One bag, one lot
Six and a half litres of pure hardwood biochar — nothing blended in, nothing added. It weighs 1.5 kg, because good biochar is mostly pore space: roughly 235 kg per cubic metre, about a quarter the density of the soil it goes into. That low density is the whole point. The pore network is what holds water and gives soil microbes somewhere to live.
Every bag carries a lot number, and one lot never spans two supplier bags — no blending across batches. Where a lot has been through the lab, its results are published against that number on the Lab Results page.
Chip grade, not powder
This is a coarse chip biochar, not a micronized powder. Chip grade is minimally processed, which means less dust to handle and a particle that stays put once it is worked into soil. Blend it, water it in, and it stays where you put it rather than washing down through the profile in the first heavy rain.
If you want it finer, crush it under a board or run it through a garden sieve before mixing.
What 6.5 L will do
- A quarter to half a square metre of garden bed worked into the top 15 cm at a 10–20 % by-volume rate
- Two to four large containers (30 cm pots) blended at 10–20 %
- A dozen 20 cm pots or houseplant repots at a lighter 10 % blend
- Seed a compost tumbler with a stable carbon habitat for the microbes
For anything larger than a small bed, check the rate table in the relevant use-case guide first — each one accounts for Ontario clay, sandy soil, and loam separately and lists the bags the job actually takes. Bed-scale projects add up quickly; talk to us about wholesale before ordering a dozen bags.
Why hardwood
Hardwood chars tend toward a denser pore structure and more consistent bulk composition than softwood or crop-residue chars. That dense pore network is what drives water-holding capacity and creates the surface area microbes colonize. For a gardener it means predictable application rates and a product that behaves the same bag after bag.
Application, briefly
- Moisten the biochar or pre-charge it (see the charging guide)
- Blend 10–20 % by volume into soil or potting mix
- Plant as usual
- One application lasts for years
Raw biochar straight out of the bag will hold onto nutrients for the first few weeks before it releases them. Charging it first — a soak in compost tea or diluted liquid feed — skips that settling-in period. Full instructions, soil by soil, are in the how-to-use guide.
What you get
- Hardwood-feedstock biochar, carbon content declared on every lot
- Bilingual label meeting CFIA T-4-130 requirements
- Lot-number traceability on every bag
- An independent heavy-metal screen against CFIA T-4-93 limits — the launch lot’s full eleven-metal panel is published on the Lab Results page
- A high cation exchange capacity that holds nutrients in the root zone instead of letting them leach