The Regenerative Grower's Guide to Garden Amendments: Using Locally Sourced Materials to Make Mineral and Biological Extracts and Ferments, Paperback

With recipes for fermented plant juice, nutrient-rich extracts, and IMO using weeds, leaf mold, shells, bones, rock dust, and more

Revitalize your garden by making your own biologically diverse inoculants and mineral-rich amendments using leaf mold, weeds, eggshells, bones, and other materials available for little or no cost from local woodlands, fields, restaurants, and markets. Gardener and author Nigel Palmer provides practical, detailed instructions that will be accessible and exciting to every grower who wants to achieve a truly sustainable garden ecosystem, while enjoying better results at a fraction of the cost of commercial fertilizer products. These recipes go beyond fertilizer replacement, resulting in greater soil biological activity and mineral availability while increasing pest and disease resistance, yields, and nutrient density. Recipes range from the very simple--such as using rainwater to extract nutrients from plant residues and using vinegar to extract minerals from bones and shells--to more complex and creative processes for fermenting plant juices and fish and culturing indigenous microorganisms (IMO) to create amendments that supply a broad spectrum of minerals and complex organic compounds. This compact collection of recipes and instructions is inspired by the work of many innovative agricultural pioneers, especially Cho Ju-Young (founder of the Korean Natural Farming method). Palmer supplies extensive data from mineral analysis of amendments he has made using materials from his own garden; this type of detailed data is not available in any other source. The Regenerative Grower's Guide to Garden Amendments also includes a primer on plant-soil interaction, instructions for conducting a soil test and measuring the quality of fruits and vegetables using a refractometer, and guidance on compost, cover cropping, mulching, and other aspects of sustainable gardening.