already know, but this is an essential step to eliminate nutrient leaching and stabalise ph, unless you're planning to compost it for a long period
iHearAll
Well-Known Member
never charged it other than what happens naturally in a tge bottom of a fire pit and i rinse it off over a window screen laid on my garden screen to be a finer mesh. i know about it i just dont do it. i do compost the biochar also. i just dont believe the hype of charging. we never had to at the farm and we used the fuck out of biochar. like truckloads. we mixed it in beds and composted it into manuer, copra meal, sawdust, farm waste/silage, and FKG. but in tge conpost it was upwards of a third of the total volume. lots of bokashi layers too. used in 3 weeks. i imagine the charging happened during the compost lime you said and the aeration uncharged biochar maaaaay suck up nutes in reality but i haven't seen much negative effects. but i always ammend N into beds after each crop even legumes.
Lots of action at the biochar surface. If those moves makes you tripping you gotta read this shit http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2004/coldsugar/
Although the chemistry on Earth and in interstellar clouds is much different, the results can be very similar. This and other recent studies show that prebiotic chemistry -- the formation of the molecular building blocks necessary for the creation of life -- occurs in interstellar clouds long before that cloud collapses to form a new solar system with planets. "Many of the interstellar molecules discovered to date are the same kinds detected in laboratory experiments specifically designed to synthesize prebiotic molecules. This fact suggests a universal prebiotic chemistry," said Jan M. Hollis of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. This suggests that the molecular building blocks for the creation of life on a new planet might get a head start in the dust of interstellar clouds.
Although the chemistry on Earth and in interstellar clouds is much different, the results can be very similar. This and other recent studies show that prebiotic chemistry -- the formation of the molecular building blocks necessary for the creation of life -- occurs in interstellar clouds long before that cloud collapses to form a new solar system with planets. "Many of the interstellar molecules discovered to date are the same kinds detected in laboratory experiments specifically designed to synthesize prebiotic molecules. This fact suggests a universal prebiotic chemistry," said Jan M. Hollis of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. This suggests that the molecular building blocks for the creation of life on a new planet might get a head start in the dust of interstellar clouds.
iHearAll
Well-Known Member
fuck yesss! i love this platt. this is 100% up my ally
calliandra
Well-Known Member
Interesting! Thanks for the summary haha
Orphan Crippler
Well-Known Member
Wow that is a lot of bio char being used. I am only going to add some as a small soil amendment so Ill start with 2 liters into my 50 liters of soil.i use up to a third the final desired volume. soooo 2L is the closest to that. a qtr the total volune is pretty standard and you can reapply the same amount every crop rotation. but thatd be if you skipped out on leaf mold or peat or perlite all together. AND you would need to reapply compost+vermicastings. just like making a new base soil but using the previous biochar soil as the sandy loam part. you'll end up with dark sexy wonders of fluff after a few years.
ex for veg seedlings/base soil is 1pail biochar 1 pail compost 1 pail sandy loam 1 pail vermicastings. ammend with rock dust, bokashi, and whatever else you can or want to formulate into it in terms of powdered or compost types. maybe you make some seaweed conoist and add a half pail of that and reduce the other type of compost by half.
basically im just saying you can add as much as you'd like and id recommend more than less.
I was intending to charge the char by soaking it with some fish emulsion and some of my bloom FPE
iHearAll
Well-Known Member
wew^
everything revolves around the fermentation processes from my perspective. saves the hastle of buying someones guanos and meals. but i do like that stuff because it does work but you wont see me use it any time soon.
if you're brand new to fermentaton, i would recommend making a lactoserum or buying an EM1 bottle and practice making EMe,using the cheapest molasses you can find (gallon on ebay is where it's at if you don't have a cattle feed store, like seriously country cattle feed store
)
calliandra
Well-Known Member
I'd say the charcoal out of such a fire could be a replacement, not the ashes. The desired property of biochar is its complex carbon structure that aerates the soil and creates housing space for microbes.
Beside that, the charcoal is probably less chemically pure due to having undergone an "open" burning process.
But let's see what IHearAll says!