Is Carbon Fertilizer ??

[Gordon Gould]

I know one thing - What ever it was it was free or very cheap. Farmers up here don't have any extra money to spend on something that doesn't have a lot of bang for the buck.

 

[vtsnowedin]

Well the water treatment plants have to pay to have it landfilled and landfill space is getting scarce. Maybe you could get them to pay you for taking it?
CSWD plan to send sludge to N.Y. draws criticism
Edit to add link to sludge story.

 

[Brian Miller]

I believe that the benefit of bio char is that the natural cavities in charcoal provide good spaces for beneficial microbes to set up shop & reproduce. It a good way to start rebuilding extremely damaged soil. But I have no idea if that's what you saw.

 

[jenkinsph]

Gordon,
Any chance this was slag? My dad would put 0 6 6 slag on the fields many years ago but I was too youngl to remember what it looked like.

 

[davesl708]

It may have been similar to the product Milorganite. Milorganite is made from the sludge from waste treatment plants. It is black and looks like small sand.

 

[Rustyiron]

I know one thing - What ever it was it was free or very cheap. Farmers up here don't have any extra money to spend on something that doesn't have a lot of bang for the buck.

A friend puts ash on his fields from a paper mill for basically trucking costs. (another cheap lime alternate)

 

[Billrog]

Ash and bio char are two different commodity's and give different benefits. Through research it has been proven that the addition of bio char into agricultural compost provides many benefits to the end user.
1: greater water retention in the soil.
2: less compaction of the soil , enhancing root distribution.
3: locked in retention of microbial nutrients for vegetation to feed off.
4: a natural captured storage area for toxins, heavy metals, and NPK storage for for vegetation to acquire as needed.
5: the elimination of toxins, heavy metals and excess NPK leaching into ground water that contaminates our creeks , rivers, lakes and ground water.
6: An increase of yield in crop production of anywhere from 20% up to as high as 350% has been recorded by users in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and here in North America.
Bio char remains in the soil, continually working in it in a microbial way to enrich the soil for thousands of yrs. I just watched a documentary on this the other evening where it was used in the Amazon hundreds of yrs. ago to enrich the soil where other wise nothing would grow it's so acidic. Lots more info out there for those interested.

 

[MHarryE]

I'm with Rustyiron. We get many truckloads of ash every year got spreading on fields in place of using lime. They need to get rid of it so we get it for free although we must pay part of the trucking cost due to distance. Our source will truck up to 50 miles but we are 70 miles away so we only pay for 20 miles plus we must spread it ourselves. Closer and they would also spread it. The piles look like milled asphalt. Remember ashes are used to make lye - they are very caustic so they need to be treated with caution. One of our neighbors didn't get his spread in a timely manner, some kids found them neat to play in and got some nasty chemical burns.

 

[vtsnowedin]

Most ashes are grey in color not black. You have deliberately make charcoal by putting the fire out at the right time. So I think the OP was looking at a pile of composted sludge which looks like this pile my neighbor has.

 

[vtsnowedin]

Most ashes are grey in color not black. You have deliberately make charcoal by putting the fire out at the right time. So I think the OP was looking at a pile of composted sludge which looks like this pile my neighbor has.