Curious about biochar and its benefits? Learn what biochar is, how to use it effectively, and why choosing top-quality biochar makes a difference. We also explain what super compost is, how to make it at home, and how Soilfixer SF60 works as a powerful super soil improver. Whether you want healthier plants, richer soil, or more sustainable gardening methods, this guide covers everything you need to know.

Making a fantastic raised bed, container compost mix

Making a fantastic raised bed, container compost mix

This blog was updated in March 2023 to reflect latest information on the new SF40 biochar multi-purpose compost.

SoilFixer has been supplying Biochar and SF60 (Biochar Super Compost) for many years. Our biochar-humus-rich compost is added to your topsoil to improve soil health and plant growth – it’s the closest means yet for you to make your own Terra Preta!

Many customers grow plants and vegetables in raised beds, containers, planters, and hanging baskets using “all-purpose compost” rather than soil.  (We are not fans of using the term compost to describe a soil-less growing media (mix) – especially when very few of the growing media mixes use any green waste compost. Most are formulations of peat/coir/wood fibre!)

Our goal is to find a better-performing raised bed mix that is also environmentally friendly – not just peat-free, but actually carbon negative (i.e. it locks carbon into the mix for hundreds of years). With a bit of annual care, our mixes should not need replacing each year.

Below we cover our journey to date.

Raised bed and container mix challenges

Container mixes present special challenges – they lose water and dry out faster than soil and the roots have a limited space to grow.  If you add lots of material that holds water (e.g. clay or humus), the mix can become ‘airless’ which restricts the root even more leading to stress, and disease problems like damping off (stem rot). It is not easy – ask any of the big growing media companies who have spent millions working on peat-compost alternatives.

We have been using our knowledge of compost, biochar, soil, and colloidal humus to create a fantastic raised bed container mix. We have looked at two routes: adding SF60 to the soil, and creating a wholly new mix from biochar and compost (now called SF40).

We tested the two options last year:

  • Raised bed one: two parts finely sieved PAS100 green waste compost, 1 part SF60, to give a 10cm layer on clayey soil base
  • Raised bed two, two parts PAS100 and 1 part biochar, 10cm layer on clayey soil base.

The differance is SF40 is a mixture, SF60 is made by co-composting biochar with green waste, then sieving the final compost-biochar mix.

SoilFixer raised bed mix benefits

Both work extremely well – giving 100% increase in plant growth. There are differences in water retention and growth in different plants towards the end of the season.

  • Enhanced growth results
  • Strong water retention and resistance to drying out
  • Good re-wetting ability
  • Viable cost for the “biochar raised bed mixes”
  • Re-usable year on year (with some minor care)
  • 100% peat-free
  • Climate positive – unlike other raised bed mixes, biochar-based will lock carbon for +100 years

What next?

  • SF40 is our preferred option for supplying a growing media – in part because it is much easier to make and control
  • We need to test SF40 at a much larger scale… ongoing
  • We believe SF60 will be the default for soil improvement
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Improve soil health ahead of the growing season

Improve soil health ahead of the growing season

The first step to improving your garden soil is to identifying which soil type you have. In the UK there are six types, clay, chalk, loams, peat, sandy and silt, each comes with its own positive and negative characteristics and you can adapt and enhance it to ensure you have fertile soil all year round. See the RHS’s soil guide to check which variety you have.

If you are a keen gardener or you grow your own vegetables and fruit you will probably dig the soil over or cultivate it fairly regularly, if this is the case you need to provide a combination of nutrients that will enhance it.

To get started, remove the weeds and as much of their roots as possible to prevent them growing back and begin to dig the ground over, digging will loosen the soil and also expose some of the larvae from garden pests such as slugs and snails, leave these for the birds to deal with. If you are following a no-dig routine, details can be found here.

There is a lot of advice around adding ‘organic matter’ to the soil to help improve it, the term itself is fairly ambiguous and many of us assume that it means add compost when the two actually differ significantly.

The next stage is to add a nutrient-rich soil improver, the SoilFixer SF60 Super Compost is ideal for use in domestic gardens and allotments and contains high levels of colloidal humus and biochar the combination of these two ingredients acts as a sponge for water and essential nutrients which contribute to improved plant health and resilience against extreme weather conditions such as drought and frost, the biochar acts as a host to a series of microbes which transfer nutrients from the ‘sponge’ the nutrients right down to the plants’ roots.

We call SF60 a ‘Super Compost’ because not only is it packed with valuable ingredients, it also offers numerous additional benefits, it can be used to improve garden soil, its results are long-lasting as the biochar remains in the soil for over 100 years, plus both biochar and colloidal humus sequester carbon which means using them in the garden helps to offset greenhouse gases.

If you don’t have an area that can be dug over but you have established beds and borders you can still use SF60 and get all of the benefits, simply fork it in as a top dressing around existing plants and shrubs and leave it to its hard work.

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