Turning on-farm plants into fermented inputs helps reduce chemical dependence while improving cranberry health and ecosystem balance

I am fortunate to have traveled throughout North America observing conventional farming operations as well as alternative operations. On the surface, these farms may seem disorganized, lacking technology, or misguided. However, this is not the case. The reality is that farming was successful before the introduction of better life though chemistry — otherwise none of us would be here. 

I have also realized that the world around us is filled with nutrition and answers to many of the pest and pathogen problems we have on the farm. Finding solutions using these resources, rather than buying products at the store, has been a fascinating conversion for our 80-acre cranberry farm in South Middleboro, Massachusetts.

Making Fermented Plant Juices

I have had many influences over the years, but Nigel Palmer’s book The Regenerative Grower’s Guide to Garden Amendments has one of the best first chapters on how plants interact with the world around them and how they actually consume, or create nutrition, from their surrounding environments. Remember — plants can’t walk away, so they must make the environment around them work.