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Biochar How it Can Improve Marijuana Growing

When you have some organic plant waste materials at home that you find hard to use, you can actually produce biochar out of them. A good way to do this is to start by piling up that material on top of a wooden structure in a pit or fire barrel. After lighting the fire, let it burn until everything is completely charred, put out the fire and then mix it with soil. This is similar to how forests fertilize and regrow themselves with natural fires. Everything get re-used to grow more plants and organisms.

Biochar is simply the leftovers of burned organic materials that blends with the soil. Because the materials that are burned, organic and are of enormous size, biochar can withstand the flow of water whenever there is a threat of it being washed away. You will also notice its difference from other burned materials because the latter usually come in the form of ash. Ash is mostly carbon because everything has been burned away while biochar still has organic material that can be used to fertilize plants.

Benefits of Biochar

Due to biochar’s capacity to retain soil nutrition and minerals, it complements with organic fertilizers and can actually collaborate with the latter in improving the soil property while helping plants boost their growth. Marijuana isn’t an exception.

Producing Biochar

Burning organic materials and smothering them in soil just before the fire becomes extinguished creates biochar. On a commercial scale, industrial plants are utilized for greater production. On a smaller scale, you can always come up with your own pit or burning place using your own organic material.

There are companies from around the world that produce biochar like Airterra in Canada that has a focus on its environmental impacts/benefits.

How Can Biochar Improve Marijuana Growth

Biochar doesn’t just have environmental benefits, it can also benefit your marijuana growing when you blend it to the soil before the planting the seeds.

  1. Biochar Increases Soil Fertility
    When you use pre-fertilized soil for your marijuana plant, you can be assured that the plant gets adequate nutrients necessary for its growth and survival. But when you blend or incorporate biochar into it, the assurance is doubled. Because it complements well with fertilizers and other growth boosters, biochar is the perfect nutrient enhancer.
  2. It Stabilizes the Soil in Your Marijuana Garden
    Most growers are faced with the problem of marijuana’s difficulty in nutrient absorption especially when the soil becomes too acidic after several applications of fertilizers. The root system of the plant suffers a lot from acid and prevents it from further absorbing the needed nutrients. In this case, biochar helps stabilize or regulate the acidity, thus, forming a support configuration in order for the plant’s roots to retain its absorption capacity.
  3. It Lessens the Infestation of Pests/Insects
    With its properties similar to charcoal and activated charcoal as it goes through burning, biochar makes your marijuana garden less attractive among the pests and insects. Because of its burnt odor, other organisms find it too pungent may deliberately stay away from your garden. While some fertilizers have less to no capacity of eliminating the infestation, biochar prevents the infiltration altogether.
  4. It May Also Lessen the Odor Problem Inside the Garden
    Because of its similarity to charcoal as far as properties are concerned, it may as well have the same capacity to lessen if not totally eliminate odor inside the grow room. Believe it or not, the natural absorption tendency of biochar may well be regarded as the solution to the odor problem minus the added expenses and the much dreaded harm that other odor eliminator can inflict to the marijuana plant.
  5. It Can Absorb the Unnecessary Moisture
    When temperature and humidity mess up with each other despite the controlled environment, too much moisture can threaten the growth and survival of your plant inside the grow room. With the presence of biochar in your marijuana garden, the problem can be alleviated just before it becomes magnified. How? Biochar absorbs the extra moisture. Since it has the same properties with charcoal and the same density as the activated charcoal, it can ensure a not too moist environment. It totally supports the plant by regulating anything that may harm it.

Downsides of Biochar

Since it is derived by burning organic materials and smothered by soil just before the fire was totally put out, aside from the smoke of burning materials it doesn’t have any downsides. It comes from organic waste materials which are even regarded as environment-friendly and everything gets returned back to the earth in a re-usable format.

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