EP 03: Karl Strahl of Oregon Biochar Solutions

Biochar gets talked about like it can do everything.Fix soil. Hold water. Store carbon. Improve crops. Save inputs. Solve climate. Maybe even make your neighbor like you again.But in this episode of How We Grow, Chad sits down with Karl Strahl of Oregon Biochar Solutions to bring the conversation back to earth. Karl works every day on the commercialization, production, specs, and real-world use cases for biochar, and his take is refreshingly practical: biochar is not one product. It is a class of carbon materials. And whether it works depends on the char, the soil, the application method, the economics, and the problem you are actually trying to solve.Chad and Karl get into what growers should look for before running a biochar trial, why feedstock may matter less than people think, how co-composting can improve early performance, and where the market is heading next, from potting mix and field applications to stormwater, remediation, and even asphalt.