Microbes

Again, we need to start with an object lesson. Imagine a cow and her calf, on an acre of healthy soil. Science has calculated that the microbes on this same acre of soil have about the same mass as Bessie and her calf. I have heard the claim that billions of organisms live in a tablespoon of healthy soil as well and I'm sure that the scientists are right, even though I can't see things that small and I will never be able to see a germ, flagellate or bacterium no matter how good my eyesight is! In my "initial contact" flyer, I have this to say about microbes, "The biochar ecosystem provides all that soil microbes need, security, moisture, air and healthy food. Microbes can be added by using compost, or healthy soil. Waste products of microbes that live in soil, often as many as billions per teaspoon, actually feed healthy plant roots." Microbes can be added by including some compost or compost tea in the mix. Some commercial mixtures are available that tout themselves as compost starter, etc. but the truth of the matter is that spores and bacteria are on the wind. It may be difficult to get a representative sample large enough to really get the char to transform into biochar, but in theory, time is really all that is necessary to get the microbes to take up residence there. I typically start to see insects hanging around my char after it gets minerals and nutrients added to it. Whether they are trying to eat some of the bits of rotted food, or harvesting smaller organisms that I cannot see will have to remain a mystery. I certainly don't shoo them away, because I see them as vectors for getting more beneficial microbes into the mix. To make compost tea, you just need an air pump, like you would find in an aquarium, some tubing you can weigh down with a rock , a five gallon (20L) bucket of water, and a quart or so of compost. Set the bubbler up so that there is a constant stream of bubbles in the bucket, then add the compost and let it go, bubbling away for 24-48 hours. The air is essential to getting a healthy representative sample of microbes. Adding some of the resulting water to the char after it has been made, micronized, moistened and mineralized will allow the microbes direct access to the territory that has been prepared for them. Of course, there are far more idiosyncrasies and special circumstances to deal with than a short post can include, but for the most part, in the vast majority of locations, you can utilize local resources to make highly effective biochar. Jumping back to the previous post, "Minerals", nitrogen, an important soil constituent, can be added to char through the use of many different ingredients. Some of the best char I have ever made began as 75% grass clippings by volume and 25% char. Another excellent batch started by moisturizing it first with pure, fresh fallen snow. Once material breaks down or concentrates, less is needed. Most of the nitrogen in the batch I mentioned got a lot of moisture and loads of nitrogen from moist grass clippings. Additionally, I added urine every time it dried out enough to soak it up. Nitrogen can come from blood meal, bat guano, fish emulsion, urine (urea) and virtually any manure or offal. As you can imagine, the bacteria which break down these materials are typically present, if not common in soil. When needed, they proliferate quickly and die out after their food supply disappears. Remember though, even dead microbes feed the next generation, it is the cycle of life. Whether you make biochar with manure or urine is not as important as the fact that microbes can grow on either, or both. If animals are fed anti-biotics, this is less so. The goal is not so much to culture a specific set of microbes, but a flourishing, diverse community that utilizes all wastes, from all the different microbes, their predators and competition as well. In diversity there is balance. I often think about how much better off we would be as a civilization, if we accepted this, or at least understood the need for diversity among our human population also. Char itself helps to moderate extremes as do the organisms who live on and in it. So does the water that it holds. Mitigating and ameliorating change is helpful for the whole soil biome. Instead of trying to give crops what they need for just one season, or rotating crops periodically to help the soil stay healthy, utilizing biochar requires us to take a much longer view of soil health and conservation. Once we put all the time and effort into healing the soil, building up the soil biome, we are loathe to abuse it or let it blow away. My county here in Wisconsin Brown County, holds the state record for the most soil lost to erosion each year in our entire state. Perhaps if people decided to value this finite resource, we would get true conservation started. Understanding that healthy food leads to healthy humans is perhaps a stretch for some who sit behind the wheel of a tractor, but we can't continue living as if it did not matter or we threaten our very existence. Just as we have become aware of the micro-biome in the human gut, we need to also become aware of the science behind the micro-biome as it relates to soil health. Estimates of the value of the gut bacteria in our health range up to claims that 80% of our immunity comes from the gut. In soils, there can be billions of microbes in a tablespoon and millions of types and strains can live in close proximity to or atop one another. Like the unbroken forest that we hear, used to cover the Eastern United States, in which a squirrel could travel branch to branch, without touching the ground from the Atlantic Seaboard to the Mississippi River, microbes inhabit healthy soil, cheek to jowl upon each and every soil particle. Biochar exponentially expands the amount of surface area upon which they can thrive. Microbe habitat waiting to happen. Atmosphere is automatic, moisture allows life to flourish, organic material, minerals and nutrients are needed by all life, even microbes. Meeting their needs is paramount to growing healthy soil. Remove just one necessary resource and life gets stunted or fails to thrive. Boutique biochar, such as I teach people to make, transforms soils immediately and lasts for geologic time. Valuing a technique that more than doubles crop production, forever, has an infinite value. What is this knowledge worth to you? Please remunerate me for my efforts and sharing with capital. You can send money through Paypal at account number: tnsaladino42@hotmail.com which also happens to be my e-mail. If you would like to contact me that way, I have brochures that you can use to spread the word about this ancient miracle in your local community. I can even Skype in on fire pit parties where you would teach others the same sort of class that I do. Humans must emulate natural processes and seek a state of peak evolution by mimicking nature's way of stacking function, producing nothing considered waste, just recyclable materials anxiously awaiting their chance to face the crucible of change. In soil, every trophic level can serve as top predator. This layers multiple levels of living carbon, inhabiting these surfaces, covering them with a micro climate that is warmer, because of metabolism. That warmth is held because soil air has a bit more carbon dioxide than the air we breathe a result of microbe metabolism. All good things for the rest of the community. Just as we have 75% water in our bodies as newborns and it slowly dwindles as we age, down to fifty percent water when we are elderly, microbes have a high percentage of water within them as well; like us, over time, they begin to desiccate, even though the cell walls try to hold on to moisture, it inevitably reduces with time. Up to 75% of the water in soils can be bound within the cells of microbes. This moisture allows metabolism within the cell, but also makes the exchange of gasses possible, helps stabilize soil moisture and moderates temperature. Building the base of the soil food web invites heterotrophs and macro-invertebrates. Microbes that can not be seen with the naked eye are difficult to explain or understand, but the most important thing to remember is that less desirable ones tend to make dank, musty or off smells. The less desirable microbes also are more tolerant of conditions that have limited amounts of oxygen. 85% of bacteria are either innocuous or helpful to humans, many lend their aroma to healthy soil. You probably know what good, healthy soil is supposed to smell like, so too our body is able to sense bad organisms by smell too. With the pathogenic ones, typically you can overcome them with creating conditions favorable to beneficial organisms. Being careful to not let stagnant water develop, aerate more, stir the biochar more often and be careful to balance the amount of nutrients available and the amount of minerals and detritus as well. some less composted material is not bad either. Typically, I have found that in making good char about ten times more nutrients, especially nitrogen are needed by weight when compared to the amount of other minerals. If there is too much moisture, dry powdered minerals can help absorb it. Worm castings can also help absorb excess moisture. Balancing the moisture level so that the biochar never dries out, but never gets too wet is something that you will develop a feel for. The typical make up of soil, as stated in previous posts, is 25% Air (soil atmosphere has more CO2 in it, from microbe respiration) 25% water, 40-45% minerals, 5-10% organic matter. Subdivided, this last 5 to 10% is 80% humus and ten percent each of roots, (both dead and alive), and organisms. Adding biochar, even at 1%, would provide habitat for more organic matter, most of which would be living creatures. These organisms are only 10% of that tiny 5% sliver of soil that is referred to as "organic matter" typically. The carbon matrix upon which biochar is designed and the pyrolysis process rendering it vitreous makes it both mineral, but immune to break down and able to foster microbial life indefinitely, growing habitat for these beneficial microbes, perhaps exponentially. This burgeoning microbial habitat helps stabilize soil moisture, holds minerals and nutrients and creates micro-biomes of better drainage, stucture and retention of moisture when it is available. It also raises soil temperature slightly as a result of microbial metabolism. All these benefits and carbon sequestration! This is where all of the water that passes through and by me, into the Great Lakes wants to flow. The microbes life, health and well-being depend on moisture. Just like we humans how much water they have inside their cells will determine how well they can function.

I realize that the discussion is currently about microbes, but the amount of habitable surface area the char provides depends on making the char a fine powder (see "Micronize") with the largest pieces being smaller than 2mm. About the width of Eisenhower's ear on a dime. The structure inherent in char unleashes massive amounts of surface area, the smaller you crush it, the more available surface area, the smallest powders we are typically able to produce are still cavernous for a microbe. Sorry for the repetition. There is much for us to learn when we build soil this way. One of the most important things to understand is that all soil microbes are interdependent. When any overpopulation occurs and death of one group of organisms occurs, it is not a horrible loss, because others pick up the slack and pitch in to return the soil food web to balance. This interdependence and alliance of all in the community to work for the betterment of conditions for all other organisms is something human creatures need to take to heart as well. The complex interdependent relationships that occur naturally in soil need to be emulated and used as templates for layering functions withing our own lives and the human community as well. I wish you all a future of security and abundance and when we realize that it is unnecessary to deprive some "other" to take care of ourselves, many problems, many traumas and untold destruction will be avoided.

Six Steps Making Char

Six steps required to make the best biochar. Alternjatively, this could be called, "NO Time to Wait!"
The short answer is making, moisturizing, micronizing, mineralizing, microbes and maturation. The next six posts will review what is meant by each of these terms. If there are editorial comments or questions, please let me know. It will make a lasting difference. Always, always, always, remeber that quality works by example and invites reciprocation. Making Char This first step in creating of biochar. In essence, all you do is heat dry plant material to between 450 and 500 degrees F (230-260 C), basically making it glow, without allowing air to get to the reaction site. This process is called pyrolysis. When the material glows, it changes form and makes it like more like fired clay, than wood or dirt. when vitrified, ut becomes permanent in the environment and not subject to degradation. Charcoal has been made around the world, throughout human history. When human beings learned of the power of char, and how it is turned into biochar is still a mystery. It is well established that as recently as 2,000 years ago, humans were making it and some tribes and cultures still use this practice in modern times. It is sad that intact cultures are referred to as primitive, because they are often far more scientifically advanced and sophisticated than that term implies. Utilizing biochar is one of the indicators of a highly advanced agriculture. My tool of choice in the matter of making char is a retort, a basic scientific instrument designed to allow heating and vapor release, without introducing oxygen (air). Typically, the retort has but one opening to allow gasses to escape, mine actually has three, but they can be closed during cooling. Here is a schematic view of a retort. Below is picture of my old retort in use and I have made other types of charring equipment as well. It is important to understand all the ways to do this step, so you can pick the one that suits your needs, available resources and needs. In my classes I discuss at least five types of charring techniques, the pit or flame cap, build and bury, similar to how much char was made before the fossil energy revolution and the current infatuation with liquid fuels; retort, of course, because it is my preferred method, the can within a can (which pretty much explains itself) which could also be called a retort in a chimney, and the TULD, Top Lit Up Draft. The method you choose varieties depends on how much you are making, what materials you have available and how pure you want/need to make your char. In addition to teaching facts about biochar, making and using it, I try to get across a feeling, or attitude of appreciation and the desire to teach and share with others the ancient miracle that is biochar. Making char requires nothing more than a basic popcorn, cookie or cracker tin. Just pop a few holes in it to release the gasses and fasten the lid on with self-tapping pan head screws, then char away. You can even use dry garden clippings, woody yard waste or herb stems, any dry woody debris will do, as long as it is completely dry. Typically, I just put the whole container right in the fire pit while enjoying a camp or bonfire. At first, the container smokes a little, but then the flammable gasses come off, making pure clean flame. When that flame dies down, and disappears, even if you shake the container around, it is finished. Lay it on a surface that won't burn with the holes you poked facing toward the ground to smother off as much air as possible from getting into the container. When it cools, it is ready to start processing. Beware though, wood and sawdust, or organic material is a good insulator, so the coals may stay warm for several hours or more depending on how large a container you use. This retort is made from a Cornelius keg, it holds five gallons of material (I prefer dry sawdust) and reduces to approximately one kilogram of material. Making char from sawdust eliminates the need for micronization, because the pieces are small enough to be used without further smashing into powder. A typical firing of a retort like this takes about three hours with dry sawdust used for the feedstock, or parent material. The value of this will become evident in later posts. (see Micronizing) As in nature, stacking functions is the key to increased efficiency.

I did not have a big enough fire pit to roast the material in this retort, a sealed 55 gallon drum, with conduit to direct the gasses out the bottom. Although it worked well enough to produce the flammable gas, it was just not enough to help warm the drum. Had I been able to build a larger bonfire, it would have been able to make over ten kilograms of finished char. That would be enough to amend a ten foot wide bed forty feet long to a depth of three inches. If you are not able to make a fire for some reason, you can use high end charcoal that is readily available at grilling outlets. Typically it has names like natural charcoal, cowboy charcoal or lump charcoal. Essentially it should appear like burned wood. If it has been compacted into uniform briquets, typically it will have contaminants and binders that reduce the quality of your finished product. In this case, I must admit that I am a bit of a carbon snob. The goal is to get the open grains of the wood's cellular structure, binders, paint, stain and other foreign material can close the ends of the pores and render the finished product either contaminated or useless. If you had a scanning electron microscope, tiny particles of the finished product would look like this: It is really that simple. Dry organic, woody material, the cellular structure of the plant is what gets preserved at approximately half size. As the material is heated, the gasses liberated are nearly pure oxygen and hydrogen, these flammable gasses must be able to leave the retort and they will readily be burned off during the process. The nice thing about the retort is that when the gasses stop coming out, you know that the char is done roasting. After removing the retort from the fire, loosely plug or cover the hole(s) to keep air out and let the char cool. Another way to tell if the char is done is to feel the weight of the container. When finished, the char is very light and when you touch finished char, there will be very little black carbon that sticks to your hands. Incompletely fired or poorly pyrolized char will still have oily soot-like residue. It gets your hands dirty when you handle it and it will smell or taste of creosote. A good way to tell if char is finished is to smell or taste it. There will be no taste or smell. The best char, is pure carbon. After it cools, if you stir the pieces, it will almost sound metallic or like broken glass shards, especially after it is moistened, but that will be covered in the next post. Poorly made char can degrade as it breaks down in soil, so take care and do whatever it takes to make the best char possible, it will reward future generations, many times over, not only for seven generations, but for geologic time.

There are other ways to make char and they include something called a flame cap burner, basically a container that does not allow air in either the bottom or sides. In this method, you have to build a rick. (a rick is like a log cabin, but the logs are layered from side to side like a nearly solid floor on each level, but to maximize air flow, room is left around each log, stick or branch, not like a solid floor of wood, but a lattice in three dimensions.) A small fire is built atop the rick and when the material burns down, you will notice that the fire only exists at the top of the vessel, where air first contacts the hot gasses. Material inside will just glow, but not burn. Keep adding material until all that is left is the glowing bed of coals, when the flame cap stops burning, the gasses have all been released, the char is done and has to be quenched with water or have a loosely fitting lid ready to cover the vessel to keep air out. This method is great if you do not have strict burning regulations because it gets smoky if you put too much material on at once. The ideal rate for adding material to the flame cap burner is evidenced by the absence of smoke. You want a very clean burn, if you get any smoke, either you have put too much on at once, the inside of the container is not hot enough, or the material is too wet to char. This can even be accomplished by just digging a hole in the ground and building your fire large enough to fill the pit with glowing embers. Quench or smother them out with the soil that remains from digging the hole. It is "primitive", but if you know what to do and how to know it is done, it can work beautifully. The TLUD (Top Lit Up Draft) burner and the vessel within vessel method are also useful if you have the materials and metal-working skills to make them. First, for the vessel within a vessel technique, you would need a small, sealing, steel container and it would need to fit within another larger steel container, I have seen them made from a 30 gallon drum inside a fifty five gallon drum. Holes are made in the bottom of the thirty gallon vessel 2-4 inches (5-10 cm) up from the bottom, to allow gasses to escape. This container is then filled with the material you are going to char and sealed. The larger drum also has holes in the bottom and is kept up off the ground at the start to let fresh air in when lighting the fire, but since they are in the bottom, when the burn is complete, you can pretty much seal them closed by simple lowering the container to the ground. The larger drum also has a lid, but it needs to have a hole prepared to accept a stovepipe. About six feet of stovepipe above the penetration in the lid, to keep all the smoke up and away from people. This device is very smoky upon starting as can be the TLUD In any case, the large drum gets propped up off the ground to start the burn, the smaller vessel, once filled with material to be charred and the opening of the drum is sealed, it goes into the larger vessel, atop a bed of tinder and other fire starting material, vent holes down. The inner drum is propped up off the bottom as well. The space under the smaller vessel holds the kindling wood and helps air to flow upward during the main burn. The next step is to be to fill the space around the inner drum with dry, burnable material An easy way to start the burn is to make ready some coals, like you would use for grilling, dump them down into the tinder and quickly fill the drum with the wood, quickly capping it and installing the stovepipe. As the outer wood burns, it begins to heat the inner drum and as that happens, flammable gasses begin to escape making the fire hotter. Eventually the smoke stops as the outer sleeve of wood goes to char, then ash, but by then the additional heat, from the escaping gasses leaving the inner vessel, continue to burn, also heating the inner vessel. This allows it to finish the process. As the material finishes, less and less gasses are produced until there is no more flame, just glowing coals within the inner vessel. At that point let the outer drum drop to the ground, sealing out the air. Some people like to throw a "seal" of sand around the edge, or do that and then moisten the sand to help keep out the air that could get in the bottom. I have not worried about it and done well, just getting a good solid seal on flat ground. To reduce the updraft of the chimney, which could draw air in the bottom, you could add a flue damper. The TLUD kiln is similar to the flame cap, but the flame essentially working its way to the bottom, using up all the available oxygen before it can burn the char all the way to ash. I'm not completely thrilled with this technique because some creosote residue might be deposited on the finished char. I have not fired one myself and it requires one to not have to worry about making lots of smoke, again when you get it started, it will smoke to beat the ban, until the flame front gets established. In a TLUD kiln, it works like the flame cap, but the air coming in the bottom is severely limited, and the flame actually advances down from the top, as it goes toward the small amount of air, it uses up all the oxygen in the process of burning and the hot material left behind is hot enough to continue to give off gasses. In this sort of kiln, typically, they run a stack with an afterburner to burn off the gasses when they finally get out into the air. These can be impressive and may bring to mind a fire breathing dragon! To my understanding, having the material loosely packed in the kiln is crucial to success, you can't pack the material in the kiln because the air flow, although small, is crucial. When packing the TULD kiln, the feedstock needs to be about as dense as a natural sponge, so air flows around and through the material, rather than if it were packed tightly, or irregularly, it would choke off the air flow, burn unevenly or only partially char. I plan to make one of these and try it for myself. The people who use them swear by them. You can put any vessel over fire, as long as you have somewhere the flammable gasses can escape. When the gasses stop coming off, if you stir the material and the flame does not continue, or flare up, pull it from the fire and put a loose fitting lid on it, seal it with the ground, or quench it out with water, because as it contracts, air will make it into the retort, but the goal is to not have it touch any glowing char that has not yet cooled below 400 F, otherwise it could continue to burn when oxygen gets in. I have had batches where the integrity of the seal was compromised and the char continued burning for over ten hours, without me even noticing. I went to sleep and in the morning, the container was still warm, opening it revealed the embers had consumed almost half the char! When making char in any sort of retort, it is important to wait until the material is fully cooled before exposing it to the air. If you do not, it can reignite on contact with air. The still warm char gets wasted when it turns to white ash. Keeping this white ash production to a minimum in all but the most acidic of soils and getting the highest percentage pure carbon as possible is the goal. It is critical to getting the most from your effort. The most important thing to remember about white ash, is that it is very alkaline, lye is made from fully burned ashes. DO NOT USE white ash. It is no longer carbon, even that gets burnt. Once burned to white ash, only minerals remain. We want the carbon, that is what benefits the soil, when it becomes fully pyrolized. Wood that has not fully charred will decay and lose carbon as well, so make sure that you fully char the material you use. The embers must glow and completely, lose all their hydrogen and oxygen. Pure, vitrified carbon will remain fixed in soil for geologic time. Once prepared this charred material has fourteen acres of surface area per handful. All that surface area needs to be nourished to become a healthy precursor to soil. That is whay the next five posts will cover. Basic science rules those phases, but for now, keeping with the title of this post, making char is easy, if one has some simple tools, a fire and patience to make sure your woody material is fully finished before you remove it from the fire. I will cover more about the golden ratio of minerals and nutrients, in the post "Mineralization" If you choose to make a retort, vessel in vessel, TULD burner, or use a flame cap method, the only requirement is to have complete pyrolysis without either un-charred material or white ash. The best tests for quality are look and feel, smell and taste. It should be ultralight and the darkest black you will ever see. Occasionally it may have a rainbow oxidization, but the predominant feature is to be super black (the best char sounds a bit like glass when pieces are touched together. You will hear a hollowness to the pieces and they will be very light) Testing char quality by smell, (should smell fresh, not like creosote or smoke) Char is a great deodorizer. There should also be no taste; again, smoky or oily flavors are evident straight away. Material not thoroughly heated for long enough will smell like smoke. Excellent char will not taste like anything, in fact, the predominant sensation is that it sucks moisture from your tongue. Truly an anti-taste. This material is so much more valuable than gold, I cannot begin to tell you. This beginning ingredient, char, when treated and processed properly will double crop production when added at the rate of one kilogram per cubic meter of soil, or roughly two pounds per cubic yard. If anyone ever needs help determining how much char they need, please contact me directly. My land line is nine twenty, double 8 four, triple two 4. Mornings in Wisconsin (Central Time) are the best time to reach me. Best wishes on your journey. When you use your char and see the benefits, think about who taught you how to make it and send a token of thanks. Think long and hard about the principles within sustainability, which urge us to equitably distribute the abundance. That is all I ask. Ubuntu as they say in Africa, namaste' as they say in India. We are each incarnations of the godhead and without a single one of us, all would be diminished. I truly am, because of you! Appreciatively, Tony C. Saladino