They call it “biochar”… or “Tera preta”…
It does work, but remember charcoal has been in health kits for a very good reason it is a wonderful absorber. Thus before you use it you have to charge it with nutrients before you add it to soil. For this I add it to my worm bin then I pull soil from there to grow plants with. Others also use urine to charge it.
Ironically, perlite and vermiculite, are the replacements to Charcoal as a growing medium. In part because treehuggers in the 70s got charcoal banned because they were using too much wood for it. (or that is what I recall). Also perlite and vermiculite even though they are more expensive, require far less labor.
Charcoal itself is a bit harder to use, because it absorbs nutrients like a sponge, and alters the pH which can cause issues with the plants. Thus the inoculation step with biochar is important.
Carrots are sorsery. I have tryed every trick and hack but still cant get good resaults.
I did however have kinda good resaults sewing carrots over snow over a wheat feald. Its a wery old local method. When the wheat is harvested the young carrot plants get light and grow till winter.
Onions we like two local worietys most, Ptujski luk is a hot aromatic red(ish) with rather big bulbs
And the Belokranjka, a small yellow onion, elongated, preety hot too but it peals real nice and fast.
I can mail you seeds or maybe even bulbs if you wuld like to try but ofcorse, your climate is different.
How do you avoid killing the carrots when you are harvesting the wheat? Even if you harvested by hand, you would still be trampling on them.Do they harvest them in the late fall or wait until spring?
The harvester generaly cuts above the young seedlings and some get trampled sure but keep in mind the area is huge. So even if the efficiancy per square foot is bad, you profit by size. Also, an old trick (wich l have not tested) to get the roots to thicken up is to cut off all the greens about mid growth period. Aparently this stimulates root growth. The cuting and trampling might actualy be beneficial.
This method was mostly used for yellow feed carrots thugh, they got bigger seeds and are more robust as a plant, but l have had sucsess with the orange ones too.
We wuld start harvesting in the fall and do it untill spring, winters are mild with litle snow these years… l dont have a good root celar yet so thats an option but not optimal as rodents are a huge problem on the feald.
Thank you Kristijan but there is no need for that, as you said it is a different climate. Although I would guess the summers in your region are probably similar to ours.
I will put a little more research and effort into the choice of onions this year, we have mostly been buying those small net bags of bulbs from stores and such so not much of a choice there even though it was the same variety as market gardener friends of ours buys, quality however could have differed.
Perhaps you try seeds, my mom swears by it. I never got the hang of it, requires a bit more effort but not that much more. She gets some nice onions and they never bolt because onion is a bianual plant and flowers in the second year.
Here, where the season is a little shorter, perhaps using seeds and harvesting early to get planting bulbs is the way to go, I’m afraid that the onions won’t have the time they need using seeds otherwise but it is more work and also need to store the next years planting bulbs… I will see what some more research will show, perhaps we do both seeds and bulbs this year.
Oh no, there is no need for the middle step. Big bulbs will form from the seed just fine on the first year. Those will not bolt. Seed producers sew seed and prematurely terminate young bulbs, producing those planting bulbs we all know. But its technicly their second year of life once we plant them, so they want to flower.
My mom sews seeds in a short bed then transplants the seedlings to the growing bed, its realy the only extra step. And usualy she had nicer onions as me, planted from bulbs.
Ok, I was a bit worried that the onion wouldn’t grow big when it is from a seed, it would have more of a head start when it is a small bulb.
Not at all, l thod that too untill my mom prooved me wrong. The seed companies terminate the growth prematurely so that the bulbs are tiny, but when you plant them the next year the plant thinks its alredy its second year and time to flower.
We will probably do a test this year with both bulbs and seeds, probably some bulbs as a control but focus on seeds and see what happens 
Most recently we bought small bulbs from jem o fix, they worked well, I’ll try to get my wife to try the seeds too.
Thanks Tom, you gave me an idea. Hard to surprise each other after 30 years. 
this one is a succes and I hope it produces mulch much better. Our other method is a disaster.
And here is some faded glory.
About Mr Steve’s raised beds, would there be any danger of zinc flussing into the soil? Didnt dare to ask at the time. Looking real good. Zinc plated steel is all around me, raised beds are made on an free afternoon. Zinc washing is the thing that stops me.
Leaving in the dark and return in the dark, couldnt make any pictures last week.
I’ve never heard about zinc problems with those beds Joep but it would be easy enough to spray the insides with rubberized truck bed liner. I’m going to have to look up and see if the zinc in the metals is different than the zinc supplements I take.
Building, making, maintaining raised beds and stand-up planter boxes is something my family has experienced and done for three generations of efforts.
Pro’s and Con’s to every material and method that has been used.
Costs. Availability of cheap and free Obtainiums.
GrandPa Jack Unruh (a professional welder/fabricator) made his for GrandMa Mae out of WW II cut in half Victory ships air and others tanks. Thick formed and riveted steel; very thick heavily hot galvanized. None thought of zinc or iron contaminations. I believe though they may have been staying, early Spring cold, for too long.
Other family members loggers, mill-men made theirs of heart cut old growth cedar. Or heart cut old growth Fir.
They rot after a few years in use. Some try to buy time by heavily painting the insides before filling with soils. All of the exterior paints had lead in them back then.
Sigh. Then I can remember as a kid some-one would dig them out and soak them with used motor oils. Took a year or so for that taste to calm down. Some plantings did not like the heavily contaminated motor oils.
There was others who would source out take-out, removed wooden railway ties. These were very heavily forced creosote-tar impregnated. Oh sure. Last for a decade or so. Pre-leached for the railway service actually not tastes transferring. And the plantings did not seem to mind. Still . . . a lot in my parents generation did come down with cancers.
JoepK the VEGO systems I got for the wife and the Australian companie’s version are 5?, 7 layers? multi-coated. May be a base coat is a zinc. The top coating is a baked on acrylic enamel I believe. They are also before stacking packing are individually thin clear plastic shrink wrap coated. To prevent getting scratched.
Supposed to like a sunburn skin; peal that off prior to SS fasteners bolting together. I did not on very many panels if the shipping plastic was smooth with no bubbles.
I hope it will buy a few years or more.
Ha! Ha! Crazy woman wife now to be 70 in just over a week; makes me build and plan for another 20 years.
So a worrier could fuss about plastics leaching. No diffnert than using plastic buckets. Plastic seeds staters trays. Lining wooden constructs with a thick black layer of black poly sheeting.
Easy equation. First: don’t starve. Then grow for nutrient density and storability. Growing for your self you have awareness and control.
Worry. Worry. Worry about planted fears is their most basic control-you tool.
A Zebra chooses to live un-domesticated Free with its wild herd exchanging potential years of being alive versus being Horse, Donkey human-purposes protected.
Zebra knows . . . the human gets starving and then food becomes you then.
The human can get distracted busy and you will up to your knees in your own shits and mud, never be given enough food and water.
Now here is an odd to me, decades now observation.
We who came and stayed to what was to become America (the U.S. part of it) it was mostly a firm rejection of the millennia Old-World systems of respect and obey/follow your betters. Whether Royalty of a Church. Systems that had to keep the majority as serving, subservient to the few.
So those of us born and bred here; and the come here recently for these values of freedom of choices, are darn sick and tired of the pushing insistence for all to respect, self-awarding know-it-all claiming over-educated current Elites.
Recreate that which was rejected by our forefathers?? How incredibly stupid.
Make a choice for your get up off your knees planter boxes. Make it work. Gather in the hugs and kisses. Eat well.
Steve Unruh
Could have been stood up; pulled sides together to form a 2 1/2 foot wide by ~30 foot long continuous raised bed. Drilled and wire-tied lower edge to mid-height while the soils were being added to hold-in the push-out spreading. Use SS wire and been a 20+ years solution.
Nope. Nope. I proposed. She rejected even its faded blue coloring. Honey-bunny we can paint the outside any color you wish. No-no. Then again another $15.00 to land fill dispose of this. 15-18 years of hiding it out of her sight. Enough. Bye-bye; to a FREE decades durable chicken house lapped roofing!
She wanted what here Father had, had made up for her Mother. Brick and cemented quarry stone. Her Pa was not a mason or brick layer. He labors exchange payed for those.
So yeah. Me too. Straight purchase paying out.
Last Fall my wife did make up a mini-version herself to finally get her bricks and stones planter boxes:
S.U.
Thanks Mr Steve. Looking good. I will leave my zinc fear. Fear is a bad adviser anyway. Next step is the chief .
Plates are sendzimir plated, no lead. Read an article once about thermal zinc and that stucked.
https://www.vegogardens.com/pages/feature-material/VZ2.0
Sigh. Of course I cannot get the material discription to link up.
The steel planels once acid cleaned and neutralized are hot dip coated to a specified microns depth with a patent mix of zinc, aluminum and 3% magnesium. That is then painted with several layers with an AkzoNoble paints.
The paints being Lab certified as non-leaching and safe for foods growing.
S.U.
Here is a no weld pellet maker for those with birds, and other animals…
His next video that came up was a homemade hammer mill for actually grinding the corn and other feed.
