A Guest Submission by Sigis
With the rise of homesteading and self-reliance within our movement there has been an increasing drive to produce more with less, and eliminate our support for multinational agricultural companies that do not share the values of the White race. In previous generations White communities worked together to meet food and material needs. Our dissident communities do not yet share the geographic closeness of times past to provide an interdependence and distribution of duties.
It seems every homesteader and backyard gardener is working from dawn to dusk or running to the local chain store weekly to be able to manage any semblance of independence. For the last decade I have worked to find ways to make my small homestead as detached from the global supply chain as possible, whether that is producing my own straw and chicken feed or opting for wattle and hedges over a roll of metal fencing.
In this series of articles I hope to explore some methods I’ve implemented, a few that a small community of neighboring dissidents could one day put into practice, and one or two that I hope more talented Whites can expound on and establish a fashion of near complete self-reliance.
Plants to Help Maintain Soil Nutrients
Most gardeners have experienced the impossible to remove weed that comes back within weeks of trying to dig the root out. Whether it is dandelion, thistle, or bindweed, the roots go so deep that the stub of root remaining in the ground is tapping into moisture and nutrients that allow it to seemingly continually regenerate and store energy before the next weeding.
These plants thrive because they can access nutrients that your plants cannot. While I would definitely not recommend reseeding dandelion or bindweed in your garden there are plants less deleterious to your garden aesthetic that you can use to provide a continual source of high value compost and fertilizer.
Let us look at some that can both enrich the beauty of your landscape and do not require extensive management to prevent them from becoming a nuisance:
Comfrey (Symphytum officinale, USDA zones 3-9) is a perennial plant that is native to Europe and has a long history in traditional White herbal medicine. The plant prodigiously produces large green leaves and tall flower stalks from early summer to late fall, which attract hummingbirds, bumblebees, and butterflies. The leaves contain high levels of nitrogen and potassium, as well as a number of trace minerals such as iron, silicon, and calcium. It grows well on the shady and drier margins of trees where other plants struggle. Comfrey’s hardiness, abundant growth, and perennial nature makes it an excellent source of fresh green fuel for the compost pile. The plant spreads quickly, so I would recommend using the sterile variety known as Bocking 14, which can be divided by the roots each winter to build a large patch to harvest through the warmer months.
Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica, USDA zones 4-10) is another European perennial native that has colonized the world. Growing up to 8 feet tall in a season and spreading quickly by seed, along with its nature of being covered in painful needles, many will be hesitant to include this in their landscape. Managed correctly, it is one of the most powerful plants you can find to create a rich compost pile. Like comfrey it grows well in shady dry margins that usually stay empty of food crops. The plant produces stalks high in phosphorus, manganese, and copper, with exceptionally high levels of calcium. To manage the growth of this plant and prevent it from spreading everywhere, harvest in early and late summer and again in mid fall to prevent the seeds from becoming viable on the stalks.
Borage (Borago officinalis, USDA zones 3-10) is a Mediterranean native annual flower prized for its cucumber tasting flowers and continual bee attracting growth. Reaching a little over two feet tall, the plant will readily reseed itself multiple times in the same year before quickly dying back and becoming a fresh mulch that protects the soil. Provided the fallen seeds have some protection under fall leaves or light mulch, Borage will regrow each spring meaning you won’t have to plant it again to continue harvesting it. The fresh leaves contain significant levels of potassium and silica, which is an often ignored critical mineral in plant growth.
Winter peas (Pisum sativum subsp. Arvense) are an annual low growing crop that is commonly used as a nitrogen fixing cold weather cover crop. When inoculated with Rhizobia the plant roots will fix nitrogen in the soil while the above ground growth acts as a living mulch that protects the surface of the soil from compaction by winter rain and snow. In USDA zones 6 and higher the peas can be planted in late fall for continual growth through the winter and a mid-spring harvest of all of the growth, leaving the roots in place so that the nitrogen nodules formed by the Rhizobia are available to the spring planted food crop. In USDA zones 5 and lower an early fall planting will produce growth that will die off in severe cold but still protect the soil until spring. The above ground growth produces compostable green material that is high in potassium and phosphorous, as well as calcium, magnesium, and sodium at levels comparable to chicken manure. While the peas will have to be replanted annually as you are harvesting the greens before seed production, leaving a small row into summer produces a large enough harvest that the seeds do not need to be purchased again.
There are many plants that can be used as a continual nutrient accumulator, but with these four you can produce nutrient rich compost and fertilizer for your crops.
Composting Methods
There are three ways to do this depending on the results you want; chop and drop, hot composting, and compost tea.
Chop and drop is a method to create green mulch that protects the soil and slowly releases nutrients into the soil as it breaks down over time. Growth is trimmed back before going to seed or before the last frost and placed around plants that will benefit from the soil cover and nutrients. Nettle makes an excellent green mulch for tomato and pepper plants, providing a slow release of calcium and silica that reduces blossom end rot. Borage mulch provides much needed silica to plants like potatoes, corn, and grain, along with potassium to any plant that produces a fruit. Shredded comfrey leaves can be added to fresh wood mulch to provide nitrogen to the soil while the nitrogen producing soil bacteria works to break down the wood.
Hot composting is the common way most gardeners turn organic waste into a usable soil conditioner. Many new to the practice, and depending on the season even some experienced gardeners, struggle to get the needed mix of carbon and nitrogen. The optimal formula is 30:1 carbon to nitrogen (C:N) which prevents a pile from staying a cold stinking mess. While most green plants have a C:N ratio of 80:1, comfrey has a ratio of 14:1. A wheel barrow load of fresh comfrey leaves brings the C:N ratio into ideal alignment for the bacterial process to turn fresh compost into plant available nutrients. Nettle and comfrey harvested through the summer are ideal when composted with used straw from the chicken coop, allowing the pile to stay consistently hot long enough to kill off pathogens in the chicken manure. Borage and a late fall harvest of winter pea greens are perfect for increasing the nitrogen content of the carbon heavy fall leaf pile.
Compost tea provides an immediate release of nutrients to the plants it is applied to, as well as inhibiting many of the microorganisms that cause plant disease, by increasing the presence of beneficial soil microorganisms. It can decrease the prevalence of organisms that cause fusarium wilt, damping off, and blight. The fermentation process releases the nutrients in the fresh plant matter making them immediately available to the plants it is applied to. A mixture of equal parts comfrey and nettle can be combined with four parts water and allowed to sit in the sun for two weeks. This produces a fertilizer that will provide for virtually all of the nutrient needs of your plants. With a small patch of comfrey and nettle, and a regular harvest, you will never had to spend money for a degeneracy supporting multinational company’s fertilizer product again.
The process of chop and drop and the production of compost tea is an ideal task for a younger child. It can teach them much about soil health and plant cycles, management of tasks on a schedule, and in the case of compost tea, they are producing a tangible product that benefits their family. The weekly process of turning hot compost is perfect for that young teenager that needs to build some muscle, and for some of our men who haven’t seen their abs in a while.
To Sum Up
Regardless of the scale of your agricultural activities these processes can and should be implemented as a means of limiting the globo-homo footprint over your land, and placing a White step in the direction of high quality foods for future generations. In a better world, some White men would have large piles of compost going all year and several barrels of compost tea bubbling away, which was provided to other white families in their regions. In the current world it is both a dream for the future and an expectant spark that someone will be able to put some manner of this into practice for his people. White food security is certainly not the blow that will bring the beast of the anti-White system to its knees, simply another honing pass of the axe across the whetstone.