For Immediate Release:

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

BioChar – what is it?
Living in a fire-prone environment, I always marvel how Mother Natures then uses that very same force to enhance the health of the soil and everything that grows from it. I talk a lot about the importance of minerals in both our bodies as well as in the plants, animals, insects birds. They all need tree minerals to be healthy. Lack in any of the over 79 trace minerals, deficiency in just one trace mineral and you will be setting yourself up for a disease or a pest to attack your body. The same is with all living things. With trees, I have found that all pests or diseases in a tree have the same cause. That cause is a lack of a specific trace mineral or a group of trace minerals. Pick a pest, any pest attacking the trees these days. First, all that they all have in common is one thing: they are connected to the soil. So what they all have in common is this: the soil they are connected to is not alive and therefore is not functioning as it should. That is to say that the soil is not able to deliver to the trees all the trace minerals it requires for good health. Once the tree is “sick” it is open to a pest, says Bark Beetle, to attack it.
By learning how to keep your soil alive, you will also then be able to keep healthy all of your trees, plants, lawns roses, anything that grow and needs living soil. You, in turn, will be healthier for it too.
It is as simple as that. So anything that we can do to help the soil maintain the proper microbial life, the better.
This brings me to compost and BioChar.
BioChar is an extraordinary and ancient farming method that uses fire, creating a valuable resource. Turns your garden waste into a live compost that holds carbon. Increases the nutritional value of the food you produce. It also raises the microbial biodiversity in the soil. Fires are also useful against deforestation by helping new trees come back strong and healthy. The process of creating BioChar results in a porous charcoal that helps the soil retain nutrients and water. Nutrients without adequate water is useless to plants.
BioChar is found in most soils worldwide because of natural fires. In Many places, farmers have been using BioChar method in they’re farming practices with fantastic results. The Amazon (terra preta) is a perfect example of using this method of farming and how it is affected the environment. It has many benefits for both the farmers as well as to the environment. Recent climate change demands that we learn how to bring the living topsoil back and quickly. Learn more at
http://www.biochar-international.org/biochar/carbon
One of the things I like about using BioChar is that it is an excellent source of not only carbon but it also increases the soils ability to hold more carbon through the increased microbiological activity. Most Folks do not realize that the earth holds and stores carbon and is called carbon sequestration. The amount of carbon in the topsoil is equal to the amount of carbon that is in the ocean. Both take carbon and through different methods binds it. Trees take in carbon in the form of carbon dioxide and convert it into oxygen. Carbon is also used by Mycelium in making minerals available to plants. We have managed to damage this process to the point of diseases and pests spreading.
I teach the laws of cause and effect. The pests and diseases are only the effects and not the cause. I suggest that we all start to make our home our own Green Acres as my late friend Eddie Albert would say. If everyone made their homes and property healthy, that would go a long way towards fighting climate change. We all would live a healthier life. Your trees, your roses, your fruit trees, your lawn, would all be happy and healthy.
Making your own compost is always the best way to go, but not everyone can make compost, so it is essential to use local sources of compost and of these beautiful new products such as BioChar that will help you to keep your soil alive. I would make sure that if you were to buy compost that the compost had the following: any type of animal manure, rock dust, BioChar, earthworm castings. Make sure it does not have Urea or any sewer sludge either. Of course, If making compost, then be sure to add to your compost.
Adding BioChar to your raised bed once a year will increase the health of your soil. This will help plants to grow better and have higher nutritional values. It is also good to add BioChar to the bottom as a layer when you first build and fill the raised bed. This will create a reservoir of nutrients for the Mycelium. It will also increase water absorption so you will need to use less water. A BioChar layer will increase the microbial activity of the soil, increasing earthworm activity as well. This in effect will produce a sustained source of nutrients.
Leave your carbon footprint in the garden.
“If you could continually turn a lot of organic material into biochar, you could, over time, reverse the history of the last two hundred years…We can, literally, start sucking some of the carbon that our predecessors have poured into the atmosphere down through our weeds and stalks and stick it back in the ground. We can run the movie backward. We can unmine some of the coal, undrill some of the oil. We can take at least pieces of the Earth and – this is something we haven’t done for quite a while – leave them Better Than We Found Them.” -Bill McKibben, author, climate activist and founder of 350.org
Any questions?
leave it below or you can email me and I will answer on my next radio show
andy Lopez
Invisible Gardener
andylopez@invisiblegardener.com