Nigel Palmer - DIY Garden Amendments

In our conversation, which begins with his biography, he shares his inspiration from the work of John Kempf and Dan Kittredge, along with the JADAM Korean farming method, to create garden amendments at home from hyper-local sources: eggshells and bones from his kitchen, scraps, and remnants from the garden, and leaf mold from the forest floor. Using ferments, tinctures, and extracts, he creates the foliar sprays, fertilizers, and soil drenches to grow disease and pest-resistant plants, and nutrient-dense food, without the need for commercial chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or fungicides.

Rich with examples from his own garden, Nigel’s approach favors biology over technology to reduce the cost of gardening, improve his local soil, and the quality of his fruits and vegetables.

You can find more about Nigel, his book, and work with The Institute of Sustainable Nutrition at tiosn.com.

Download Nigel's Recipe for Vinegar Extractions (With Permission from Chelsea Green Publishing)

Gardening can be incredibly wasteful from all the packaging and plastic, to harmful to our environment through the overuse of chemicals, from nitrogen-heavy fertilizers that runoff into our waterways, to the pesticides and herbicides that, even when narrow spectrum, kill a wide variety of soil life. In our waterways, many of these chemicals that seem to improve our gardens and growth of food, kill fish, and amphibians. I like Nigel’s DIY approach to sustainable fertilization, fertigation, and improvement of life in the soil because it dispenses with those harms while using and reusing items we can find in our local environment. Often from our pantry, garden, or own backyard, while aligning with so many of the principles of permaculture.

We can observe the rise of a disease or pest issue and interact with a creative response via the homemade remedy. We catch and store energy by creating tinctures, extracts, and ferments while they are available and create a form we can keep refrigerated or on a shelf. We obtain a yield by increasing the health, vitality, and nutrition of our plants. Though not written explicitly as a permaculture book, Nigel provides a holistic approach to Zone 1 and Zone 2 plant management.

But, those are just my thoughts. After listening to this interview with Nigel Palmer, what are yours?

Leave a comment in the show notes, or email me: The Permaculture Podcast.

Until the next time, feed yourself, your soil, and your garden from local sources, while taking care of Earth, yourself, and each other.

Related Interviews
Nutrient Dense Foods | Dan Kittredge
Improving Broadscale Agriculture | John Kempf

Resources
The Regenerative Grower’s Guide to Garden Amendments
The Institute of Sustainable Nutrition
Korean Natural Farming Resources
JADAM Organic Farming: The Way to Ultra-low-cost Agriculture by Youngsang Cho (Amazon)
JADAM Organic Farming