Spring has been hesitant to appear this year, but travelling through the Welsh lanes yesterday speaking with garden centres about our Precious Earth launch, it was lovely to see all the blossoms finally daring to bloom and bring that incredible transformation to gardens and hedgerows. The incredible, transient beauty of cherry blossoms is one that always touches my heart with the magic of how a bare stick can become a wonderful array of pink flowers, almost overnight....and then, gone again. The natural world is full of magic in so many forms. How a tiny seed becomes a beetroot to eat or an acorn becomes a huge oak tree. After all these years, it still amazes me!
I was catching up with Sky this morning ( our lovely scientist of microbiology ) and we were discussing how incredible it is that the beneficial microbes in our Precious Earth Mother Culture appear to regulate and balance whatever growing conditions they have been added to. If the PH is too high, they can lower it, and vice versa. If the plant needs more Nitrogen, they can facilitate that, if it needs Potassium, they will serve it up for dinner. We have worked with Mother Nature to produce her recipe for life and nurturing. Now all the gardener needs to do is to add Precious Earth to whatever plant, vegetable patch, tree nursery or seedling tray they have and Nature will literally do the rest. Of course Sky likes to know exactly what is going on and who is doing what and why. She's now identifying every beneficial microbe we have in our cultures and what they do for the plants. With over 16.4 million different ones identified in a tiny pinch of our Mother Culture, I'm not surprised that we are still waiting for the results!
For me, honestly, I don't mind what they are called, I just find them wonderful and let them work with the mycorrhizae and the mycelium network to give the plants what they need at the time they need it. I like keeping things simple and if it keeps the plants happy, the earth enriched and changes the way that people perceive gardening and nature, I'm good with that!
In other trials, they have identified that our Precious Earth can bring old spent composts back to life; replacing the synthetic (petro chemical based) fertilisers they were previously imbued with, with our organic goodness (using 1 part Precious Earth: 10 parts old compost). The seedlings and plants grow strong and happy and are able to match the controls (synthetic fertilisers in new compost) for root growth and yield.
Taste tests have not yet been done, but the team are getting ready for the tomato trials.
The icing on the cake is the wholehearted recommendation by Charles Dowding who trialled our Precious Earth and said he really liked it. He's noticed that it works much better than a wormcast mix he has also been growing in and believes that it's due to the Mother Culture balancing everything out as needed by the plants at their different stages of growth.
We had a lovely visit to his gardens at Homeacres earlier on this year and he was excited about how our Precious Earth could be diluted with ten parts compost and still create a perfect environment for growing vegetables. I told him how I grew fantastic beetroots, carrots and leeks in the No Dig way in just ONE INCH of compost mixed with our Mother Culture! As the beneficial life is transported through the cardboard layers, it boosts everything so much that it works wonders.
Use less, yield more.
This is Charles showing us his wormery.
I don't want to boast about this size thing, but we've got a Mother load of happy worms in our Mother Culture shed!
Our worms have been busy blending the blue Mother Bed and after 3 months of this, it is finally matured and is starting to get emptied now and is being processed by our team in the Tin Shed ready for our next batch of boxes.
Look out for us as we will soon have our shop set up online and we will be in National Trust centres and other lovely places imminently!
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