Question: I am interested in making biochar in my small urban garden, and using it to amend my soil. Do you have resources on how to go about this?

Answer: We have a few books on this topic. Biochar for Environmental Management is for large-scale landscapes, and Gardening with Biochar (Jeff Cox, Storey Publishing, 2019) is a how-to for home gardeners. I recommend that you first read WSU professor Linda Chalker-Scott’s fact sheet, Biochar: A Home Gardener’s Primer. Cox’s book offers directions for making a TLUD (Top Lift Up-Draft) stove for pyrolysis (combustion of organic matter with restricted air flow). If created properly, biochar is a good way of sequestering carbon instead of releasing it. However, Chalker-Scott says “proper pyrolysis is impossible to achieve at home since oxygen is present and temperatures are too low. Improper cooking also generates carbon dioxide and other pollutants. You are better off using pruning debris and other home-garden wastes in your compost pile or on top of your soil as a natural and sustainable organic mulch layer. Ideally, biochar can be made commercially from excess crop residues, invasive plant species, such as kudzu and English ivy, and other organic materials that might otherwise end up in landfills.” Biochar is available for sale from some nurseries, much as you might purchase compost.

The Miller Library welcomes Rebecca Dvorin Strong for her February 2-28 exhibit. She is known for meticulous artworks in which she creates the illusion of light using multiple layers of paint. Working in oils, gouache, watercolors, and inks, and inspired by the natural world, her subjects range from realistic images to symbolic works. Of her work, she says:

My goals as an artist are to express the beauty, mystery, and poetry of Nature, and to create highly personal artworks that also represent wider human concerns. To help invite the viewer into the experience of my artworks, I also display the processes, mediums, and studies that led to the creation of my work.

This show has paintings of plants, trees, bees, flowers, and fruits painted in oil, gouache, watercolor, ink, and mixed media. I use these mediums in multiple layers of transparent, translucent, and opaque colors to create the illusion of light, space, and atmospheric conditions and to produce a luminous quality.

I make close observations of the natural world, and I am especially interested in conveying stages of growth, exploring inner worlds through the symbolism of realistic natural objects, and expressing environmental concerns.

Strong studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Drawn to northern landscapes for inspiration, she moved from the East Coast to the Pacific Northwest when she was in her thirties, and she has traveled extensively in Scandinavia, including an artist residency in Iceland.