John,

Do you buy the biochar or make it yourself? I have a fair bit of limbs fall down each year and I wonder if making the biochar with the wood is worth it.

Chris

Fascinating John, do you charge the biochar before using it, or just go for it?

I find John's crop improvements fascinating too.

Science is starting to find how this works and on a closer level while experimenting with tomato plants. Scientists view the turning of specialized genes that are associated with hosting the beneficial fungi in the earth.

This picture here is hosted inside phys dot org. The top control is tomato. The very active in the top middle is Wheat Straw (WSB). The inactive in the top right is Chicken Manure (CMB), which should be avoided when charging biochars because it suppresses plant immunity, which I think correlates (as in John S persimmons) to plant fertility.

Clicking on the physical dot org image will land you on the article.

I meant for you to click on the picture using some physical effort that invokes your hand, mouse, and the image I placed in the above.

The article when you get there indicates a controversy between phosphates in priming biochar and not having phosphates which you will see when you get there. And like I said before it's going to be interesting to see if the experimental results will eventually show us if this withholding of phosphates applies more than just to tomato plants. It is even plausible that this benefit relates to better selfing abilities (ie. fertility).

This is the same Phys dot org article

I acknowledge the part on my side from before that caused this misunderstanding. Sorry.

That's John. I caught him by surprise while I was on that side of the woods. It looks like he mastered making what he posted last year (above post-3). I've read nothing but great things regarding Biochar. I think there is only one negative, but only short term, that if you use concentrated Biochar out of softwoods then the PH is very high and holds negative consequences (in the short term) for plants in pots having to do with a lack of nitrogen. That's all they really seem to know as all the other benefits are still shrouded in this still pretty big shroud of mystery about it.

Congradulations!

Well I didn't comb through enough background to know for this for sure. It was only wrote for basically potted greenhouse plants that would concern profitability in the first year. The appropriate link I went by is the one I'm pasting here about the first year warning signs and this was not any large enough funded example to stand up anyways.

Possible risks associated with potting with lots of Biochar

Sorry for the surprise picture. You get around the same as I've always known you, but feeling a bit disappointed for not planning this visit with you. This is really the only summer in many spent in Washington. I had to be here gathering my pollination crosses. The apricots were not hand pollinated. The most interesting of all crosses for me this year are high takes of japanese ornamental cherry (from diploid plants) on the male side to peunte/adara plum (also diploid). Who known if they will germinate though.