Product Review and other comments by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
At the Garden Press Event 2010 I ended up with a sample bag of biochar by the name of “Carbon Gold” and I must say that the ancient ones, who we have to thank for the original invention of biochar, definitely knew what they did when they used charcoal to enhance soil fertility.
I used the Carbon Gold biochar in a container where I sowed some cabbages and carrots and not, I have no idea as to whether the two work as companion plants and the cabbages for one, and for once, have turned out real well.
On the Internet someone recently was lecturing in a video as to making of biochar oneself and how it was a different production process to the making of “ordinary” charcoal in that it would be created at higher temperatures to that of your common garden varieties of lumpwood charcoal. Ordinary charcoal, so this person said, thus would not work as a soil improver like biochar.
I must beg to differ there in that being a gardener at a former stately home the plant beds here are full of bits of charcoal that was used as a soil improver. This charcoal simply came from the charcoal cooking ranges in the great house and the gardeners of old used it to improve the soil and to add carbon matter to it, and that for all beds, whether flowers or vegetables. And I am sure they knew what they were doing.
The black earth areas of the Amazon where charcoal had been used as a soil improver to create highly fertile food growing areas I am sure where made also by simply adding carbon matter from the fires rather than special charcoal. Let's get back to terra firma. All the old gardeners and farmers knew of the value of adding charred wood to the soil, and also wood ash.
Maybe the process of making biochar today is better as to carbon capture than normal charcoal burning but that does not mean that ordinary charcoal does not work; it does. The stuff that the gardeners of old used was just that, ordinary charcoal and wood ash. Both arr good for the soil, and slowly release the carbon remaining the remains of the wood into the soil, thus adding food for the plants.
The results using the little sample bag of Carbon Gold, I must say, are very good indeed and the plants have done extremely well.
The stuff definitely seems to be working.
© 2010