From scratch only! No premixed bottles of "stuff"
- Thread starter iHearAll
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iHearAll
Well-Known Member
you can do that. i do that. i hose off the ashes by covering my garden sceen with a window sceen and dumping fire pit waste over top and washing with the hose. then i crush what i can with a mallet, screen through the garden screen (just the garden screen and no window screen anymore) over concrete, shovel up and save, then crush whatever didnt come through the screen more and pass through the screen again. repeat untill its all capable of fitting through the screen.
iHearAll
Well-Known Member
biochar is simple a carbonization of organic matter. whole trees can carbonize, saw dust can carbonize, grain hulls, etc.
the easiest method is actually grain hulls believe it or not. you can start a fire and get some good coals, then smother the fire with rice hull, the hulls will eventually form black spots, this is the ember trying to find oxygen. quickly cover these spots with more hulls, it CAN catch fire if you dont smother the black spots. this will result in ashs and possible will loose you biochar if you arent paying attention. when the entire pile is blackened just wet it. no screening needed and wetting it should remove most of the ashes but there wouldnt really be any in it anyway other than the original fire that was made
SSGrower
Well-Known Member
Well unfortunately it dosent appear my class 3 epa fireplace wI'll double as a biochar factory.
edit, um or a piece of 6in steel pipe a foot long filled w/material, some form of insulating but not sealing caps in the back of the fireplace, a short cool fire....
I questioned originally bc in a prior life I was exposed to a company that had what they called a biochar kiln on a trailer and we're testing feasibility for using beetle kill pine - it didn't work so well as I recall.
edit, um or a piece of 6in steel pipe a foot long filled w/material, some form of insulating but not sealing caps in the back of the fireplace, a short cool fire....I questioned originally bc in a prior life I was exposed to a company that had what they called a biochar kiln on a trailer and we're testing feasibility for using beetle kill pine - it didn't work so well as I recall.
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iHearAll
Well-Known Member
how much acid determines when a prior life ends? also i'd like to see some biochar techs go down sometime soon. yea i dont have a drum or grain hulls at the moment. nor a functioning fireplace. there's a note on it by the land lard actually stating how the fire box is damaged and not to use it..Well unfortunately it dosent appear my class 3 epa fireplace wI'll double as a biochar factory.
I questioned originally bc in a prior life I was exposed to a company that had what they called a biochar kiln on a trailer and we're testing feasibility for using beetle kill pine - it didn't work so well as I recall.
i may try and make some bamboo splinter biochar if i can find a drum out on the curb as trash. i did see 6 shopping carts that were "discovered" in someones backyard after the storm. except i saw the woman taking them out of her yard. i think she was a taboo addict of sorts that steals shopping carts and she used the hurricane as an opportunity to try and get rid of them lol..
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why
anyway, here's a funny experiment of mine. im brewing a kombucha EMe cross. I took two SCOBYs from my last kombucha batch and instead of saving a half cup of the tea and feeding it into a new jar to make a new batch to drink. i figured take a qtr cup of EMe and a qtr cup of molasses to make up that half cup volume needed of kumbucha to start it up. its been incubating for a week and a new SCOBY is forming on the surface while being covering in nice white bacteria colonies. they're all tethered together in a thin film over the surface, the film is made of a gelatinous body of bacteria ha. it smells fine and strong but i am certainly not tasting this for the sheer look of it's current state... maybe if it completely solidifies on the top half inch to inch... btw it's about 4-5 inches deep and its volume is a gallon.
DonBrennon
Well-Known Member
...........nice SCOBY...........LOL
wanna pick your brain, if ya don't mind.................my EM1 arrived the other day and I was about to start mixing some up to extend it, but I've just been reading the instructions on the Teraganix website. It seems 'organic' molasses has 'ph buffering' properties and they advise to halve the amount of molasses and add an equal amount of vinegar. Have you any experience with this?.................. I've only got organic molasses
iHearAll
Well-Known Member
i have added vinegar to my ferments but to the EMe. ill make some today to check it out. but i dont buy organic molasses so it may be in vain. i just want ti measure the pH of the final.
i can sense your sarcasm from here about that scoby lol. damn thing is haggard and white. id toss it if i wire trying to make a drink lol. i fed some older ones to my worms the other day and laid some on the bottom of the worm bed where water collects.
try it both ways! maybe just use 500mL water bottles and do a side by side.
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DonBrennon
Well-Known Member
Hey......sorry, no sarcasm intended.............I have seen pictures of them during research, but wouldn't know a good un from a bad un. Kombucha isn't something I've got into yet.
DonBrennon
Well-Known Member
Gonna follow their advise and go with some rice wine vinegar...................I have got some ACV with the mother culture in it, do you know anything about that stuff? I think that is bordering on kombucha and scobies isn't it? Would that be better to use or would I mess with the Microbial balance?
iHearAll
Well-Known Member
oh that's good stuff!! whole foods sells that as a drink. it's close, but kombucha has a huge biodiversity that most probiotics don't even bother trying to replicate. kombucha versus EM tho is much more diluted in the bacteria count but more diverse. makes a nice foliar spray undiluted. if you do get into scoby cultures for agriculture use, id recommend a month long fermentation to eat up more of the sugars. a week or two of fermentation leaves a sugary gum on the leaves for a few days. but ive diluted it with good results too. ellimated PM overnight and the PM never came back. works on fragile leaves too, like that of squash and cucumbers. just dont spray during the day of course.
iHearAll
Well-Known Member
indoors garden as of steamed-bone-meal + Ghost pepper + EMe +molasses foliar. everyone but my new kids Querkle 1 and Viper City OG 13
i think i should get on board with thumbnails to make it easier to browse. i hate goinig to previous pages here. too many giant photos of dirt.
i think i should get on board with thumbnails to make it easier to browse. i hate goinig to previous pages here. too many giant photos of dirt.
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iHearAll
Well-Known Member
this thing's turned wooden in the stems from bonsai'ing so hard. the goal is a kind of mainlining deal. problem is this OG doesn't like growing paired nodes. so the way i see it, get as many nodes closest to the base most. to maximize large colas in a compact space. i still intend on getting her about 24"x36" when flowered. last run there was a good 12" stretch from start to harvest but had soooo much space between branches.
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calliandra
Well-Known Member
nah, admit it, you were just trying to cache that very suggestive pic with that seedling
yeah I can tell you've been roughing her up some, but she has a very beautiful shape
Well unfortunately it dosent appear my class 3 epa fireplace wI'll double as a biochar factory.
I questioned originally bc in a prior life I was exposed to a company that had what they called a biochar kiln on a trailer and we're testing feasibility for using beetle kill pine - it didn't work so well as I recall.
I make biochar from coals from my stove. Maybe I am oversimplifying it... I sift the the charcoal from the ashes when I clean the woodstove. Metate and mano grind it down to size. I will add a little ash after, if I want.
I am building soil from scratch. I have about 6 inches of any kind of soil and then rocks, hardpan [caliche] and if I get lucky... a little red clay. The "soil" is primarily decomposing shale and granite. Zero organic matter. I am 3 years into it and starting to get some decent planting sites dug in this crap. My water percs laterally, not down
iHearAll
Well-Known Member
yikes! you need to get some children out there with pails and say "fill these up with rocks for me please"
calliandra
Well-Known Member
You need to redirect your water first then - make swales (if it's a small garden, they can be small too!) along contour lines so water is forced to take the longest possible path through your land. That way, it will begin to seep into the soil more, and organic matter will accumulate and decompose more quickly, creating fertile strips of land that expand outwards.
You can harness nature's processes to greatly assist you in your endeavor
