Adding charcoal to soil through irrigation systems - ?

[Turtle]

Sounds good to me! I'll see what I can gather tomorrow (er...later today).

 

ditto. i have about a cup of bio-char left for trials. i put a tablespoon of it into a cup of water and about half sank & the rest is floating; nothing in between. i'll crush some up to different fineness with the mortor & pestle and then mix with water as with the big chunks. :smilingsun: :)

[Philip Small]

To get an aqueous suspension, the charcoal has to be finely ground. It must be doable at some level but it sounds daunting. Google "micronized charcoal" and "air flowable charcoal" (for kicks), "colloidal charcoal".

 

The compost tea I make from my char laden compost pile is black. I suppose that is the colloidal charcoal.

[Turtle]

If the particles are dust-size, they may fit through the drippers without clogging. On the other hand, they will float and may gather in the top of pipes and not reach the outlets.

 

To get an aqueous suspension, the charcoal has to be finely ground. It must be doable at some level but it sounds daunting. Google "micronized charcoal" and "air flowable charcoal" (for kicks), "colloidal charcoal".

 

my camera is out of commission so my description must suffice. i prepared very fine ground charcoal in the mortor & pestle and mixed it with water. at first all remained black, but after about 12 hours ~10% remained floating while the rest sank. (i expected more to float. )

 

this indicates to me that for this to even have a chance to work another machine is required to stir the suspension. on daunting yet more is the stirring/storing/delivey vessel needs to be closed & pressurized. while i haven't tried passing the mixture through straws to simulate an irrigation setup, i see problems with clogging during operation, as well as having the charcoal dry & solidify in the pipes/hoses when not in use. even if the system is flushed, the amount of water is increased and yet another level of complexity introduced.

 

any other experiment results or observations on this scheme?

[Gerrit]

Charcoal will just plug up a drip system. Maybe "floppysprinkler.com" can help you. Their sprinkler has no nozzle and can handle silt-laden soil. It just uses an open-ended silicone tube about the size of a pencil which swirls around flinging water droplets into the air. Mine spreads water for a diameter of about 30-35 feet.

 

Gerrit

[Michaelangelica]

A company called Barmac in Oz sell "Pick UP' activated charcoal which they recomend be delivered in water. It is used for fertiliser and chemical spills. It is very fine and flows like water. I am sure it would go though any watering system

Also it is very, very expensive ($160 for 3K?)

But it must be possible to take ordinary char and make some very fine stuff out of it? A sieve getting finner and finner and finer?

A hammer mill to start then working down?

 

I have some char that has stained a motar and pestle

How does it do that?

Mortar and pestles are suposed to be for drugs and impervious.

So this means some VERY, VERY tiny bits of char are getting into the hard vitrified clay.

Perhaps it is just a crap M&P?. It is not a chemist's one. Still?

 

I have been having a little think/thunk about this thread

 

A long time ago in aGalaxzy far away I was told to put soda water on my indoor plants as it was good for them

(Now soda water in Oz is just carbonated water)

 

A little while ago I came accross a research paper from New Zeland which told of the amzing extra growth they were getting where carbonated water bubbled to the surface. (I may have posted it somewhere here)

(the whole of NZ is a practically an extict volcano)o

I Thinks "How could you do this big time?"

Carbonate water and then put it onto /into the soil in a farm or nursery?

 

I gave up with the indoor plants because the soda just seemed to bubble off

So would this be what would happen if you tried to farm with soda water?

Would the CO2 disapear immediately when it hit soil?

Would it last a minute? a week? a year? until the next flood?

This isn't what was happening in NZ -it was lasting for awhile--but they had a continous, free soda syphon.

 

How long would the CO2 stay in the water/soil if you made some??

Would you need to use lots? little? CO2

Would it be a waste of time and energy?

Or would it be a way of promoting plant growth and sequestering a little CO2?

Are there wee beasties that exist and like CO2 and do wonderous things to soil fertility?

There seems to be wee beasties that eat/breathe everything else.

 

So ends here, the thunk.:shrug:

[Gerrit]

CO2 as a plant growth stimulant?

 

Virtually all greenhouse growers routinely burn natural gas to "manufacture" CO2 and spread it around the greenhouse through above-ground plastic tubes during the daytime to maximize photosynthesis in the leaves. However, I've never heard of them trying to put it into the root medium - where they would want O2 to stimulate root growth...

 

Gerrit

[Michaelangelica]

CO2 as a plant growth stimulant?

 

Virtually all greenhouse growers routinely burn natural gas to "manufacture" CO2 and spread it around the greenhouse through above-ground plastic tubes during the daytime to maximize photosynthesis in the leaves.

Good point, I had forgotten that. It is usually hot enough in most hothouses N of Victoria and growth is rapid so heaters are not used a lot. (I could be wrong). Bottom heat (electricity) is routinely used for propagation.

Of course by burning gas we are adding to the Global GHG effect!:(

 

I wonder if it is more environmentally sound to use compressed cylinders of CO2? I am not sure how it is gathered into a cylinder?:confused:

 

However, I've never heard of them trying to put it into the root medium - where they would want CO2 to stimulate root growth...

I'll have a little browse on the web but I doubt if any research has been done on this.

Well look at this

Some bugs like it

nteractive effects of mycorrhization and elevated carbon dioxide ...

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat

Elevated CO2 did not affect the root/shoot ratio, but. it supported lateral root formation ... elevated CO2 each stimulate growth of pedunculate. oak trees. ...

SpringerLink Home - Main

and

The Influence of Root Zone Temperature on Photosynthetic ...

Although the photosynthetic rate became less stimulate over time, a significant ... but it did increase root growth relative to shoot (top) growth with a ...

aob.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/81/6/717

 

probably need atrnslator for this article

Elevated CO₂ did not stimulate root growth of the treated vegetation nor did altered root decomposition occur.

However, elevated CO₂ resulted in 20% more water extractable soil organic carbon and marginally higher soil respiration rates.

Our data show that fine root growth may be much less stimulated by elevated CO₂ in late successional systems than in ecosystems with a rapidly expanding plant community biomass.:confused:

The higher water extractable organic carbon measured at elevated CO₂, could have important implications for soil functioning by changing substrate availability for microorganisms or the potential for carbon loss from the system by leaching.

:confused:

Treeline trees in a CO2-enriched world

 

This is a better article (contradicting the above one!)

But it is not clear WHERE the CO2 is coming from the water or the air?

• The results of our study indicate that rising CO2 may accelerate seedling root growth in L. tridentata, could lead to proportionally greater investment of roots in deeper soil layers and may enhance water acquisition.

Blackwell Synergy - New Phytol, Volume 159 Issue 1 Page 175-184, July 2003 (Article Abstract)

 

You would think Chevron Mobile would have funded some research on this as they want to pump CO2 underground!:):D:)

I envisage an underground farmer's trickle CO2 "irrigation" system!?

Has anyone got Chevron's phone number?:)

[diazotrophicus]

Hi,

that thing with carbonated water in the root zone had been tried and proposed by a Mr. Kückens in Germany about twenty years ago. Useless.

 

But I have an old article dating from 1925 (I like old books) where someone studied the CO2 in a wheat field near Berlin in Germany.

 

Just above the soil the concentration was about 850 ppm of CO2 and just above the plant tops it was lower than in the surrounding atmosphere! Only one metre above the plants things resumed to (then) standard 330 ppm.

 

Take care of your soil life and it will give you all the CO2 your plants will ever need.

diazotrophicus

 

A company called Barmac in Oz sell "Pick UP' activated charcoal which they recomend be delivered in water. It is used for fertiliser and chemical spills. It is very fine and flows like water. I am sure it would go though any watering system

Also it is very, very expensive ($160 for 3K?)

But it must be possible to take ordinary char and make some very fine stuff out of it? A sieve getting finner and finner and finer?

A hammer mill to start then working down?

 

I have some char that has stained a motar and pestle

How does it do that?

Mortar and pestles are suposed to be for drugs and impervious.

So this means some VERY, VERY tiny bits of char are getting into the hard vitrified clay.

Perhaps it is just a crap M&P?. It is not a chemist's one. Still?

 

I have been having a little think/thunk about this thread

 

A long time ago in aGalaxzy far away I was told to put soda water on my indoor plants as it was good for them

(Now soda water in Oz is just carbonated water)

 

A little while ago I came accross a research paper from New Zeland which told of the amzing extra growth they were getting where carbonated water bubbled to the surface. (I may have posted it somewhere here)

(the whole of NZ is a practically an extict volcano)o

I Thinks "How could you do this big time?"

Carbonate water and then put it onto /into the soil in a farm or nursery?

 

I gave up with the indoor plants because the soda just seemed to bubble off

So would this be what would happen if you tried to farm with soda water?

Would the CO2 disapear immediately when it hit soil?

Would it last a minute? a week? a year? until the next flood?

This isn't what was happening in NZ -it was lasting for awhile--but they had a continous, free soda syphon.

 

How long would the CO2 stay in the water/soil if you made some??

Would you need to use lots? little? CO2

Would it be a waste of time and energy?

Or would it be a way of promoting plant growth and sequestering a little CO2?

Are there wee beasties that exist and like CO2 and do wonderous things to soil fertility?

There seems to be wee beasties that eat/breathe everything else.

 

So ends here, the thunk.:P