Plants and growing systems
- Preparing and rooting plant cuttings
- Repotting, pruning, labeling, and caring for research plants
- Comparing plant growth, stress, rooting, and recovery
- Working with compost, experimental growing media, and coppice systems
Recurring Oakland greenhouse gathering
Biopunk Greenhouse: Trees, Biochar, and Open Plant Biotechnology
Spend an afternoon inside Carbocene’s working Oakland greenhouse and garden. We will propagate plants, make biochar, care for a living research collection, and explore how plant biotechnology can be practiced outside the usual boundaries of companies and universities.
Carbocene Industries is an independent nonprofit research organization preserving and advancing biological climate work that might otherwise be lost when funding ends or institutions change direction.
The greenhouse includes a noncommercial research collection of photosynthesis-enhanced poplar, alongside propagation work, experimental soils, biochar systems, and early research connected to improved photosynthesis, bamboo biotechnology, and durable plant materials.
This is not a formal lecture or a polished demonstration garden. It is a working research and stewardship site. Each gathering combines teaching, discussion, and practical work based on what the plants and projects need that week.
No laboratory, gardening, or biotechnology background is required.
Activities vary with the living site
What we will do
Activities vary by season and may include:
Biochar, materials, and research practice
- Making small batches of biochar
- Preparing biochar for use in soil
- Building simple structures from reeds, fibers, and locally available plant material
- Discussing tissue culture, plant transformation, construct design, and greenhouse research
- Documenting plants and experiments so the work can continue over time
Living-material stewardship
Plant propagation
We will teach the practical biology of producing new plants from cuttings, including:
- Selecting healthy stems and nodes
- Preparing cuttings
- Choosing rooting media
- Managing moisture, humidity, light, and temperature
- Using rooting hormones
- Recognizing callus, roots, stress, and contamination
- Moving rooted plants into soil
- Keeping useful records across a living collection
These techniques apply well beyond poplar and are useful for gardeners, restoration practitioners, community biologists, and anyone interested in maintaining unusual plant material.
Plants, soils, and durable carbon
Biochar and biological carbon storage
Biochar is produced by heating plant material under limited oxygen rather than allowing it to burn completely.
We will discuss and, when conditions permit, demonstrate:
- The difference between combustion and pyrolysis
- How feedstock and temperature affect the resulting material
- Why fresh biochar is often prepared or “charged” before being added to soil
- The relationship between biochar, soil biology, nutrient retention, and water
- Coppice systems and repeated biomass harvest
- The role of durable plant materials in longer-term carbon storage
The goal is not simply to present biochar as a climate product, but to understand it as part of a larger biological system involving plants, soils, decomposition, materials, and repeated stewardship.
A durable nonprofit home
Why Carbocene exists
Living biological research cannot be preserved as files alone.
It depends on plants, tissue, greenhouse space, protocols, seasonal observation, technical memory, and people willing to continue caring for an experiment after the original institution has moved on.
Carbocene was created to provide a durable nonprofit home for this kind of work.
The Oakland greenhouse serves as a research site, propagation facility, teaching space, and living archive. These gatherings invite people to participate not only as an audience, but as part of a community learning how biological technology can be maintained, understood, and responsibly extended.
A mixed community
Who should come
The event is intended for a mixed community, including:
Community and scientific participants
- Counter Culture Labs members
- Biohackers and community biologists
- Frontier Tower residents and collaborators
- Plant scientists and synthetic biologists
- Gardeners, growers, and restoration practitioners
Climate, materials, and creative practitioners
- Climate and materials researchers
- Artists working with living systems, pigments, fibers, or biomaterials
- Engineers and builders interested in bamboo, wood, biochar, or biological production
- Curious people with no previous technical experience
Experts are encouraged to bring their knowledge and difficult questions. Beginners are encouraged to come without worrying about whether they know enough.
Before you arrive
Practical details
The event takes place at a working outdoor garden and greenhouse in Oakland.
Wear clothing and closed-toe shoes that can handle soil, water, smoke, and plant material.
Useful things to bring:
- Water
- Work gloves
- A notebook or phone for notes and photographs
- Dry, untreated woody plant material for the biochar system
- Questions, project ideas, or plant materials you would like to discuss
Material safety: Please do not bring painted, pressure-treated, glued, or chemically contaminated wood.
Separate from registration
Supporting the work
Donations are welcome and support greenhouse costs, plant care, propagation materials, research supplies, and Carbocene’s nonprofit scientific work.
Plant stewardship: Plant stewardship placements, when available, are arranged separately. They are not included with registration and are not conditioned on making a donation.
Biopunk Greenhouse
Join the next gathering
Come ready to get your hands dirty, learn practical techniques, and spend time with biological technologies that are still alive, unfinished, and open to participation.