Sounds like a plan. Even though some have misgivings about the efficacy of using charcoal, at the worst, I can see no harm. I see Billy set the record straight on briquettes. Do you all have lump charcoal there. Royal Oak brand is what we have available here.
Did you see the recipe that Bill posted a while back on what roday was doing, adding gypsum, clay and leonardite coal dust to compost and the ability of the resulting compost to better retain nutrients?
Yeah, same. I often base my ideas on getting a consensus of a bunch of articles and research, some of which I scarce understand. Of course, there is the danger of making the data fit the intended results. ;-)
I am assuming that the lime in the recipe balances the pH effect of the charcoal.
Not only that, but charcoal briquettes (even partially burned) is one of the items that should not be added to a compost pile. I use hickory wood for outdoor grilling (with no "starters") and use the ash remains and charred wood for soil amendment.
You got one right! "Activated" carbon for aquariums (not recommended for any gardening purpose) could lower water pH of the water slightly (until porosity is clogged with impurities in under 15 minutes), but wood or bone carbon -- vis, horticultural charcoal -- when added to soil has no such effect either on water or soil either one. Charcoal is next to inert and changes nothing, at most adds porosity to a soil mix. If the charcoal were to be burnt to ash it could heighten alcalinity, not acidity, if mixed with soil.
Not at all. Ad copy POSING as scientific articles are sent to websites with "science" in their web address titles and used pretty much as-is by the webmasters. They are then encountered by gardeners who actually do attempt to find independent sources not generated vendors, but are easily tricked by these vendor-provided articles to websites supported by vendor ads and so very open to vendor generated articles nowhere on them identified as such. When you see pretty much the same information -- even the same wording -- on five or fifty sites, you know it was vendor-generated. No law requires you to be warned. So you do have to be careful, and it does look to me like you got some of your beliefs from carefully reading disguised ads about "biochar," a term popularized by vendors and about 99% of the time associated with garden ammendment products shipped from South America.
This "biochar" product has only one value: adding porosity to soil mixes. This MIGHT enhance water retention (no better than many another product) and it more certainly enhances oxygen content in soil which PROBABLY assists in microorganism health (to the same degree as wouold ground up tulfa rock or perlite). These are not controlable benefits even in the best of cases, as they microorganism health is not something predictably improved by porosity which might already be sufficient in soil. One of the claims is that because charcoal is inert, it is "better" than organic materials that break down because it doesn't break down so adds permanent porosity.
But the ad-writers muddle this information to make it sound like the charcoal adds nutrients (it doesn't) rather than supports nutrients in the same way as would any porous material, whether inert like ground tulfa or charcoal (and never a nutrient) or temporary in its porosity like bark or pete (which does break down producing nutrients in the process).
SOMETHING has to be broken down by microorganisms for the soil to generate nutrients, so the idea that porosity provided by material that never breaks down is better is highly questionable. And ammendments such as perlite, charcoal, and tulfa almost always reduce the quality of soil in the long run, but a very few studies exist to indicate charcoal assists microorganisms longer than tulfa, much longer than perlite, so vendors can make the authentic if misleading claim that their product is best. When pointed out woodchips would do it better still the answer is "woodchips break down, charcoal doesn't, so is a longer lasting benefit," problem with that reasoning being that the soil MUST include organic material in the process of breaking down and charcoal will NOT cancel out the need for renewal the better ammendments. So the "biochar" vendor gambit is always partially a ruse with just enough truth to it to befuddle the public and permit authentid studies to be selectively quoted to support the ad copy.
I would not personally use a charcoal product for anything but epiphytes in pots, and even then only as a minor ingredient. But such choices are for each gardener to make with the best information they can obtain. I do ukse natural ash however as a weak potash direct in the garden or in the compost heap.
All I've seen is in really small bags, intended for 'sweetening' pot soil. Of course larger bags could be elsewhere. I just haven't come across it or didn't notice it.
No. My main problem is drainage - I've got one part of the garden where I seem to lose whatever goes in there. (Oh muscari are so easy! they said. Yeah right.) So I'll stick with wood chips, zeolite, compost and used potting soil for a while until I loosen it up.
Welcome to the internet. There is a lot of contradictory information out there. For my part, I don't know enough or have enough experience to say whether charcoal would work or not. That recipe is really the only instance I've seen of it being used, and it is being used on alkaline soil.
Do you get your soil tested at all? I'd get it tested before and after just to see what your experiment does in objective terms. Might as well make a science project out of it. Dora
Who knows what burning them converts them into? Easy to make real charcoal, though. Wrap small chunks of wood tightly in foil and toss into the hot coals.
There's no such thing as "charcoal ash" as distinct from "ash." Burnt wood charcoal becomes wood ash. Wood ash has many benefits for soil which charcoal, being inert, does not possess.
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