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First Batch of Biochar


I finally started cooking biochar. It took a little longer than I expected to get started.

The first pic is the beginning of the burn. I think I need to get a chunker to get these branches down to a nice size. These longer twigs have too much air space and it took a while to get a flame cap.


I eventually did get a flame cap and after adding lots and lots of branches, I finally did get some nice char.

I have no idea how long it took. I forgot to set a stopwatch or even write down the starting/ending time.

There were some uncharred branches at the bottom of this barrel. I think I'm going to have to get some gravel to bank around the sides of the barrel to hold in more heat. Either that or build a double-wall set-up.

This turned out a whole lot better than I expected. Of course, there wasn't much wind, but even then, most of the flame stayed in the barrel. I didn't see any embers floating away in the light breeze. The contents stay where they belong and the flame just pops out the top a bit, consisting of burning gases.

After a while, I finally quenched the batch...as I said, perhaps a little early.


I managed to fill 3-75 litre trash cans, all the way to the top, for a total of 225 litres of char.

I have to do the first turn of my big compost pile tomorrow. I think I'll add a barrel of char to the pile.

I had tried to make a compost pile earlier, but I didn't cover it when it rained. And of course, we had many, many centimeters of rain over the past two weeks. So I'm not very pleased with the results.

The second batch of compost was covered in anticipation of rain over the past few days, but we barely received a sprinkle. I can see the waves of heat coming out of the top, so I'm pretty sure it's cooking along as it's supposed to.

It's mostly hay, grass cuttings and horse manure. It will be interesting when I add the char tomorrow in the first turn. I'm trying to use the "hot compost" method described by Geoff Lawton, but I don't have a whole heck of a lot of woody biomass to add that's small enough to make it easy to turn.

A small wood chipper should be on my wish list soon to take care of that.

If it's not too windy tomorrow, I'll do at least one batch, maybe two.

All in all, I'm impressed with how it turned out.

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