Welsh Biochar

Biochar is a project at Henfron Farm as they had the facilities to produce biochar from Molinia caerulea (purple moor grass). Biochar has been analysed and has a high carbon content. Pure biochar can be added to soil to improve the soil structure but the extremely porous structure of biochar can initially draw nutrients out of the soil leaving fewer nutrients available for the plants. If the biochar is charged with nutrients first, the plants can immediately benefit. The two main aims of this project are to 1) Establish a peat free compost which can be used to charge the biochar. 2) Establish new high value biochar based retail products . Sheep manure from cleaning sheep sheds can be composted to make a nutrition rich compost to be added to the pure biochar. The resulting biochar compost would need to comply with PAS100 standards. The resulting peat free biochar compost would need to be analysed to ensure it meets the PAS100 standards.