Burnt Wood as a Mulch - Worked Really Good - Once

[St. Phatty]

My source for Potassium this year was wood ash.

100% organic from some burn piles.

When I picked it up, I got all the pieces of burned wood & everything.

When I mix up the compost tea, I add the handfuls of ash, with the wood, to the Compost Tea.

(which also gets Nitrogen & Phosphorus )

Anyway, that leaves me with a bucket ALMOST ready to go, except it has a bunch of burned up pieces of wood on top.

To finish off the tea, I have to lift/ strain out all the wood floating on top. And put it SOMEWHERE.

The plant I chose to put it on did really well. Nice frosty buds. After a few months of getting the excess burnt wood, she has a mulch of about 3 inches of burned wood pieces.

A bit LATE, other plants are near finishing and she still has at least 3 weeks.

Anybody else use charcoal or burned wood in their soil mix ?

 

[troutman]

Hardwood is best and make sure you keep an eye on the pH raised by it.

 

[Bud Green]

My house is in the middle of the woods, so I burn dead oak and hickory trees I cut down, several times a year...

I save the ashes (and small charcoal bits) in buckets, after it has cooled..

I mix about 3 quarts of this in each of my 100 gallon holes every Spring and then use about 2 or 3 cups of ashes dissolved in water, per hole, every few weeks during the grow...

That's where most of my K comes from...

 

[h.h.]

I wrote a long post about using fermentation to charge your char. Took another view of your plant and decided screw it. Your plant looks good. Real good. Porn quality.

The word “once” kind of spooked me. Lots of things I did once. Well. I may have done them twice. Maybe three times.
What were once vices are now habits...Snakemans on my trail.
https://youtu.be/y81B4VLpgXw

 

[St. Phatty]

I wrote a long post about using fermentation to charge your char. Took another view of your plant and decided screw it. Your plant looks good. Real good. Porn quality.l]

THANKS !

Didn't know it looked that good.

I am tempted to enlarge the experiment next year. Maybe put the burnt pieces on 2 plants.

I often forget to collect the ash until it's too late, and it's washed or blown away.

 

[Cvh]

 

[ambertrichome]

Weed loves K. From what Ive read weed likes a 1-1-2 ratio...19.5-20-39 2x amount of K vs Nitrogen.

Like was stated above. Just keep watch on PH. Really good stuff for high acid soils. nothing better. Don't use treated wood.

 

[Teddybrae]

I added Char to my soil mix. The Char was naturally collected by flood rain in a backwater of a creek. Mostly it was maybe 1/8 inch cubes. I added it, uncharged, to soil pH'd at 6.3 and the pH came up to 7.

The plants growing in it don't seem to mind. They are a nice colour and growing fast.

I worried about the Char not being charged (a la 'h.h' above) but it must have been charged already with local microbes etc.

Peace Phatty!

Out ....

 

[Bud Green]

I have never "charged" the bits of "fire pit" charcoal that I add to all my gardens..

The way I understand it is that the char will absorb excess nutrients from the soil every time you water in nutrients..
As the soil dries out, the nutrients (dissolved in water) in the char are released back to the soil where they are available to your plants..

..

 

[St. Phatty]

I wrote a long post about using fermentation to charge your char. Took another view of your plant and decided screw it. Your plant looks good. Real good. Porn quality.

The natural processes implied by fermentation, I don't know if I did them but it was Mother Nature most of the way.

Till they were moved to the 5 gallon buckets on the back porch. But whatever microfauna/flora was in the burnt wood, basically got rained on.

It almost sounds like people are mixing it in with the soil, not just putting it on top like a mulch.

I have another bucket because the one pot with the frosty Indica was full up.

I guess I need 2 clones from the same mother to do a decent experiment. One with the char mulch, one without.

 

['Boogieman']

I made a lot of biochar early sping, mixed it with wormcastings 50/50 and let it sit outside for a month before adding it to my soil. I think it worked out well.

 

[h.h.]

I have never "charged" the bits of "fire pit" charcoal that I add to all my gardens..

The way I understand it is that the char will absorb excess nutrients from the soil every time you water in nutrients..
As the soil dries out, the nutrients (dissolved in water) in the char are released back to the soil where they are available to your plants..

..

Charging just puts you a step ahead. Balances things out ahead of time. I’m not sure it’s necessary but it does eliminate the question if problems do arise. It may depend somewhat on how you mix your soil. Your individual style.
Going in the other direction. It’s a way to add strong fermentation’s to my soil.

I don’t burn where I live now. We had a mandatory fire evacuation last week. Lots of tall dry grass where the neighbors haven’t mowed.

I’ve been using store bought char.
Nice stuff. Expensive to ship.
I couldn’t make it as clean. They use modern equipment. Modern smokestacks.
Nicer than I could make it. Slivers rather than chunks. Black and I mean black. Ink black. Nothing like I’ve made before.
I also use marine char. (Kelp4Less)

I make a yeast lacto fermentation. I use a little sugar. I hate buying tiny jars of molasses. If I find a big jar, i’ll use it. I also add a little Espoma for the microbes. Maybe a little chicken manure as a catalyst or maybe fish flakes. Soy meal works.
Apple cider vinegar to drop the pH. Depending on my mood.
I may add kelp. It doesn’t ferment well by itself but in the mix it breaks down.
I let the pH drop, then add char to bring it back up. I may add in crab meal or gypsum, or whatever.

 

[St. Phatty]

I have never "charged" the bits of "fire pit" charcoal that I add to all my gardens..

The way I understand it is that the char will absorb excess nutrients from the soil every time you water in nutrients..
As the soil dries out, the nutrients (dissolved in water) in the char are released back to the soil where they are available to your plants..

..

Do the roots of the plants grow into the Char pieces ?

If not maybe it's like having big pebbles in the grow mix. Where the roots go around the Char ?

 

[h.h.]

Roots grow around it.

When I made my own, it was the size of large pebbles.
Unlike large pebbles, it holds moisture, nutrients, and air. It doesn’t simply just take up space. Multipurpose. I use it for aeration.

The stuff I buy is much smaller.

 

[Teddybrae]

Yes, Phatty, mixed into the soil. The quote I 've read is that Char makes a "penthouse" for organisms. The organisms are attracted to Char ... and make nutrients more available.


My reference to changing pH implies I mixed the char with soil. And I was surprised that it seemed already charged with local organisms. It's like free nutes!

 

[h.h.]

The molasses I’ve found at feed stores all has additives. It’s hard to browse. It’s all in the back. I stopped looking.
I do find it in restaurant supply stores.
I usually have sugar around for the bees.
It’s a love hate relationship.

A recent study. A bit disappointing. I wonder if it was pretreated.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-06/uoia-bmb061919.php

 

[h.h.]

Pot smoke.

 

[Hookahhead]

A recent study. A bit disappointing. I wonder if it was pretreated.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-06/uoia-bmb061919.php

So I looked up the published paper, it seems like the bio char was not “charged”, and they only studied the first 14 days after germination. In my opinion char provides numerous soil benefits that were not properly investigated in this study.

Following cooling, all biochars as well as burnt and raw corn stalks were stored in sealed polyethylene bags (Ziploc®) at 4°C. All amendments were initially analyzed for proximate analysis (ASTM D7582), total carbon and nitrogen content (by combustion), total polyaromatic hydrocarbon (PAH; USEPA SW846-3561), and total metal
content (EPA method 3050B + 6010).

Two corn seeds (Dekalb; DKC42-95) were seeded in each pot. The planted trays were placed on a greenhouse bench and were monitored for emergence and watered daily to replace evaporative losses. No supplemental fertilizer was added. Day 0 marked the planting day. Emergence was recorded as the number of days past planting until the seedling radicle was seen at the soil surface. Corn plants were harvested 14 days after this emergence date.

 

[TychoMonolyth]

I just pulled 1+ to 2+ lbs each from my plants i planted where my burn pile was. 3 very big Trainwreck, 2 Strawberry Cough and one gg4xnl.

The proof is in the pudding.

 

[h.h.]

Lacto and char...
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03650340.2019.1610168