This is waaaayyyyy off topic here, but if you are ever camping where the only "facilities" is an old one holer, if you sprinkle campfire ash in after every "deposit," you will have almost no foul odors in the privy...

Charcoal briquettes are usually made from wood (typically oak), with some petroleum components added to the cheaper brands, including coal.

Wood ash generates lye, which can be in the form of soda lye or potash (potassium lye). Potash is less common, and both forms leach from the ashes in water, which is how lye used to get extracted for making soap. Lye is caustic, so as a soil amendment you wouldn't want to apply it on foliage or the plants will get chemical burns. It is best to mix into bare soil along with organic compost, which is slightly acidic.

Charcoal has other gardening applications not associated with lye, which may be more like what Susan is considering. Hard to say until she lets us know. In any case, lye can be extracted from charcoal ashes as well, so be mindful of that if you are dispersing charcoal into your garden, you will also be likely adding a small amount of lye.

What I am attempting is an experiment in Terra Preta, the phenomenal Black Earth of the Amazonian jungle.

It seems the native people there (prior to disovery by Europeans) lived in a rain-heavy area that washed the nutrients out of the poor, acidic soil. Scientists have been trying to discover how the local tribes along the Amazon (specifically) created an incredibly rich, black soil that seems to reproduce itself.

Going by what they know of the way the people lived, farmed, and disposed of their debris, most scientists suspect that it was mostly accidental, a combination of farming practices and debris disposal. But they think that charcoal played an important part, creating a way for the nutrients to be caught and held in the charcoal, preventing the loss to the rains.

They are fairly certain that they did some low-temperature burning of their fields to reduce weeds. I think that they probably shoveled out the ash and burned bones from their fireplaces and dumped it into the fields (potash, phosphorus), kept their livestock near their huts to prevent loss to jungle animals (manure). They may have also bled out their animals there (nitrogen), and buried dead animals and possibly even people.

Some people involved in permaculture have done some small experiments, adding things like charcoal and burned gummy vegetation (done in a pot as suggested above) to their ordinary dirt that was amended with older manures. Some kept controls (all done in large planting pots) and they seem to be finding that the plants do much better with the 'homemade' amendments than regular dirt with just manures, or regular dirt with chemical fertilizers, etc.

So, I thought I would do some experiments also, but mostly in the ground, rather than pots.

And that's why I wanted to know how to make my own charcoal, and was sure that someone here would know how!

Sue

So, are you going to try any of the charcoal making methods suggested, keep researching, put the project on the back burner, what? My wife, who pretty much has a black thumb, thinks that this sounds interesting...

Jerry Baker should be reading this thread......

We used to soot our garden regularly back home. We put a lot of chikcen manure into the soil, and so to counter the acidic effect of organic decay, the ash from our fireplace (we burned about 10 cords a year) was added to it for years. Our biggest problem was too much nitrogen, which would make the spinach, radishes and lettuce bolt. I recall taking armfuls of spinach around the neighborhood to give away, stalks about an inch around at the time. Just like too much zucchini, you can overdo it on spinach in the garden too. Bolting radishes means no bulbs.

OBG, are you perhaps insinuating that I may not follow through on this? Hmmmmmm?

I like the idea of the dutch oven method, but I don't think it would make very much charcoal.

I also didn't think about charcoal being made from hardwoods. Most accessible stuff around here is fir. I'll have to look around.

A guy not far from here sells burn barrels. I think I will buy one and beat some holes in the bottom with a pick. Then I'll push a brick under one edge of the bottom to let air get under the fire, build a good hot fire with untreated 2x4s, put in a bunch of yet undetermined wood, let it get started, then put the lid on and knock the brick out from underneath and let it cook.

I have a burn barrel now, but it has holes all around it, and I don't know how to close them off other than sticking wads of aluminum foil in them, and someone said aluminum will melt.

We shall see.

Sue

I suggest hardwoods only because if you are going to use it to cook with, then you don't want to use fir. Most coniferous woods contain too much of the nasties that would taint whatever you are cooking something fierce. About the only thing I will cook over an open fire made from fir is hot dogs or marshmallows, where I can keep the food out of the path of the off gases from the combustion.

However, for your purposes, I don't see any fault with using fir. Also, it depends on how big a dutch oven you use. : ) I have or can get my hands on some pretty big ones, big enough for what you need for sure.

I had no doubt you would follow up, just wanted to prod you along a bit, so to speak. Whatcha been doing, off working or something?

I suspect that your new plan will work as well as, and maybe better, than anything suggested here so far. What are you going to use for a lid on the thing?

Awaiting further developments...

Okay, if fir will make charcoal, I'll try that.

If I plug the holes in the sides of my existing burn barrel with wads of aluminum foil, do you think they would melt?

Most burn barrels come with lids. If they aren't cut off, it's really hard to get the wood through that little hole in the top.

I've been getting my vegetable garden started, and getting some hollow concrete garden spheres ready to sell as fundraisers for a local cat rescue shelter. And this nuisance of having to work for a living is something that I find to be a constant source of irritation. But I have to be able to keep gas in the car so the dog can go for a ride.

Sue