How to Start a Regenerative Garden

Want to learn how to start a regenerative garden? Today we're looking at all the regenerative techniques and how to get started incorporating them into your garden.

Regenerative gardening is super exciting, and connects you and your garden with your local ecosystem in a way that's meaningful, holistic, and has a positive impact that will ripple out from your small garden in ways you can't yet imagine!

Let's jump into some of the basic concepts here to help you get started today.

Soil-Building

The foundation of any successful organic garden is healthy soil. Without that, plants can't be healthy and the ecosystem as a whole can't be healthy. It all starts with soil!

In the regenerative mindset, the soil-first focus is the cornerstone upon which everything else can be built.

Chop and Drop

Building on the soil-building focus above, chop and drop helps you to build soil faster and cheaper, while also suppressing weeds.

The idea here is to treat your garden beds and plots as their own compost heaps. Afterall, leaves, stalks, stems, and branches in forests are not carried off to some compost pile and only brought back after being broken down - they compost in place.

Chop and drop seeks to mimic this natural process simply letting dead leaves and plants compost where they fall.

This directly feeds the microbiome in your garden soil, where the prunings and stalks from past cycles are broken down into a new layer of soil.

Improve Soil Structure

Stalks and stems also help to provide structure to soil layers as they're being built, preventing compaction and improving drainage.

Protect Seeds

Chop and drop can also help to cover and protect seeds after planting or scattering, to reduce birds and critters from accessing them before they sprout. Toss seeds around for the new season, and then chop down the old season plants and lay them on top of the seeds to protect them while they germinate.

To dig further into chop & drop, check out our Chop & Drop Guide.

No-Till

No-till gardening is a way to preserve soil structure and promote a healthy soil microbiome.

Cover Crops

Cover crops are crops that are grown specifically to improve soil health. Cover crops

Some popular cover crops for gardeners include clover, vetch, and cowpeas.

Check out our full guide on Which Cover Crops to Grow to learn more.

Irrigation

Water is the lifeblood of your garden, comprising the majority of what plants are made out of. It's important to use water efficiently and to try to provide the most consistent and reliable water you can for your plants.

One way to do this is by using drip irrigation.