Biochar

I’ve been doing a bit of reading about the benefits of adding Biochar to soils and also to compost. Quite interesting reading if you have time. Good starting points Australia & New Zealand Biochar Researchers Network and also Black Earth Products. To start with I’ve got a 25L bag of Biocharpure (unfortunately I paid twice as much from another online garden supplies store… next time I will buy it direct from Black Earth Products).

As per the directions I’ve incorporated it into the top 10cm of soil in the vegetable garden beds at a rate of about 6 handfuls (50g approx per handful) per square metre, and also been including a couple of handfuls into the compost heap after the addition of high nitrogen material.

By adding Biochar to the soil I am hoping to improve moisture retention, improve the microbial population of the soil, increase amount of carbon in the soil and of course ultimately increase the amount we are able to harvest from our veggie patch.

We will look into this further also as a potential addition to our soils in our horse pastures when we start re-renovating them, but the veggie garden is a good place to make a start at least.

Picture of Biocharpure mixed with inoculant waiting for distribution. Apparently human urine is the inoculant of choice…. not what we used this time (Biocharpure comes packaged with its own inoculant!)