I’ve purchased 80 lbs of lump charcoal and plan to bury it or rototill it into the garden. This is my method of micro-sequestration of carbon. If everyone with access to a patch of land did this, it would make a difference.
Be that as it may, I’m also doing it to enhance the fertility of my soil. I’ve been doing this on a very small scale for years, limited by my intentional and incidental production of charcoal. I spread ashes from the wood stove in the garden (for their potassium content and to limit soil acidity) . There’s always some charcoal mixed in with the ashes, and if you clean out the ashes after every fire, you’ll often get a decent amount of charcoal. (If you don’t clean out the ashes before starting the next fire, what charcoal is present will be consumed.)
And, when I’m feeling ambitious, I make charcoal in a roasting pan in the woodstove. Between cutting up the wood and fitting it in the roasting pan and building the fire the right way, it’s a very hands-on process, and I don’t always have the time or inclination to do it.
So now I have 80 lbs of lump charcoal. Before whatever weed-suppression tillage I do, I will spread charcoal in the areas to be tilled. I will also create pockets of fertility by digging a hole and dumping in charcoal, kitchen scraps, and chicken manure.
I don’t plan to reduce the size of the lumps of charcoal. It’s too much work and unnecessary for long-term benefit, which is always my focus. Tillage and frost will, over time, do an adequate job of reducing the size of the lumps. And breaking it up into smaller pieces is time- and labor-consuming, as well as potentially hazardous to my health because of any dust produced.
I would do this even if I knew I were going to be dead in a year. Improving a patch of ground, making it more able to produce food for humans, is something that has a lot of meaning and significance to me. The long-lasting effects of burying charcoal in the garden mesh with that perfectly.
Ending and Beginning 