Learn / The Roots
The OGs this club stands on. Free, because this is the front door.
Elaine Ingham passed on 18 February 2026, at 73. The club honors her: her microscope method is behind every bioassay we run.
Mineral balance & soil fertility: the Albrecht line
William Albrecht
University of Missouri. Base cation saturation; the soil health to animal health connection. The root of this whole lineage.
Carey Reams
RBTI, brix and refractometer testing; calcium as the driver of fertility and energy in the soil.
Neal Kinsey
Albrecht's leading disciple; turned base saturation into a working consulting system (Hands On Agronomy).
Charles Walters
Founder of Acres U.S.A.; author of Eco Farm. Kept Albrecht's work alive and in print.
Arden Andersen
Science in Agriculture; bridges Reams, Albrecht and soil biology.
Phil Callahan
Paramagnetism, insects as antennae, rock dust and round towers.
Graeme Sait
Nutri Tech Solutions (Queensland); Nutrition Rules!. Champion of silicon as the forgotten nutrient; Nutrition Farming in the Albrecht/Reams tradition.
André Voisin
Soil, Grass and Cancer; rational (rotational) grazing.
Biodynamics
Rudolf Steiner
The 1924 Koberwitz Agriculture Course, where biodynamics began.
Ehrenfried Pfeiffer
Steiner's scientist: circular chromatography, microbial work on BD compost, the BD compost starter. The closest historical match to Cure Soil's bioassay work.
Lili Kolisko
Early lab trials on the preparations and potentization; capillary dynamolysis.
Alex Podolinsky
Scaled BD 500 across thousands of acres in Australia; prepared 500.
Peter Proctor
New Zealand pioneer; Grasp the Nettle. Spread biodynamics across India and developed Cow Pat Pit (CPP).
Hugh Courtney
Josephine Porter Institute; the U.S. authority on making the preparations.
Maria Thun
Planting calendar research and Barrel Compost, the ancestor of Prepared 500.
Hugh Lovel
Quantum Agriculture; blended biodynamics with Reams and Albrecht.
Alan Chadwick
French intensive biodynamic garden at UC Santa Cruz.
Dennis Klocek
Coros Institute and Rudolf Steiner College; Sacred Agriculture. Plant alchemy, the preparations, and weather and climate work.
Humus, compost & soil biology
Sir Albert Howard
Indore composting method; An Agricultural Testament. Father of the organic movement.
Lady Eve Balfour
The Haughley Experiment; The Living Soil; co founded the Soil Association.
J.I. & Robert Rodale
Brought organic farming to the U.S.; founded the Rodale Institute and the Farming Systems Trial.
F.H. King
Farmers of Forty Centuries (1911); nutrient cycling in East Asian farming.
Siegfried & Uwe Lübke
Controlled Microbial Composting; clay humus complexes.
Hans Müller & Hans Peter Rusch
Swiss founders of organic biological farming; Rusch's microbial cycle of life.
Elaine Ingham
Soil Food Web; microscopy based assessment of compost and extracts.
David Johnson
Johnson Su bioreactor; fungal dominant compost and fungal:bacterial ratios.
Christine Jones
The liquid carbon pathway; mycorrhizae and plant driven soil building.
John Jeavons
Ecology Action, Willits CA; How to Grow More Vegetables. GROW BIOINTENSIVE: double digging, compost crops, closed loop fertility. Chadwick lineage.
Harry MacCormack
Sunbow Farm, Corvallis OR; cofounder of Oregon Tilth. Pioneer of organic certification standards in the Pacific Northwest.
Permaculture & landscape design
P.A. Yeomans
Keyline design; Water for Every Farm. His son Ken Yeomans carried the work forward.
Bill Mollison & David Holmgren
cofounders of permaculture (Permaculture One, 1978).
Masanobu Fukuoka
Natural farming; The One Straw Revolution.
J. Russell Smith
Tree Crops (1929), the root of perennial agriculture.
Sepp Holzer
High altitude permaculture at Krameterhof, Austria.
Allan Savory
Holistic Management and planned grazing for grassland restoration.
Geoff Lawton
Water harvesting and food forests; Permaculture Research Institute.
Mark Shepard
Restoration Agriculture; commercial scale perennial polycultures.
Robert Kourik
Sonoma County; Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape Naturally and Roots Demystified. Edible landscaping and root zone science.
Viktor Schauberger
Austrian forester and naturalist; water as a living system, vortex dynamics, copper tools. Influenced BD stirring and water thinking.
Penny Livingston
Regenerative Design Institute, Bolinas CA; cofounder of the Permaculture Institute of Northern California. Leading teacher of permaculture design and natural building.
Toby Hemenway
Gaia's Garden; brought permaculture to home scale growers.
Who tells you what best
Is my mineral balance right? What do I add?
Albrecht (why), Kinsey (how much, in what order)
Is my compost or extract alive and balanced?
Ingham (microscope), Lübkes (managed pile), Pfeiffer (chromatograms)
How do I make fungal dominant compost?
David Johnson (Johnson Su), then Ingham to check it
How do I make, store and apply the preps?
Courtney (making), Podolinsky (500 at scale), Thun (barrel compost), Proctor (CPP)
Hugh Courtney · Alex Podolinsky · Maria Thun · Peter Proctor
How do I prove the preps do something?
Kolisko and Pfeiffer (lab trial design); Cure Soil's BD 500 bioassay study follows them
Does organic hold up long term?
Rodale Farming Systems Trial, Balfour (Haughley)
How do I close the nutrient loop?
F.H. King, Howard, Rusch
F.H. King · Sir Albert Howard · Hans Müller & Hans Peter Rusch
How do I move and hold water?
Yeomans (keyline), Lawton (swales), Holzer (ponds and terraces)
How do I lay out my garden or land?
Hemenway and Kourik (home scale), Livingston (Bay Area), Mollison & Holmgren (principles)
Toby Hemenway · Robert Kourik · Penny Livingston · Bill Mollison & David Holmgren
Trees and perennial crops?
J. Russell Smith (why), Mark Shepard (farm scale)
Grazing animals on the land?
Voisin (rest periods), Savory (planned grazing)
Most directly on the Cure Soil path: Pfeiffer and Kolisko (lab work on the preps), Ingham and the Lübkes (compost biology and microscopy), and Reams and Kinsey (mineral balance).
