Protect this man at all costs

I did this as an experiment under my plantain banana trees and the one with the charcoal is currently about 5 feet taller than the other one! This stuff is magical!!

Great video,thanks. I'm 77 and not in the shape I was 40 years ago. About 5 years ago I started making charcoal, running it through a wood chipper and adding to my compost pile. it's a passive pile and takes about 2 years to finish. I have 6 of these. They are 42 x 42 inch wood pallet bins. If want to speed up the biocharge I make aerated compost tea that I let run for five days, adding 2 tablespoons of molasses everyday till done. Add the charcoal on the third day. On the fourth day the tea has approximately 6 million critters per spoonful.That's by microscopic count. Had to find a way around all that shovel work. Huge difference in the garden.

My thoughts…… YOU ARE THE BEST !!!! You can teach in such a clear concise understandable way in a short video it is amazing !!!! I have watched hundreds of gardening videos over the years, some 1 1/2 hours long and when I’m done I question, “what do I do” ?……not here, you are direct, to the point, don’t waste time, not a bunch of infomercials, not selling anything, not trapping people to watch by giveaways…..you are pure Gold and I am on a mission to make you KZfaq famous !!!! I recommend you to everyone that wants to garden, I comment about you on other channels and hopefully send people here !!!! I can’t wait to see you earn enough to buy the land you dream of !!!! Thank you Nate, I know you are helping people to grow food easier, cheaper and healthier which will help people with food insecurities!!!! God bless you !!!

A lot of people have missed that the black soils of the prairie are basically biochar enriched. It got dry enough for for the occasional fires to prevent trees from growing. Even though only a little of the burned grassland was charcoal, over the centuries, it accumulated into deep black soils.

I made a retort to make charcoal but was unsure how to charge and apply. You have a gift for explaining clearly. Thanks for all your gardening videos.

I'd watch this channel even if I wasn't a gardener just for the injection of positivity and passion you have Nate. Thank you from Wales🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Hello Nate, Yes absolutely use Bio Char in your soil. I have 24 raised beds and have been adding Biochar into my beds for the last three years. Works wonders with my Sandy Florida soil. Leave mold, compost, Biochar and your teachings about using the JDAM system. The combination works wonders for my sand box soil. Thanks for helping us Organic Gardeners.

I’m so excited! You made this doable for me, because I would’ve been an old lady before I would’ve ever been set up to make the charcoal myself.

I wondered when you were going to get around to covering biochar, and I am glad you did. I first read about this about 20 years ago in the wonderful Acres USA eco-agricultural publication in an article about terra preta. That is Portuguese for dark earth. Ancient Amazonian civilizations made highly fertile soils in the Amazon basin, and if you have ever been in the tropics and seen the soils you would know that can be a challenge. They also utilized unfired pottery sherds for the clay minerals and to act as a type of perlite. I use leftover charcoal from my fruit and nut trees used in the grill, which goes through the chipper with other green waste and gets added to compost piles. I add kitchen waste, manure from horse, burro and llama, as well as urine, then hot compost it. I have been doing this for many years and have built amazing soils. I am now using the JADAM preparations as well. Outstanding work you are doing my friend, keep it coming!

I just typed in the question”Can I use my GREEN EGG lump coal too make my own bio- char ?” and was directed too your site. I’m so happy I found you😁!. I’m an old disabled grandpa that is gardening with his granddaughter, and due to 5 back surgeries and a lot of pain, sometimes without her😉, I’m recently leaning tech, ie. this SMART PHONE my daughters got me, but I subscribed and MUST learn how to converse with you, be it text or phone?Your a GARDEN GURU, a SOIL SAINT, a GROW BRO.I doubt any site will reach and teach what the earth NEEDS NOW

@Nate: The more of your videos that I watch, the more I appreciate the amazing experience and knowledge base that you have, as well as your genuine concern for everybody else trying to grow a garden. Tough times are either here or coming, and we as a nation are going to have to do a lot of what the World War II generation did in terms of producing our own food. The problem is that most people really don’t know how, and just think that if they dump a bunch of fertilizer in their garden that they buy at a big box store, that’s good enough. Thanks to you, we all know better. All of us should spread our own knowledge to family, friends and neighbors, including telling them about this channel. Rather than using urine for nitrogen (not that there’s anything wrong with that) another fantastic and free source is used coffee grounds that you can get for free from your local coffee shop. That is obviously in addition to whatever coffee grounds someone may have from their own brewing, though that is usually a very small quantity in comparison. Most of the acidity is removed during the brewing process, so you are left with something that is chock-full of nitrogen. Another good thing about coffee grounds is that they are roughly a 50-50 mix of carbon and nitrogen, so it is a good addition to a composting pile. You don’t have to worry that much about the ratio between greens and browns if you have a lot of coffee grounds.

Thank you for sharing this. I began making Biochar after stumbling across an academic research article about the Amazonian dark earth (Biochar) from over 1000 years ago and how those regions are still amazingly fertile and becoming even more fertile each year. Amazing how nature can turn what initially is a total destruction by fire into an ever-present source of life.

I never thought of supercharging the biochar before. What a great idea. I'm trying to no-till my foodplots, but if I ever do till again ill definitely add this to get it all mixed in deep.

I spent the winter making biochar in pyrolizing stove (made from a clean one gallon paint can in a sap bucket with a 4" stack 3 feet high). Small batches. Takes some experimentation to get things right, but it can burn with almost no smoke. Even if you have neighbors around it is doable. I live in a "right to farm community," whatever that means, so people here are a little more relaxed about what you do on your property when it's burning, composting, keeping livestock, etc. Anyway, lots of ideas online for building one of these stoves. This practice sequesters carbon, too, people!

I definitely gave this a happy thumbs up. I learned something today. I've been wanting biochar for my sandy yard. But fire hazard is high in my forest area. So I didn't want to burn anything. Now I know I can purchase a few bags and have the same benefits for a small cost. And since I no longer need to purchase fertilizer, I have the extra funds.😊. Thank you!!!

Nice and easy methods, best bang for the buck enhancements. Wonderful set of gardening knowledge tools from this channel. Never fails to disappoint. One of my favorite channels.

Look at you! 60k plus followers now. Well done and deserved.

Two thoughts. First, making charcoal for biochar is relatively easy with the TLUD approach. Oxygen starved, the Top Lit Up Draft method keeps the carbon from oxidizing into CO2. I sent a sample to the NC state lab and using hardwoods as a base material, the charcoal I produced was 97%+ pure carbon, ~2% Calcium, and the rest trace minerals. I burn in 55 gallon drums and after a dozen burns I had, literally, a drum full of charcoal. Second, the I make the particle size small. Small means more surface area and better bio-activation. I've used a mid-sized screen in a small hammermill but pounding with a 4x4 post works too. My activation material is contents from a Johnson Su Bioreactor and 2 YO leaf mulch.

You are a very vibrant, high energy being. I love your energy and the beard. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

OH AWESOME Nate, I have seen many other videos on how to prepare the Bio-char before you add to the garden. But man this is the BEST! So easy to follow your recipe and demonstration. I still have to find the fish to make the fish fermentation, and the chicken manure to make that too. Thank you SO much. Hail the Viking King of the kingdom of "Gardening like a Viking" You are the very BEST! You explained it so well! We are all so very fortunate to be taught by you, how to learn from mother nature.❤ The natural way! ,💚💚💚💚💚💚💚🇿🇦👍

Wholly affable, endlessly informative, & a refreshing voice on the future of (gardening) humanity. I’m losing sleep re-watching all the great videos. Love it! Thanks!

This is awesome! I have been making charcoal for a few years, “charging” it with whatever I had on hand. Wasn’t sure how long it took so I was waiting way longer than 5 days! Thanks Nate, appreciate your knowledge and confidence.

Wow with all these recipes I will look like a mad scientist with all the buckets sitting around. I love it!

They found evidence that the amazon basin was at one point heavily populated despite the ph of the soil. They found ample proof that they used exactly this technique for enriching the soil, on experimentation theysaw an increase of around 100 heads of wheat in a square yard/meter to 600 heads aftyer the act of charcolizing the soil. Don't tell Big Agro though, they'll ban it!! Great vid, keep educating the world my friend.

I have got a Iron-heart wood burner which I only burn natural wood from windfalls from my wood nearby 👲I will try that out 👍thanks again for your videos 👍I always learn something new from you😀watching from England

Hi Nate! I'm late to this one as I'm catching up after subbing to you... Just thought I'd add a comment. I cut down and dug out some big wild rose bushes next to my patch during the winter. I left the branches and roots where they fell and last month cut them into foot long lengths and used them to make charcoal. The burn went well and after dousing, I let the char sit in water overnight. The next day I added rice bran (brown), chicken manure and 2L of urine (green). After letting it sit for a week I then added it to two 1.2 cubic meter piles of compost that were bubbling away at about 68C (154F). This compost will be used to make no dig beds in the fall. So excited to convert to no dig and garden/farm more naturally. Thanks for all the info you provide in your videos. All the best my friend ☺

After watching maybe 15 of your vids, I kept asking myself if you knew about biochar. OMG how fantastic! I just made almost an entire 55 gal barrel of biochar yesterday and the day before. It's crude and I used old wood pallets. Then I used a magnet to get all the nails out, then I used a round shovel to smash the pieces using a 55-gallon barrel that I had cut in half lengthwise. I was able to see what I had and get rid of rocks and other debris that I noticed. It was a crude way to make biochar and it was my first time after watching tons of vids. I have an area on my little 1/3 acre that I had carved out what was gonna be a pond but it's been so dry in the Texas Hill Country that it was dry as a bone and cone shaped. I got 4 small goats that love that space. My chickens and goats were thrilled to have me out there. I've been in a SUPER depressed state and trying everything to increase my vibrational energy. Gosh, your vids are incredibly helpful. Gonna start looking for your live shows cause you really are helping me stay alive. I started to watch your last live vid and I love how you answered someone's question - how to help others lift their energy. You used the two logs example. One is burning brightly, the other is smoldering. I told my husband of 41 years that luckily for me he has been the burning log stoking my smoldering log. Kind of sounds a little kinky now that I put it in writing. LOL From the bottom of my heart I wanna thank you for what you do. If you're helping me, I just KNOW you're helping others. I bet you're gonna have a million subs in no time!

Learn something new everyday from the viking king,

Great job explaining, excellent analogy -- "high-rise condominium"! for micro-organisms. :)

I am an avid viewer of gardening videos and YT just finally suggested your channel to me, I think I've watched 3 videos so far, but man! The info on those alone is amazing.

Why only 60k subscribed!? This is pure gold! 🔥

Dude! I literally need this right now. I was going to buy a 30" & a 55" steel drum and make a rhetort burner, and a hunk of chimney and get at it. Now I am going to Home Depot or somewhere nearby to get me a bag of that! We have the Royal Oak up here in Ontario! Just when I need it, God Provides. I am a rare type. I feel that as a lawncare guy, GRASS HAPPENS. I know we can grow food on tye space and should, but I can be the fool who believes that if your going to have grass, make it the healthiest grass it can be, and take care of the land its living on. Make it better than it was when you found it. The labor of love is easy when yu mean it. 🇨🇦👊🏻👨🏻‍🏭✨💖🙏 Thanks Nate for the frugal tips! I am so poor, that when the weatherman says its chilli outside? I go grab a bowl and head out!😅🤡😉👌🌞🙏🙏🙏

Hey man. I live in southern Florida. I’ve already used microbes saturated charcoal to cure my tree of rot and still got a lot of charcoal. I want to say that I also added the finely crushed charcoal to my grass it helped with the spotty areas with no grass. For a Sandy area, to add more life, big chucks of charcoal like fire pits mixed in around so all the minerals from everything I’m adding doesn’t all just seep below to the bottom. As I see with my grass, adding more charcoal helps with roots too.

I can’t stop watching your videos. I’m definitely making Biochar to add to my container garden

Listened to Albert Bates lecture on biochar several years ago. Be careful if you try to buy biochar. I did and added it to my new garden and after suboptimal production I inquired about what/how that inoculated the char with the microbe biology. Turns out they were selling char as biochar and that was the reason for poor garden performance. Caveat emptor! Will be making my own this winter.

Finally got myself some hard wood lump and turned it into biochar. Charging it now. Thanks for the knowledge my friend

Thanks Nate I guess you could be called the bionic gardener.

Yesterday I was thrilled to find the exact bag of charcoal at my local store! Off to make some super charged biochar! Today I found some biochar on my walk and I collected an ice cream pail full of it. So exciting!

I made some homemade biochar with pure charcoal from the grocery store. (Don't need enough to warrant making my own charcoal.) Broke up the super big chunks and inoculated it with a soup of fish emulsion and worm castings. Buried the biochar in the bottom of the grow bags I am using for sweet potatoes. Will make more and bury the pieces in my raised beds.

I've said it before and I will say it again. You are very knowledgeable and remind me of me with your techniques and application. Tell me more please sir.

One of the greatest channels on KZfaq Thanks man for the great info

Love your videos Nate and I also love reading all the comments it’s like a 2 in one special. Thanks for all that you are...blessed

I just made my own Bio Char using home grown bamboo thanks for the information on how to super charge it. Cheers Nat.

Amazing stuff! So much to learn. Thank you Nate!

Thank you! I've been researching this biochar and can completely understand the benefits but was still a bit unsure of the charging method. There is so much "stuff" out there on the subject. You spoke in language that I get and I really appreciate it. Thanks again!

We are making our own here and we are inoculating it and selling it to our local greenhouses and our slogan is "Your Ticket To Garden Success" and "Nutrition Coming To Fruition". We do NOT make it so that cows fart less, lol. Yes, it "sequesters carbon" but we don't acquiesque to the climate bs. Thank you for teaching folks about this! We need to get the world healthy again!!...I, Stella and Kage at Prepper's Paradise Permaculture Gardens - (Prepper's Paradise Canada on you tube) appreciate you! We listen to you often. Keep up the great work and knowledge!❤

So glad this info is available when needed. Running to catch up these systems.

this video is really good, sir, it's very useful for farmers and planters, thank you for sharing your knowledge.

I make biochar using softwood as thats all we have in Montana. After I make the charcoal, I charge it in my compost pile, chicken coop, and use it in my barn for bedding with the goats and pigs. I spread a lot of mine on my fields with my manure spreader. I just found your channel, so I haven't had the opportunity to make all the fertilizers and urea yet.

You can use this charcoal for actives charcoal for ingesting for 1st aid or for facials 😊

I was happy to see you post this video, I've exhausted the rest of the biochar content on YT moons ago. Skillcult's playlist stands above the rest and his video on charcoal usage in early north america is FULL of cool information. Cheers to you and yours, thanks for your content! Always watching when you post new ones and love the long Q&A's as well.

Really like your straight forward tutorial don't need a lot of fluff just info 👍

Thank You for this Tutorial!

We are using burnt rice husk as a biochar. It is normal practice in our country Sri Lanka.

I like to soak my charcoal in my homemade liquid feed before adding into my compost piles

I ABSOLUTELY love your site! You share much wisdom my brother. Biochar and a more robust garden coming up!💖

i love how u break it down . thank you

I can't get the thought of a high rise full of anthropomorphized mycelium and bacteria and other microorganisms out of my head, but that is a great metaphor! Love that this method not only serves us now, but serves many generations of farmers.

I love your western revitalization of this ancient technique.

VERY GOOD VÍDEO NATE, THANK YOU VERY MUCHO, I REALLY APPRECIATTE, BEST REGARDS & WISHES FROM PERÚ

Archeological findings in south America discovered charred wood and bone meal in the rainforest from thousands of years ago called terra preta. Fascinating stuff!

Thank you Nate. I leaned a new 55 gallon drum at a 45 ish degree. It made perfect size charcoal from tree branches. You helped me tremendously. Hopefully this will help you or someone else in the viking tribe.

Viking - you are the garden GOAT my friend! TY 4 ALL the KNOWLEDGE!!!

Really appreciate video. Using biochar for first time this summer. Thank you!! Very informative

I was saving all my pistachio shells to make my own bio char because I was buying it but I use it for terrariums, aquariums, ponds and the garden so need to start my own because it’s gone really expensive and aquariums bio char needs changing every month so this video was helpful thank you (I want sure how to activate it with microbes) 👍

Awesome ecplanation. Congraulations for your teaching skills. Greetings from Honduras.

Thank you for this. About a year ago I made a 50 gallon barrels worth of biochar for the first time. Months ago I had it all soaking in a 200 gallon tub of rain water. In December I made my first LAB just to make it. I didn't have anything really growing so I dumped the whole thing in to the tub of biochar. Then I decided to add urine, weedwater fertilizer solution, several shovels of compost and and clumps of arborist chips that looked a lot like your mycelium rich leaf mold. It sat for months and basically turned into an algae rich bug and frog pond that I would stir up when I thought of it. A couple weeks ago I drained all of the fluids into the center of a newly planted banana circle. I thought my weird science project might have been a good enough inoculation so i have been adding it to my compost, sand mixture. It's probably only about a solo cup of biochar per gallon worth of compost. Instead of entire beds, for each plant I just dug out my sand, mixed it all together, refilled the hole and planted into it. It's too early to tell if this season was doomed from the start or not, but I have about 20 gallons of biochar left, 20 gal of weed water, and probably 150 pounds of nursery bought compost left over. I'm thinking I need to have a better plan for my fall garden and the 20+ fruit tress I still have in pots... I've been a youtube junkie lately and I really appreciate the direction and instruction you provide!! Thanks!

I'm gonna do a poop based compost with charcoal as substrate You can make your own charcoal by picking red pieces of wood during a camp fire and drop it into water. That way I can pick the nice ones ^^

Great, glad to see more on the subject. We have a jora composter, and add our home made charcoal there. Remember you can biochar a lot of organic material, fish bone, pinecones, shells, etc. Pretty cool man, thanks for the video.

Asalammualaikum brother. Love the beard, don't cut, Mashallah. Great breakdown in simple terms. And I didn't know this for lump coal. Yes sir. Charged up my garden today. Inshallah. Thanks. Don't cut beard Bratha. Salam

Just realised from your explanation: This is why lava is such a good fertiliser.

Most people don’t have half that stuff. Great video as always. 👍

Subbed from the compost video... I know about biochar but this is a good video.

Your explanation about biochar is correct. Charcoal and Biochar are different. What you have is store-bought natural charcoal, not complete carbon, not biochar. Biochar needs a high temperature process over 1000℉ called pyrolysis. During the process, there is no smoke from the exhaust. Biochar is a lot lighter and has a crisp sound to the touch. Details on making biochar maybe searched on Geoff Lawton, Joel Salatin or Andrew Millison's permaculture channels. Biochar is safer and last longer

I think this is my favorite of your videos. I am making tons of biochar for my soil. I hope that in a few years when I can't garden so intensively anymore (age/health), then the biochar will do the job for me! Hurrah for permanent fertilizer - my own Terra Preta :)

Dude where have you been! Thanks downloading this bad boy.

Currently watching the weather. Stay safe my friend.

Good talk cheers Nate. If you want a simple smokeless biochar burner that would work in your home setting look out for a beer keg, the handle holes are perfect size for primary/secondary air, drill some holes in the bottom, cut the top out leaving a 2" rim round the edge, then all you need is a flat metal top (doesn't need sealing) with a chimney between 4-6" dia, it's a TLUD design Top Lit Up Draft, light the top then put the lid on when it's going good, soon as the yellow flames stop you need to douse it or it'll turn to ash, works great completely smokeless, all the fuel needs to be dry and ~the same size for an even burn, dry woodchip works great, can send pics of mine if it helps.

Thanks for sharing your extensive knowledge , mister And your video held my attention from start to finish , thanks for that too

Great content as always. Thank you!

This is super information, and it's free,, thanks friend. I suggest you do not use your bare hands to scoop up the biochar,, use a big scoop with a long handle, for fear bacteria may get caught in your finger nails.

Wow you are good! I found you after the Pinball video. So glad I did!! Thank you

I've been adding broken up charcoal to my hot compost bin with my chicken coop litter and garden/food waist. So looking to adding the bio filled compost to my garden in the fall.

Im loving it. Shout out for the bio-char inspired outfit!!!😂

The "drive over it"-solution to crush the charcoal is truly american :D i did not think of that. But a neighbor a few houses down the road had a plate compactor at hand, which I could borrow for one hour. My particle size is 3..5 mm roughly 1/8th to 1/4 inch My first contact with biochar was 2005. I could talk to one professor on this topic from my home country. He recommended "up to 5mm particle size", that it shall be incorporated in the upper soil layer (otherwise it will swim away with the rainwater), and that I shall not use directly it after breaking but add it to the compost to charge it up. Also he told me to make the charcoal for myself, because the most important step is the "quench" when the ready, but still glowing charcoal is stopped with (ideally soft rain-)water - this breaks open all the pores and yields charcoal with the most useable cavities per volume and thus most surface area.

Good morning from Papua New Guinea. I enjoyed watching your contents.

Yep, recycled beer/water is an excellent way to add urea to the mix. It certainly does kick -start the compost pile. I add stinging nettle to my brews; I'm not sure if you have them across the pond, but here in NE Scotland we have ample amounts of the stuff.

Did you ever wonder why the evil ones have declared carbon as the enemy and are trying to remove it from the environment.....

Brilliant. I've been waiting for you to cover this topic. Cheers dude!

Thank you. I just made an open air charcoal kiln. What ama do is use the smaller bits of left over charcoal and create biochar for my vegetable garden. #salute. #great_vid

One of the best information I never none thanks brother

Awesome video friend!

Endless, perfect content from a master.

Best video on biochar I've seen, well done

It's actually proven best to powder it or make it very very small granuals. But it's good to mix some different sizes in there. Powdered, charged biochar can cover a massive amount of garden area and make it produce greatly. This biology you're talking about is microscopic so that it can still live in the powdered charcoal. And the nutrients can stay there as well. What's your talking about when you say one in² of biochar when folded out can cover something amount of football fields or whatever. This is when you powder or crush it up as fine as possible throw a wood chipper after it's been soaking in a nutrient solution and then pulled out and dry for 2 days you can run it through a wood chipper. Watch Jack Spirco, The Survival Podcast. He goes into deep detail for this process, and he has several podcasts that go into detail about it with other people who are experts in it.

Good stuff but hard work. I use banana peel chopped and tea bags orange peel soaked for a few days. It goes round the roses and rhodedhendrons azaleas camelias. The birds eat most of it but i water down the liquid and it is sufficient to feed them. Very powerful

Best explanation ever...

Nate so lucky to discovered your videos

Your perspective and guidance is greatly appreciated 🤙