Charcoal trials promising for crops

[Florence]

http://statements.cabinet.qld.gov.au/MMS/StatementDisplaySingle.asp...

[Elaine de Saxe]

The addition of Charcoal brings many benefits so I read. We have a charcoal enthusiast among us so he will be able to add some practical advice.

Refreshing to see the Queensland Government actually interested in something worthwhile.

We've been stockpiling prunings too big to mulch with a view to making our own charcoal and bought an el cheepo kettle-type barbeque to make it in. Remains to be seen if we can.

See Wiki for many entries on charcoal and charcoal-related agriculture. It's a tradition among some cultural groups in South America (can't remember which country) and in Russian-speaking areas too. So much old wisdom finally coming to the surface!

I'd love to see a modern industry in Australia. I never use charcoal because most of it comes from virtual slave-labour situations in third-world countries.

Thank you for finding the info Scarlett :-) very pleasing news!

[Scarlett Patrick]

ah ha - this time it wasn't me, it was Florence!

[Elaine de Saxe]

Duh! Sorry Florence :-)

[Florence]

lol, that's alright ~ no biggie ~ I had Scarlett's hat on :P

[Scarlett Patrick]

cool!

I've got a photo of some home made charcoal burning set up that we were shown on a Food Connect farm tour up near Killarney - I'll try to dig it up but I'm having major computer trouble at the moment and everything (hopefully!) is on disk somewhere

[Florence]

I'd really love to know how to make charcoal if there's an easy way ~ Have some big chunks of wood from the forest mulch we bought last time... ^^

[Mick Porter]

Florence,

I've been really interested in this, especially for the third-world application of clean-burning stoves that could produce biochar as well.

Have been experimenting - results published on my blog, although I'm about to try 2 more designs - one smaller and one bigger:

http://backyardpermaculture.blogspot.com/search/label/Biochar

I've been getting heaps of feedback about the stoves, use of forced air, materials etc. from the guys on the stoves mailing list. Starting to understand it a bit :)

I'm also interested in doing a bit of a workshop on this in my garden sometime, if there's interest from this group.

[Elaine de Saxe]

Certainly interested, Mick - keep us posted!

[Florence]

I would be interested ~ Checked your blog, great experiment, but looks like some metal work skills involved?

[Mick Porter]

Well, I'll host one of the garden visits some time in the first half of next year and have a bit of a focus on this stuff.

Not much in the way of "skills" involved; I had never used tin snips before and it all turned out pretty well.

Some of the other designs are even simpler; I'm going to try them and will blog about them. I picked up a nice metal garbage bin the other day that someone was throwing out - should make a good outer cylinder for a slightly bigger burner.

[Scarlett Patrick]

cool! we dug a hole in the backyard, lit a fire and then smothered it with dirt, which worked ok, but this is really neat and glamorous and efficient and you can boil the billy! every household needs one!! (in some ways we're all the developing world - in Brisbane we've got to develop out of our progress traps :)

[Vanessa Thompson (pomare)]

This is very interesting. Could you do the same thing in the home made break stove of.........(i forgot who page it was on?)