This series of articles on How to Start KNF is not meant to give you recipes. It’s meant to teach you how to cook. So far, we have covered the basics on how to start practicing KNF. This is a quick review of the basics before we cover more advanced concepts. Level one of How to Start KNF focuses on setting up the systems. It’s about setting goals, learning skills, and starting things that take time to be ready for use. IMO is the foundation of the soil, and the foundation of

Clearly, the loving farmer is going to have healthier plants. It does not matter whether plants can read human emotions and react to them, although they probably do. As scientific tools improve, scientific experiments increasingly show that plants respond to stimuli, including human interaction. The fact is that the loving farmer, doing the same chores, is giving plants better physical care. Your attitude drives your actions. In order to have better health for your crops, you

A 21-nautical-mile stretch of water could trigger a global famine. The Strait of Hormuz controls up to half the world’s fertilizer. The Ukraine war is also a major disruption, and we’ve hit Peak Fertilizer. Cheap, mined minerals are over, and our food system is fragile. What if you could opt out without buying a single bag of fertilizer? It’s a method where you become the supply chain by harnessing the biology already on your land. We’ll get to the solution in a moment. But h

People tend to assume that plants need fertile soil in order to grow well. But that’s not really how nature works. The place where conditions matter most is right around the plant’s roots, the small zone of soil where roots, microbes, and nutrients interact. This zone is called the rhizosphere. Essentially, the rainforest's amazing output isn't due to nutrient-rich soil. It comes from a living biological system that constantly cycles nutrients right where plants need them, ar

The most valuable skill in farming can’t be bought, bottled, or scheduled. It isn’t proper planting, fertilizing, or pest control. It’s learning to recognize patterns and respond to them in a timely manner. Recognizing patterns enabled humans to settle, grow food, and build civilizations. The right action at the wrong time has zero reward; the right action at the right time produces abundant results.

cotyledons act as the egg yolks of the seeds, which plants use for nutrients and energy until they can develop their first true leaves and p

The basis of agriculture is to create an environment in which plants can absorb as much nutrients as they need at the proper time. Fertilizi

I love ducks. They get ecstatically happy when it rains. They taught me to love dark, dreary, wet days. They quack with exuberant joy in...

The goal of KNF is the integration of plants, animals, and microbes into a system for organic material cycling and recycling, with the ultim

GROWING LICORICE Licorice, Glycyrrhiza glabra, also known as Sweet Root, is a perennial shrub found wild in areas of the world with...

WHAT IS NATURAL FARMING? Part 2 300 YEAR OLD PERMACULTURE FOOD FOREST This majestic tropical Food Forest has been a family garden for...