Fertilising with Biochar

Morning all,
Have been looking into biochar for a while and as usual with such heavily marketed innovations it was useful to find some actual research backing the benefits of using it in a temperate climate. Considering getting some biochar fertiliser to use next year, have any of you tried using it and what were the results you've had?
Have been looking into biochar for a while and as usual with such heavily marketed innovations it was useful to find some actual research backing the benefits of using it in a temperate climate. Considering getting some biochar fertiliser to use next year, have any of you tried using it and what were the results you've had?
To Plant a Garden is to Believe in Tomorrow
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for the fag ends of the aristocracy.
//The most important finding is that biochar works best at heavy dosage (about 6 tonnes/acre or 15t/ha) and when supplemented by sanitised urine.//
So you need very large quantities, and you still need to add plant nutrients (biochar doesn't contain nutrients itself it just holds on to them). I think buying expensive containers of the stuff from Amazon etc is unlikely to give a good return on investment. Making the stuff yourself could be viable though?
//Putting six tonnes of biochar into an acre of soil is not a trivial task. It needs three units of raw material going into the kiln to make one unit of biochar. To get optimum dosages of biochar, the farmer therefore needs to process eighteen tonnes of agricultural wastes or wood. This is the average yearly production of several hectares of land. Opponents have focused on the risk that the increasingly clear yield advances offered by biochar might encourage rapid deforestation as farmers cut down trees to obtain raw materials.//
By the way when I clicked on the link in the article it took me to a vibrator website
the lettuces were all harvested at the same time and their leaf and root growth measured. the conclusion from the results were that there was no significant difference and if there was a minuscule difference it was in favour of the control. so we never bothered using it again.
my partner says there is some data that biochar/terra prater is more effective in equatorial areas but that it has not been found to make a significant change in our climate - otherwise people would be using it as a matter of course!
Make sure you remember it next year @BobTheGardener 😉