I was watching Green House Seeds' trip to St. Vincent/Trinidad the other day and they mentioned the natives using charcoal during flowering. I'm just curious if anyone on here has used this method and if so, can it be any type of charcoal? Did you have good results?
google "biochar" and check it out. There are many benefits of using biochar (although it isn't this incredible magic potion stuff like some sites will claim), and biochar is just charcoal. If I were using it I'd add it to the soil from the beginning though. You want pure lump charcoal, not charcoal briquettes (obviously). And you don't want mesquite charcoal or anything like that.
Genesis Industries this is a company that i got some char from. considering it's just lump charcoal. they are charging quite alot. 1200 per ton of bio char. they only sell by the ton. they also have innoculated char for 1500 per ton from what i've read. you have to add the char to your soil a few weeks before you put any plants it. the site says it will harm the plants if you dont give the char time to innoculate anyone in so cali area i have a shit ton of this stuff literally from this company.
Thanks ya'll. Yeah, I didn't think that the briquettes would be good. I think I will just stick to FFOF, bat guano, & molasses for now. Hopefully, one day when I can grow outside, I'll be able to experiment more with biochar. Seems like too much of a hassle at this point for me. 1 ton of charcoal!?!? That's crazy! I guess if you could use it for a large field, it would go pretty quick though. Hopefully one day, right!? lol
Also referred to as terra-petra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta I use a product called vermichar (in my potting mix) that is a combination of biochar and vermipost. Like peanut butter and chocolate together.