What is Biochar?

Biochar is a powerful fertiliser and delivers huge environmental benefits while its at it.

Biochar is similar to charcoal but with one big difference – we are not burning it, we are adding it into the soil where the carbon will stay locked up for thousands of years.

Biochar is created by a process called pyrolysis, where the biomass is heated to very high temperatures under low oxygen conditions. This means almost no harmful emissions are produced.

You can use fast growing wood like willow or poplar because the cell structure of the growth is bigger and allow more nutrient to be soaked up in it. After 3-4 hours the biochar is cooked then it is quenched with water.

Biochar is a habitat for microbial life that lives in the soil which have many benefits to the soil. A mere handful of biochar has a living surface area of a basketball court, which is a lot of space for microbial life to live and thrive.

For soil improvement you can add it directly to the soil or mix it in with compost to bio activate the compost making it more effective. Biochar improves water retention, increases beneficial bacteria and enzymes, and reduces the need for chemical fertilisers. Effects are long-lasting and can result in 15% greater crop yields.

Adding 10 to 20 percent biochar in the early stages of composting can reduce processing time, increase heating temperatures which kills of more pathogens or weed seeds, retain more nutrients and boost long-term carbon content, all of which translates into high quality compost.

Biochar can sequester carbon out of the atmosphere, there is a lot of research going on right now to find out just how effective it is. Trials are currently being run by Nottingham University.

To try it for yourself, we have lots of biochar in stock sold by the litre, £5 for 1 litre of readily inoculated biochar packed full of nutrients.

Contact us if you want to order some for collection. Our biochar comes from a woodland just 3 miles down the road from us in Alderwasley, Derbyshire – keeping things as local as possible. It is inoculated with our natural plant feed and compost tea from our worms.