How are you making bio-char?SQWIB wrote:I would look into making some bio-char also.
I have had pretty good luck with it so far.
When I burn small tree limbs they burn up fast they are gone mostly all ash even if I put it out with water.
Large logs are harder to get started they burn slow if I put them out center is still solid wood & charcoal on the outside.
If I let logs burn longer center becomes charcoal most of the outside has become ash.
Charcoal is made industrially by cooking wood in a very large pressure cooker so oxygen can not burn charcoal to ash and gas is given off. The gas that come off wood is about 70% natural gas pipe it to the under side of the pressure cooker then ignite the gas it becomes a self heating cooker. This gets too hot for a kitchen pressure cooker it burns up the rubber gasket. A 55 gallon metal drum with a metal lid works great but you need a wood fire under the metal drum until there is no more gas & smoke then you get a LOT of charcoal even with small sticks. This only works good for me if metal drum is 1/2 full with small wood pieces & lid is held on by gravity so smoke gets out & air can not get in but its more work that I want an my 55 gallon drum finally rusted away.
Some wood does not like to burn it makes charcoal so it works better than other wood. I have been getting mole wood from a furniture factory it makes a big fire like a kerosene about 60% of the charcoal never burns up it makes a very large pile of charcoal. I till large piles of charcoal into the garden few weeks later it is very hard to find any charcoal in the soil. Charcoal must turn to powder easy. Charcoal is about 8ph it continues to be 8ph much longer than calcium or lime products.
I burned lots of tree limbs in the same spot once tilled it into a 6 ft diameter circle nothing grew there for 2 months soil was gray/black color. After it rained several times and I tilled it several times plants started to grow. I can get too much in a small spot but when I scatter it all over my 30'x50' garden I can't tell it is there.
I shovel all the ash & charcoal into 5 gallon buckets save it until spring it works best for me to till it into the rows that need calcium like, tomatoes, peppers, squash, melons. Wood ask makes a large crop of tomatoes plants like the potassium & calcium to prevent BER.