Protocols / how

Put your garden to bed

Close out the growing season without leaving your soil bare, hungry or torn up. Done in this order, these eight steps protect the life in your soil through winter and set the next planting up to start strong instead of starting from scratch.

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Making extracts I: the bucket method

A compost extract is the life in good compost (fungi, bacteria, protozoa and nematodes) shaken loose into water so you can pour or spray it where you need it. This is the home garden way to make one in a bucket and get it onto the ground while it's still alive.

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Making extracts II: continuous flow

At farm or property scale, a bucket won't keep up. A continuous flow extractor feeds compost into water jets at a steady rate, so you get a constant stream of extract at a set strength that goes straight into your irrigation lines.

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Extract vs tea

People use "compost tea" for two very different things. Here's why Cure Soil extracts compost instead of brewing it, and why the difference matters for what ends up in your soil.

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The six extract additives

Six things can ride along in an extract and help the life in it. Here's what each one is, what it does in plain words, and when it goes in.

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Compost application

Living compost does its work where the roots are. This is how to put it down so it actually moves into your soil, inoculates the root zone with life and protects it, and how to keep that life topped up.

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Making compost at home

Build your own compost pile the way the OGs did. Here are four proven methods, from Sir Albert Howard's original heap to David Johnson's no turn bioreactor, and the one check that tells you whether any of them worked.

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Mulching

Bare soil is a wound: rain hammers it, sun bakes it, and the life near the surface dies. Keep it covered all year, with the right mulch in the right place, and your soil stays alive and fed.

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Cover cropping

A cover crop is a planting grown to feed and protect the soil rather than to harvest. Living roots hold the soil in place, feed the life in it, and can grow your own compost material too.

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Fertilizing by your soil test

Feed what is short and stop feeding what is not. Your soil test tells you which is which, and most gardens turn out to have more of most nutrients than the plants can use.

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Potassium program

When potassium (K) is truly short, it goes first, because it matters most for yield. "Truly short" means more than one test agrees; then you feed it in small, split doses so you don't salt the soil.

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Boron program

Plants need only a tiny amount of boron, and the line between enough and too much is narrow. Check your water first, then split the season's boron into small doses. Never put it all on at once.

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Calcium the Albrecht way

Calcium is a nutrient, not just a pH fix. William Albrecht showed that what matters is calcium's share of the soil's holding sites, and your soil test decides whether you need calcium, which kind, and how much. Never habit.

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Nitrogen: hold the line

There's no fixed nitrogen budget here. Measure first, and add nitrogen only when a test says the plant is running short, never by the calendar.

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Phosphorus: leave it in the bank

Many garden soils hold a large phosphorus reserve. When yours does, the right amount to add is none, on purpose, and the job is to let soil life unlock what's already there.

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Micronutrients: tissue first

A micronutrient that reads "below detection" in the paste test isn't a reason to add it. Check the reserve, confirm with a leaf tissue test, and only then spray a targeted dose.

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Fermented humic acid

Fermented humic acid is always on: it goes out with every fertigation (feeding through irrigation water) or monthly as a dry product, because it helps nutrients move and feeds the fungi.

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Water: read it, credit it, condition it

Your irrigation water is a fertilizer and an amendment whether you mean it to be or not. Read a water test before you write any rate, credit what the water already adds, and fix what it's doing wrong.

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Sulfate discipline on salty ground

No fertility program can outrun a salty water source. On high sulfur ground, stop adding sulfate, find where it's coming from, and move it out.

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Plant health: root rot and wilt

Build a suppressive soil, one that holds disease back on its own, against Fusarium and the other root rot and wilt organisms that hit tomatoes, strawberries, peppers, cucurbits, basil and container plants.

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Biodynamic preparations in the garden

The biodynamic preparations, used the way the biodynamic OGs taught, and tested the way we test everything: under the microscope. These are traditions we practise and measure, not claims we sell as proven.

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