Biochar and stress

Observation: Just to see the effects of biochar on plants in my own garden I planted peas in two pots. The pots doubled as weights for the barbeque cover. Accidentally the pots were covered with the cover and were thus deprived of light for a while. I can only assume that the pots were covered for the same amount of time since it happened by accident and I wasn’t there doing measurements. However, when I uncovered the already germinated peas this was the result:

Left: biochar amended soil (1/5), Right: control. Plant: Pisum sp.

 

Hypothesis: There could be a number of reasons for this phenomenon but I can narrow them down to the two most likely:

1.       Biochar has speeded the growth of the pea making it thicker and thus more resistance to cover (the cover was quite heavy ~thin raincoat) Also if you look closely at the pictures the one grown in biochar is thicker and has a little greener leaves.

2.       Biochar helps the pea recover more easily from stress. Senescent leaves are absent from the pea grown in biochar.

Future prospects: Whatever the exact reason I plan to make further experiments where I include more samples and have some plants covered by pressing down the stalks and some where I only deprive the plants of light for a period. Stay tuned for more.