Steve Solomon has grown most of the food he eats for several decades. He’s discovered that when his plants get ALL the elements and nutrients they need, they taste amazing, grow better, are more resistant to disease, and improve his health. He calls it nutrient dense growing.
Steve has been experimenting with the best ways to organically add nutrients to the soil. Here he shares his ideas on how his learning can be applied to container gardening.
Notes and Organic Fertiliser Recipe
Download a PDF summarising the key points.
Download Steve’s recipe for a Complete Organic Fertiliser for containers
How to watch or listen to webinar
You can watch the webinar or download the sound only files (MP3) below. Steves presentation does not include many images so sound only might be a good option. To download the audio file, right click on the ‘Download audio file’ below and then click ‘Save as’.
1. Why grow nutrient dense food?
Video time: 12.43
- Intro: how Steve became interested in nutrient dense food.
- The benefits of growing nutrient dense food.
2. Nutrients, liquid feeds and lime
Video time: 22.54
- What nutrients do plants need?
- Why is liquid feeding essential in containers?
- Why it might be useful to make friends with cannabis growers.
- Why add lime to your growing mix?
3. Soil, soil life, and wormeries
Video time: 11.36
- How soil life releases food in the soil.
- Why you should add soil (if you can find it) to your potting mix or wormery.
- Complete organic fertiliser (see notes for more detail)
- Can you over feed?
4. Adding nitrogen; rock dust
Video time: 8.24
- Why oil seed meal (if you can get it) makes a superb nitrogen fertiliser.
- Chicken manure.
- Are there benefits to adding rock dust?
5.Flavour; re-using compost
Video time: 11.30
- How do you tell if food is nutrient dense? Brix and refractometers.
- What is the flavour of nutrient dense food like?
- Is canola meal organic?
- Tips on re-using compost.
Further information
For further information, I highly recommend Steve’s excellent book The Intelligent Gardener. Steve has also put together a huge, online library of papers on health and growing (all free to download) on his website: Soil and Health