Everything you need to know about feeding your garden, orchard, or smallholding with homemade and chemical-free “teas”—packed with recipes for creating nutrient-rich, healthy soil, to give you healthy plants and ecosystems

Permaculture orchardist Eric Fisher provides an in depth history of organic agriculture and the rise in chemical inputs. He then goes on to explore the importance of nutrients, their cycles and the structure of soil. This enables the reader to truly understand their soil and own ecosystem, so they can manage it properly.

Once we understand how soil and nutrients work, it is easier to diagnose problems and find a natural remedy. Eric provides recipes for a wide range of compost teas that can remedy many different deficits, as well as for natural pesticides and insecticides. Eric shows the reader how to use the plants growing around them to create these “teas,” using aerobic and anaerobic processes, as well as how to grow specific plants to encourage beneficial insects for healthy ecosystems.

Eric’s aim is for growers to feel confident in diagnosing plant disease and pest problems, and then be able to create the right remedy for the problem. If we can care for the health of our plants and soil without using chemicals, we can save money, encourage others to do the same, and demonstrate that conventional chemical inputs are not necessary.