Partially burned material a boon to plants

Sandy resident sees biochar as a way to fertilize and capture carbon

By Garth Guibord

The Gresham Outlook, Mar 30, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Garth Guibord / The Gresham Outlook

Paul Elmore shows off a handful of his homemade biochar while he stands in front of a pile of branches set to become part of the garden supplement.

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When most people see a pile of sticks and wood, all they see is sticks and wood. Sandy resident Paul Elmore, 39, sees possibilities. He sees biochar – burned organic material that can be used to make plants grow.

“The natives in the Amazon basin developed a method of using biochar as an agricultural or garden supplement,” said Elmore, who first heard of biochar from a TV documentary and learned more from research done by Cornell University.

“The carbon in the soil allowed the microbes space to breed and multiply. The soil creates its own ecosystem where it’s breaking things down,” he said.

The thought of biochar inspired Elmore – who makes his own organic juice from fruit trees on his land and also hopes to make sustainable renovations to his house in the near future – to try it for himself.

Elmore’s process is simple: Start to burn a pile of material (from branches to wooden pallets), shovel it out, put it in a barrel and put a lid on to stop the burning. Once the biochar cools, it’s ready to use. But one important aspect is not to let the pile burn too long.

“If you char wood, you are left with biochar,” researcher Johannes Lehmann, associate professor at Cornell University, wrote via e-mail. “If you burn wood, you are left with ash.”

So what’s the difference between burning and charring? “If you burn wood, close to 100 percent of the carbon goes up into the air as (carbon dioxide); if you char wood, about 50 percent remains in the char,” Lehmann said.

Elmore uses his biochar in a variety of ways, from spreading it on the ground to putting it into the soil. He sometimes includes a micro-nutrient fertilizer for some plants because the biochar offers a solid base to start growing from.

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