Soil health matters

The first time I heard the term regenerative farming it was a couple of years ago on a Rich Roll podcast with Zach Bush, a MD from the US who is passionate about what this type of farming can do for our planet. I was already eating a lot of organic produce but when I learnt that this wasn’t actually the most sustainable, environmentally friendly and nutritionally dense option out there I was definitely taken by surprise. 

Regenerative farming has been defined as practising a holistic approach to land management that keeps water in the landscape, improves soil health, stores carbon and increases biodiversity. It achieves this by making minimal soil disturbance (no-till, no-dig), using sheet mulching (usually cardboard, newspaper, woodchips and/or straw) crop rotation, cover crops (usually either grasses or legumes), compost, solarising weeds, planting perennials (to reduce compaction and erosion and provide material and nutrition for soil microbiota) and managing pests with natural rather than chemical means. Organic foods focus on the last principle listed above (i.e pest control), but this is only one piece of the puzzle for food grown in the regenerative way. Sustainable Gardening Australia have some great information and resources on this if you wanted to read further into it all.

We’ve recently extended our garden and are focussing on using the regenerative farming principles. We went with a really simple no-dig style and used sandstone rocks for the walls. Instead of layering to make the soil in the typical style for a no dig garden, we found a fantastic mixture at our local landscaping place that combined all the necessary ingredients together, so we could just fill the gardens up and start planting.

We planted strawberries, cherry tomatoes, roma tomatoes, eggplant, snow peas, celery, rockmelon, broccoli, broccolini, corn, silverbeet, spinach, fennel plus others. We have a bunch of perennials in our older garden beds, but plan on getting some down or planting others in these new ones to keep the soil health optimal.   

Here’s to learning new things, getting our hands dirty and eating delicious fresh fruit and veg 📖 🤲 🌱🤞