Could not hear speakers except the woman.

Does this mean that my neighbors, who burned off their fields every Good Friday, were enhancing the soil?

I'm just glad it played. I've been fighting Youtube all day...

Every computer has a different grasp of volume. You might want to turn up the volume of your speakers if you have them. If not, you might want to add external speakers --- my little laptop's speakers put out so little sound I'm always having to plug in headphones.

Biochar is a bit different than just burning off your field. The ash left behind from burning off a field was created in the presence of oxygen, so it tends to lack the carbon structure that makes biochar so useful. In addition, when you add anything with such small particle size to the top of soil, most of it tends to wash away in the first rain. Which is not to say that the plants don't probably get some immediate nourishment from the burning, but it won't be a long-lived effect like biochar.

Anna

I've been following this for some time. Have my own small unit. Been to demos and workshops.

This site covers alot of info on it:

http://www.carbon-negative.us/BiocharFAQ.htm

Best hands on demo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXMUmby8PpU

Best wishes Ron

Ron --- I'd be very curious to see what your biochar unit is like. We definitely want to make one since there's quite a bit of biomass that goes to waste on our farm, from blighted tomatoes, to colored junk mail, to the huge weeds that die back every winter along our driveway. But we want to make something relatively simple, perhaps like the next stage above the toucan version.