The Regenerative Gardener's Handbook Essential Techniques for Growing a Garden That Leaves the Land Healthier than You Found It

In this comprehensive handbook, Briana Bosch of Blossom and Branch Farm teaches you how to grow flowers, herbs, and vegetables in a way that improves the soil, supports pollinators and birds, and minimizes the use of store-bought products.

Eco-conscious gardeners have always done their best to minimize the harm they cause—by not using synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, for example. But today's gardeners want to go beyond "do no harm" and have a positive effect on the environment. The goal of regenerative gardening is to leave the world a better place: to create living soil, improve habitats for insect pollinators and birds, reduce the presence of invasive species, minimize the gardener's carbon footprint and use of plastic, and help sequester carbon from the atmosphere.

Author Briana Bosch, founder of Blossom and Branch Farm, teaches the key principles for regenerative gardening: recognize the garden as its own ecosystem, know your soil, minimize the "purchased garden," build your soil armor, plant for biodiversity, create living soil, choose plants wisely, minimize soil disturbance, and close the garden loop. In addition to teaching all the skills necessary to carry out these principles, Bosch offers a season-by-season guide to implementing them—from when to start garden cleanup in the spring (later that you'd think, to avoid disrupting overwintering beneficial insects) to how to use cover crops strategically to enrich the soil and retain moisture throughout the year. 

Introduction: How Did We Get Here?
The modern nursery industry has turned gardening into an overly expensive endeavor: each trip to the nursery is met with a new product suggestion, something to buy to “fix” whatever pest or growth problem is being seen.  Bagged soils are pushed heavily, as are fertilizers and “safe” pesticides, which only serve to decimate important pieces of the garden ecosystem, leading to further damage as the balance of beneficial insects and food for those beneficial insects is knocked out of equilibrium.  The solution lies with treating the garden as an ecosystem and regenerating that system, starting with the basis of the soil food web.

Part 1: The 10 Principles of Regenerative Gardening

Chapter 1: Recognize The Garden as Its Own Ecosystem
Regenerative gardening can be explained as thinking of nature as a partner rather than a resource to be used.  It will always start with an analysis of the current soils and ecosystem to establish a baseline.  Regenerative growing is different from organic growing practices. Organic growing is done using only organic or OMRI-certified products—however, “organic” growing can still utilize broad-spectrum pesticides and applications of fertilizers that can overly acidify the soil and throw off the balance of soil life.  Regenerative growing, on the other hand, focuses on growing and regenerating soil and the garden as a piece of the ecosystem.  The practices we use include no pesticide sprays or granules (even organic ones like NEEM oil) and zero synthetic fertilizers; but most importantly, the soil and the health of the soil and ecosystem is always the main focus.
•   Levels of the garden ecosystem, and the importance of fostering each
-    Soil food web overview (microbial and fungal life, brief overview—not too in depth to avoid overwhelm but to give the reader the idea behind the concept)
-    Insects/arthropods (including “pests”) and their function within the ecosystem of the garden
-    Birds/mammals and their function within the ecosystem of the garden
•   What happens when the ecosystem is lacking or is out of balance, which leads to the majority of garden “issues” such as pests, fungus, and low yields
•   5 strategies for ecosystem balance
1.  Plant biodiversity: monocultures lead to increased disease and insect damage (in most home gardens, lawns serve as a major monoculture and source of issues)
2.  Birds: Birds are the top of the soil food web and are a vital, and often missing, key to balancing the ecosystem and reducing the number of insects damaging your plants
3.  Native plants: native plants are a key attractant to the beneficial insects that naturally balance the soil food web
4.  Healthy soil: Healthy soil will provide the correct balance of nutrients from the bottom rung of the soil food web up, to create balance.  Excess fertilizer often leads to unhealthful soils and the death of the soil microbes and symbiosis between plant roots and soil life.
5.  Healthy plants: Rootbound plants, over fertilized plants, plants purchased that have traveled hundreds or thousands of miles, non-native plants can all struggle, leading to increased fungus and disease pressure.
 
Chapter 2: Know Your Soil
How to analyze your current soil health using visual and tactile methods, how to test your soil using lab services, and how that informs garden decisions for the layperson. Soil tests can be helpful, especially the first time you are establishing a garden.  However, if you are following our seasonal plan to a regenerative garden, yearly soil testing will become unnecessary.  We are basing most of our planting decisions on the visual and physical examination of our soil, and on the performance of our plants. Soil tests can give good baseline information such as soil texture, mineral deficiencies, and phosphorus/potassium levels, but the important thing is to remember that the annual soil management practices we will outline in the seasonal guide will be the same regardless. The only thing a soil test might change is the amount of compost you use and the types of cover crops you choose to utilize.
 
To me, this is the most eye opening and enjoyable part of regenerative gardening—the fact that once you have these strategies down, they can be applied no matter the type of soil or medium you are growing in.  
•   How to analyze soil health using visual and tactile methods
•   The importance of getting a soils test for new gardens to establish baseline and avoid wasting money and resources on unnecessary amendments
-    When you can choose NOT to use a soils tests: the goal of this program is to make annual soils testing unnecessary, as the soil and overall health of the garden is brought into balance naturally without the use of artificial additives
•   How to do a soils test (timing, depth, quantity, frequency, where to send the sample)
•   Knowing your soil can be the most eye opening and enjoyable part of regenerative gardening, as you understand how your soil is the foundation of the garden’s ultimate performance
•   Weeds as a symptom: if your soil is riddled with weeds it can be a symptom of issues in the garden, though that is also not always the case: sometimes it is just from a seed bank or invasive weeds
•   Why starting gardens with popular “no dig methods” in the name of soil health can actually be detrimental
•   Starting garden beds, two ways
-    Using the native soil method in grassy area
-    Build a layered garden bed for immediate gratification

Chapter 3: Minimize The “Purchased Garden”
One of the most confusing things to do is to go to the garden center and browse the fertilizer aisle.  There can be five or six different brands of “bloom fertilizer,” all with different NPK numbers.  The NPK numbers indicate how much nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are present in each bottle—the problem is, most gardeners have no idea what they truly need to feed their soil, whether they need fertilizer at all, and the bottle often recommends more fertilizer than is actually needed. Truly, if done correctly, regenerative gardening means you won’t be applying any artificial OR organic fertilizers or chemicals at all. They are often expensive, unnecessary, and will result in the death of your soil life and ecology.
 
•   Too often, we rely on purchases from the garden center to “fix” perceived problems in the garden. These fixes can include: pesticides, fertilizers, bagged soils/composts, other “miracle” amendments, purchased beneficial insects
•   Include list of questions to ask when purchasing soils/composts/what to look for
•   The “problems” seen in the garden can be solved through implementation of regenerative gardening, affordably, in the way that nature intended.
Examples:
•   Low nitrogen: nitrogen-fixing cover cropping
•   Compaction: heavy root crops such as radish, turnip; building the soil life
•   Fungus/disease: create resiliency in the soil through minimizing disturbance
•   Pests: building biodiversity, looking at ecosystem
•   The importance of growing your own plants from seed whenever possible to have full transparency into what is in them, and also to have the healthiest plants possible
-    Soil blocking as the way to create the strongest and most healthful roots for pest and disease-resistant plants
•   How to soil block (physical process: mixing soil, wetting, pressing out blocks, what kinds of trays to use, how to water, how to use humidity domes, how to plant from soil blocks)
•   Soil block recipes:
•   Coconut coir-based
•   Wool pellet based
•   Pitt moss (recycled paper) based
 
Chapter 4: Build Your Soil Armor
Soil armor is just another way of saying mulch—soil armor, as the name implies, serves many purposes.  Remember that soil food web we just spent time reviewing? This is where soil armor shines! That soil food web consists of living beings—and those living beings will thrive if their environment is staying even and consistent.  Soil armor, or mulch, helps with this in many ways.  We all have probably heard of the benefits of mulch in terms of weed reduction and prevention, but there are other benefits as well.
•   Benefits of mulch from the perspective of ecosystem and soil food web
•   Different types of mulches and their uses
-    Always best to source what’s the most readily available and travels the fewest miles: pine straw, leaves, wood chips, straw (including things to look out for), compost, terminated cover crops
•   When and where to mulch (“building a soil blanket”)
•   When to NOT mulch, when to remove mulch and why
•   Tips to help hold mulch in place in harsh environments or windy seasons
•   Weed management tips for the regenerative garden: Using deep mulches, manual removal, solarizing, controlling irrigation, crowding, corn gluten application

Chapter 5: Plant For Biodiversity
By increasing the biodiversity of plants in your garden, you will find that the inherent resiliency of your entire garden to pests and diseases is greatly improved.  Powdery mildew and other common fungus that tend to attack specific plants will be much less likely to spread if we have diversified our garden beds through the interplanting of a wide variety of plants in one space.
•   Focus on native plants to attract widest range of ecosystem diversity
•   How biodiversity can protect the garden from pests and fungus
•   Pest management
-    How native plants lead to less pests in the garden through beneficial insects
•   Include a chart of good native plants and the beneficial insects they attract/what pests they fight
-    Why it is sometimes important to let plants be attacked by pests, from an entomology standpoint
-    Including trap crops
-    How to interplant
-    Avoiding monocultures in the garden
-    Incorporating physical barriers to pests when necessary
-    When to stop growing certain pest-prone plants
•   How to incorporate biodiversity
-    Spacing
-    Planning for biodiversity/what to include
-    Know the plant habits (spreading, reseeding, aggressiveness)
-    Planting for habitat building and creation as a part of the garden
•   Tips for planting
-    Amendments (if any)
-    To include compost or not to include compost?
-    Using existing soil as an inoculant in new garden soils at planting time

Chapter 6: Create Living Soil with Plant Roots
Cover crops can serve a multitude of purposes in the garden. From erosion control, to nutrient retention, to providing organic matter for depleted soils, to providing mulch on the surface of the soil.  Recall that the base layer of the soil food web was that of the plants and living roots—the longer we can keep living roots in the soil, the longer we will be able to provide nourishment for that soil food web.  Cover crops can also help fulfill the role of biodiversity, leading to healthier soil and more pest and disease resistance in the garden.
There is no one size fits all for cover crops, and no one correct strategy. Cover cropping in the garden is highly dependent on individual situations and soil needs, but there are some important points to consider when cover cropping.
-    When to cover crop:
•   Spring: pros and cons of cover cropping in spring
-    Pros: lets your garden grow until frost in fall, built in mulch after termination
-    Cons: timing, weather
-    How to cover crop in spring and considerations
•   Crop needs to be easy to terminate (kill) since it can’t be killed by frost or cold temperatures
•   Need to plan for time between termination and planting of main garden
•   Late summer/fall: pros and cons of cover cropping in late summer/fall
-    Pros: weather is usually more reliable in fall, soil temps are warmer for easier germination, no worries about irrigation freezing as in spring, easier termination of cover crop (just select frost killed varieties)
-    Cons: Have to terminate garden earlier to plant
•   How to interplant your cover crop if you don’t want to kill your garden to plant your cover crop
•   How to cover crop (show in containers, in ground, in raised beds)
•   Cover crop considerations:
-    Using a variety of cover crops
-    What cover crop to use? Various cover crops can be employed depending on issues and goals for the garden:
•   Nitrogen fixation
•   Weed smothering
•   Disease resistance
•   Nematode/pests
•   General biodiversity
•   Organic matter building
•   Erosion
-    Chart on what cover crops grow well/frost kill temperatures/what cover crops help to achieve goals
•   Termination/killing your cover crop:
-    For home gardeners, termination can be the most intimidating part of cover cropping
•   What qualifies as termination?
•   How farmers terminate
•   Options for home gardeners to terminate
-    crimping
-    cutting down (“chop and drop”)
-    tarping
-    winter kill
•   When to terminate for best results
•   Planting after termination

Chapter 7: Choose Plants Wisely
Understanding the importance of this principle requires us to take a little bit of a deeper look into the ecosystem and a quick explanation on why plant selection is important! One of the things I emphasize is the vital place of native plants in the regenerative garden and the logic behind that; as well as the danger of invasive plants in the landscape and how they can make, or break, your healthy regenerative garden.
•   The role of native plants in the home garden and how to incorporate them (sometimes native plants can be more aggressive, self seeding, or large, so either selecting better behaved cultivars or being sure to give them then space they require to avoid frustration down the road)
•   If a plant is difficult to grow in your soil or zone, decide whether it is worth the hassle
•   Invasive plants: their impact on the home garden ecosystem
-    List of commonly sold invasive plants in the nursery and horticulture industry to avoid and good alternatives
•   Planning the garden: It can be helpful to create a “map” of your existing lawn or garden space to identify pockets where native perennials, bird-supporting plants can get tucked in
-    How to draw a garden map:
•   Incorporate structures/trees that cast shade or compete for water/sunlight
•   Identify sun exposures
•   Remember to leave space for tools like wheelbarrows
•   Incorporate your visual and tactile soils testing to identify drainage and soil types in the space
-    Planning for “guilds” (guilds are a permaculture idea of supporting plants that work together in a symbiotic way)
•   Examples of guilds in the garden
•   Planning the garden incorporating producer plants, pollinator plants, herbs
•   Planning the garden to account for height and plant habit (spreading/upright)
 
Chapter 8: Minimize Soil Disturbance
Closer to the soil surface exists the aerobic bacteria and fungi, where there are more porous spaces, gaps, and holes within the soil.  Further down into the deeper layers of the more compacted soil exists the anaerobic versions of this life—the life that doesn’t need as much oxygen to thrive and survive.  When we disturb this soil through deep tillage or turning of our garden soil, we end up doing a lot of damage as we rearrange these layers and expose the anaerobic life to excess oxygen and the aerobic life to the deeper layers of soil that lack the oxygen they need.  This can result in massive die off of the soil life.  By turning and disturbing the ground, we also expose this soil life to UV rays that can kill them, and we can also dry out the soil, leading to more vulnerability of that soil life.  While healthy soil will be able to regenerate that soil food web over time on its own, the less we do to disturb it, and the less frequently we do it, the better.
 
•   What is considered “soil disturbance”
-    Tilling
-    Overworking
-    Turning over soil with shovel
•   Why disturbance is detrimental to the regenerative garden program
-    Exposure to UV rays and soil life
-    Can dry out soil rapidly, killing soil life
-    If done deeply, can expose anaerobic soil life to excess oxygen while smothering out aerobic soil life
•   Is soil disturbance ever ok? Exceptions to the rule (i.e., in the native soil method of establishing garden beds from Principle 2)
•   Alternatives to tilling or turning the soil
-    “Cracking” the soil to provide some aeration in heavy clay, or to help work organic matter down into the soil in heavy or sandy soils using a broad fork or garden fork
•   How to broad fork
-    If using compost, apply FIRST
-    Insert broad fork or pitchfork
-    Tip back slightly until soil cracks, but do not turn soil over
-    Pull back and continue across bed, being careful not to pack down areas that have been forked
•   Cracking the soil for aeration and organic matter addition can be done in spring or late summer/fall, or both
-    Spring: prior to planting to help lighten compacted soils and make planting easier
-    Late summer/fall: prior to planting cover crop or adding compost, can also help moisture from snow work down into soil and create air pockets through expansion/freezing
 
Chapter 9: Close The Garden Loop
Modern gardens have become incredibly reliant on purchased amendments.  But how do we stop this dependence, make the garden more self sustaining, affordable, and in line with nature’s garden?
 
This is where animal integration comes in.  The idea behind integrating animals into the system is that they complete the nutrient cycle of the cover crop and living root system we just discussed—ideally, at the end of that cover crop’s growing cycle, it will be eaten down by a ruminant animal such as a sheep or cow that will trample down the crop and leave nutrient-rich manure in its place.  This is a benefit that can’t be overlooked—and can actually be achieved fairly easily through smaller animals such as rabbits, chickens, small sheep or goats.  While the best option for animal integration is always going to be to have them on your property, for most of the smaller scale urban home lots, that simply isn’t always an option, or perhaps there isn’t time or the desire to maintain animals on a property—and that is ok too!  While having animals physically in the garden provides a closed loop of nutrient cycling and the best benefits,  gardeners can still utilize the theory of a closed loop garden in other ways.
•   Benefits of animal inputs, cons of animal inputs
-    Pros: Rapid renewal and regeneration of soil life with onsite animals, eating of garden waste, onsite fertilizer production, control of inputs and knowing what is going into the garden
-    Cons: Space, shelter, maintenance, cost, feeding, smell, logistics, can sometimes lead to excess phosphorus and salinity, stress!
•   Ethical considerations of animal integration
-    End of life considerations: will animals be used for meat, or will they live out their lives? This is a personal consideration that only you can make if you choose to integrate.
-    Quality of life
-    Respect for the animal
-    What types of animals work best for home gardeners with small lots, considerations: Rabbits, chickens, ducks, sheep/goats (need 1 acre or more, can be prone to diseases, higher vet bills, more expensive to maintain and feed, often smellier, escape artists, need hoof trimming/worming and extra care; but can be good lawn mowers, weed eaters, pets, scrap eaters, fertilizer providers)
•   NPK levels of animal inputs (sheep/goat, cow, chicken, rabbit/guinea pig, horse)
•   Alternatives to animal integration
•   Simple homemade amendment recipes and when to use
-    Compost tea recipe
-    Leaf mold
-    Weed tea from foraged weeds recipe
-    Alfalfa pellet and compost fertilizer for nitrogen recipe
-    Plant-based stinging nettle and chamomile seedling fertilizer recipe
•   Home composting: the importance of home compost from an environmental standpoint and also for the garden

Chapter 10: Renew Your Mindset
If plants aren’t being nibbled on, they aren’t part of an ecosystem. It can be difficult to see a prized or favorite plant being eaten by bugs, but remember that they serve a purpose in the ecosystem as well.  But how do we support the ecosystem in the garden to create the most resiliency against these pests and still get yield from our hard work?
•   Journaling as a way to keep track of changes in the garden, amendments that are used, successes and failures
•   Taking the “10 mile view” of the garden
•   Gardening with nature as a partner can be renewing to the mind and soul as well as the soil
 
Part 2: Living the Principles: The Seasonal Guide
Best practices of how to implement these strategies and a seasonal guide to keep on track!
 
Spring: Waking the Garden
•   Management of fall-planted cover crops
•   Soils testing
•   Plant spring cover crop
•   When to work the soil, if at all (broad fork)
•   Mulching/cleaning up (when to clean up if at all)
•   Which homemade amendments to use
•   seed starting via soil blocking
•   Include “how to time your seed starting” tips in side bar
•   Accumulate your seed starting and soil blocking supplies
•   Provide food source for birds

Summer: Harvesting and Maintaining the Garden
•   Management/termination of spring planted cover crops
•   Weed management through mulching
•   Which homemade amendments to use
•   Planning and planting cover crops
•   Summer is a prime time for composting with temperatures up, take advantage
•   Provide water source for bird and pollinators
•   “Pest” management and documentation

Fall: Preparing the Garden for Rest
•   When to use compost/when not to
•   Making and collecting your soil “blankets”
•   New plantings of natives
•   Creating habitat for ecosystem support over winter (branch piles, leaf piles)
•   Plant fall cover crop

Winter: Reflection, Rest, and Planning
•   Have a plan in place for wind and erosion potential
•   Cover sensitive plants like climbing roses with burlap, wrap tree trunks of newer trees
•   Winter watering: when it’s necessary and when to do it
•   Planning for next year’s garden
•   Making a garden map
•   Seed starting timing plans
•   Journal and record keeping, goals