Regenerative practices library

Turn kitchen and garden waste into dark, living soil food. Compost is the heart of growing God’s way, returning to the ground what the ground gave you.

1. 1Layer greens (kitchen scraps, fresh clippings) with browns (dry leaves, straw, cardboard) in roughly equal parts.
2. 2Keep it as damp as a wrung-out sponge and turn it every week or two for airflow.
3. 3In a few months it becomes crumbly, sweet-smelling compost ready to feed your beds.

Stop turning the soil over and start building it up. Leaving the underground world intact protects the fungal networks and worm channels that do the work for you.

1. 1Lay cardboard over grass or weeds to smother them without chemicals.
2. 2Top with several inches of compost and plant straight into it.
3. 3Add a fresh layer of compost or mulch each season and let the soil life pull it down.

Move plant families around your beds each year so pests and diseases never settle, and each crop leaves the soil ready for the next.

1. 1Group crops by family (legumes, brassicas, roots, fruiting) and never grow the same family in the same bed two years running.
2. 2Follow hungry feeders with soil-building legumes.
3. 3Keep a simple map each year so you remember what grew where.

Never leave soil bare. A living cover protects the ground, feeds the microbes and captures nitrogen until you are ready to plant again.

1. 1Sow clover, vetch, rye or field beans on any bed that would otherwise sit empty.
2. 2Let it grow, then cut it down before it seeds.
3. 3Leave the roots in place and the top growth as mulch, or turn it in gently.

Borrow the ancient wisdom of Leviticus 25 and give a bed a season of rest. It is the oldest regenerative practice there is.

1. 1Each year, choose one bed to rest rather than crop hard.
2. 2Sow a rich cover crop or heap it with compost and mulch, and let the soil life recover.
3. 3Return to it the following season and notice how it has come back stronger.

Leviticus 25:4