regenerative gardening

Healthy soil is the soul of your garden! 

One teaspoon of good garden soil contains several yards of fungal hyphae, several thousand protozoa, a few dozen nematodes, and a billion invisible bacteria. The more life in your soil the better! Not only do these invisible members of the soil food web interact and communicate with your plants, they produce nutrients and food for them too. In turn, your happy plants put out root exudates (basically plant sweat), which attract and feed more fungi, bacteria, nematodes, and protozoa... and a healthy symbiotic relationship is formed.

Things you can do today to start fostering a healthy soil food web

• Stop using all chemical pesticides & herbicides. While killing off those pests and diseases, they are also killing off large portions of the soil food web. While short term they may get rid of those diseases and pests, in the long term it's a waste of money and time to have to constantly be 'treating' plants with chemicals multiple times a season when letting nature take care of it instead is free
• Stop using chemical fertilizers. Once plants can get those "fast food" nutrients provided by chemical and synthetic fertilizers, they don't need those beneficial microbes to get nutrients and the symbiotic relationship ends. Once those microbes leave, the earthworms and other arthropods that eat them move out too
• Stop roto-tilling. This very common gardening method breaks up fungal hyphae, and chops up and crushes earthworms & arthropods. While it seems like roto-tilling is destroying weeds and fluffing the soil, it's destroying soil structure and disrupting the soil's food web
• Cover bare soil. Use leaves, grass clippings, straw, cover crops, woodchips, etc to protect that top layer of soil. Bare soil is prone to being compacted in heavy rains or snow. Adding a cushion layer or "blanket" keeps the soil fluffy and full of air underneath
• Feed your soil with compost, earth worm castings, worm tea, mycorrhizae, rock dusts, etc. Adding compost to the top of your soil will inoculate it with everything it needs to get that balance back
• Inoculate your seeds with endomycorrhizal fungi at planting time or apply to the roots of your transplants.

The following are your friends! These beneficial creatures will hunt & destroy unwanted pests or improve conditions in your garden to make it less attractive to the bad bugs

• Ladybugs - control aphids, mites, thrips, insect eggs. You can build ladybird bug boxes or build log piles to encourage nesting. Ladybugs can live up to 3 years and eat 5,000 aphids in a lifetime
• Ground & Rove beetles - ferocious predators. They have no trouble hunting down and ripping apart slugs, aphids, caterpillars, slug eggs, and other soft bodied animals. Build a beetle bucket to provide a beetle hotel.
• Earthworms - chew up organic material and pull it  into the top layer of your soil, aerate soil with extensive tunneling, fertilize the soil with vermicompost
• Hoverflies - feed on thrips, aphids, scale, mites and more. They look like bees or wasps but are harmless and are also very effective at pollinating
• Lacewings (lacewing eggs shown in photo) - larvae are voracious aphid, thrip, spider mite, and whitefly eaters. Adults mainly eat nectar, aphid honeydew, and pollen. Lacewing bug boxes can be constructed to encourage overwintering.
• Parasitic Flies - lay eggs on leaves of plants. When eaten by caterpillar, the larvae use the caterpillar's body as a host
• Parasitic Wasps - control whiteflies & aphids
• Chalcedony Wasps - much like parasitic flies, use hosts such as ticks, mites, and nematodes 
• Centipedes - very much like earthworms in terms of fertilization and aeration, but are carnivorous, rather than plant-eating worms.
• Amphibians - eat slugs, flies, grasshoppers, ants, caterpillars, etc
• Bats - eat moths like yellow underwings and other cutworms.

Coming Soon...

Turn your household food waste into rich compost

Coming soon...

You can make your own plant-based organic fertilizer using common weeds and perennials!

The below are some common weeds growing in my zone 3, Alberta garden that can be used to make fertilizer:

• Comfrey
• Hairy Vetch
• Sorrel
• Dandelion
• Yarrow
• Chamomile
• Borage
• Chickweed
• Stinging Nettle (can also be fermented for several weeks to make a foliar spray to repel aphids and spider mites)
• Lamb's Quarters
• Clover
• Alfalfa
• Chickory
• Toadflax
• Plantains
• Dill
• Sage
• Parsley
• Horsetails
• Lemon Balm
• Mustards
• Barley
• Peppermint
• Grass

Collect any of the above and chop or break up and add to a jar or bucket. Add distilled or rain water to the container, ensuring all the plant matter is covered. A rock can be used to weigh down the plants. I like to add a few tablespoons of cane sugar to the mix as well. 

Let sit out for 3-7 days. It's best to do this outside as it can be quite smelly when the plants ferment and break down. 

When completed, strain out the decomposed plant matter and throw into your compost bin. Keep the liquid in a sealed container. Use 1 part 'weed tea' to 10 parts water. I use as a soil drench or foliar feed on houseplants and out in the garden. Mature outdoors plants can tolerate a stronger dilution of 1 part 'weed tea' to 4 parts water.