I was surprised at the acclaim that biochar was getting on this list serve, because I thought organic matter itself was good for the soil and the things that live in it. Isn't the residue of the process a particulate ash? I suppose it makes no carbon emissions? As for eating a peck of dirt, fine if you have organic dirt, but many sites of community gardens may have a toxic heavy metal load. Especially in cities. Remember a few years back when ville de Montreal wanted space for houses and they decided to shut down 59 community gardens, saying that they were toxic? That didn't dawn on them until they needed the space to put up buildings. How many municipalities ask community gardens to know if they have unsafe levels of heavy metal? My guess would be, not many. 1 in 10 children have the habit of eating soil. They should probably stay out of urban gardens. In South Africa people eat clay for their health, it is sold in balls at the markets. It may be good for people to do that. Vitamin B12 is a bacteria which inhabits soils and meat that is starting to go bad. Without it we would all be wandering around wondering what our names are. Where you find someone saying do it, you can also find some one saying don't do it. A gray murky area. But why go to the bother of burning biomass to add to the garden, why not just dig it in? Am I missing something? Very possible, but it seems it may be primarily to produce energy and the resultant ash needs to be recycled. Wasn't that once used to make lye for making soap. Isn't lye very acidic? Clue me in please? Clueless in Canada, Karen
"Man's attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we now have acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is part of nature and his war is inevitably a war against himself" Rachel Carson _______________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: community_garden@list.communitygarden.org To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org
