Tropical Fruit > Tropical Fruit Discussion

Making Biochar at Home, Enrichment Soil with Kitchen Waste

(1/2) > >>

GrowerA:
Have a Great Thanksgiving to All.
Do you use wood charcoal to make biochar and compost your kitchen waste? Please share your experience
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it0X_WH8scA

Finca La Isla:
We compost kitchen waste and fruit processing waste.
We also make biochar from pruning and other material in a TLUD adapted steel drum. We activate the char with a lactobacillis microorganism culture.
Peter

spaugh:
Im not as sophisticated with my trash.  We just keep a bucket under the sink and take it out every couple days and burry it under tree in a shallow hole.   No need to do any extra work with it.

Finca La Isla:
Most things work with kitchen waste in the farm/garden. What we’re doing with the compost is incorporating it into our potting medium with other stuff so we kind of want a uniformly composted material.

Galatians522:
I tried several methods and spent a lot of time composting several years back. Then, I did the math on how much I was generating in fertilzer/humus for the year compared to what I was investing in time. I was making something like $3 an hour. That didn't seem worthwhile to me. Now I just do what Brad does and bury my kitchen scraps in the garden.

Actually, some nitrogen is lost in the composting process. So, I think burrying is a more efficient use of nutrients (it won't get rid of pathogens like hot composting, but that's not as big of an issue when the material is 12" under the soil). Also, high carbon stuff will not affect your soil nitrogen if it is just a mulch. However, earthworms will slowly eat it from the bottom, up and turn it into humus. Now my motto is, "Burry the green, mulch the brown." It works best if you plan a fallow area (or areas) in your garden rotation where you can methodically burry scraps to enrich the soil.

As for bio char, my soil is really acid and is already high in organic matter. So, I need the liming effect of the ash more than I need the char. I just save the ash and whatever char there is from my fires to spread on the garden. I also save my bone scraps in a gallon bag in the freezer. When the bag gets full I dump it on a nice hot fire. Bone ash and char are about 30% phosphorus (most of which only becomes available slowly over time). As long as you live in a place where there is no mad cow disease, campfire heat should be enough to sterilize the bone. That is probably another of those things where I am not generating much in the way of a dollar value. But, if I was going to have the fire any way the time invested is negligible.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page