essential nutrients

The Essentials

When I start the creative process of brainstorming and physical preparations, like starting to collect the necessary ingredients to successfully grow an outdoor garden, it makes me wonder, “where does this process actually start?” What actually needs to be bought? Can some of these ingredients be collected? This whole process can either be easy, or we can make it difficult. In reality, this is the truth and we actually only need to fill some very basic requirements to successfully achieve a high quality end product from your garden.

Try to remember 6 essential nutrients, “if we have a nutrient source for each of these 6 we should be good, right?” The answer to where these ingredients will come from is availability. When looking at adding an ingredient to your CRAFT soil mix a quick Google search or even reading the label on packaging should tell you what you need to know. Is there opportunity in your day-to-day life to turn things you normally discard as trash into nutrition for your garden? Are there weeds in your neighbourhood that contain the nutrients you need? Everyone knows where to collect dandelion or plantain plants right? “The difference between a weed and a nutrient source is only as skin deep as how we choose to classify things as having a purpose or not.”

We throw things away all the time that can be used in place of things we spend money on. That being said, ingredients like KELP I do not have a fresh source for and I absolutely need it in my garden, so that amendment needs to be purchased from a reliable source.

Here are some ideas for cheap, if not free, amendment ideas.

Essential Nutrient – Nutrient Sources

N Nitrogen	Aged poultry manure, stinging nettle, alfalfa pellets or meal and believe it or not even aged urine.
P Phosphorus	Chick weed, stinging nettle, dairy products, some legumes, nuts as well as fish parts bones, skin etc.
K Potassium	Dandelion, stinging nettle, banana peels, potatoes, dried fruit, acorn squash and beet greens.
Ca Calcium	Sea weed, wood ash, egg shells, bone meal, and sea shells.
Mg Magnesium	Fresh organic compost, Epsom salt, lime also works but raises the pH of anything it is added to.
S Sulfur	composted manure is a good source @0.25-0.30 %, Poultry manure comes in @ 0.50% and is one we use a lot.

Once you start to look at different organic options you start to realise that there are opportunities often to add multiple nutrients from each source and start to see a lot of balanced nutrition for our gardens. Remember once you start feeding the biome around your plants you actually stop feeding the plants themselves and instead start organising all of the micro and macro life to perform certain tasks, this in the end makes this whole process a lot easier. #fuckpesticides