Healthy soil is the hidden ingredient

I started my gardening adventure with vegetables in pots. It was perfect, plants gave amazing yield, but required too detailed care and attention every day (or sometimes 2-3 times a day in a hot dry summer day). When I have moved to planting in soil I was shocked how worse the plants are doing. Same tomatoes giving 10-15 kg per plant yield in pots were under 3kg in soil. They got more disease issues, more pests (slugs and snails!).

After talking to fellow natural hobby farmers I realized the soil quality was garbage (lack of earth worms and insects), and there were severe drainage and water holding issues: weirdly the soil didn't hold water but it drained way too slow too. So, ehen it rained it was swamped for days but when it got dry none of that water stayed at the top 1 meters of the soil. I'm lucky to find amazing help from local natural farmers, so I got natural green compost (no animal products/byproducts). I have been introduced to no-dig farming too. So first year I started by applying 20cm thick compost on top soil, after putting a layer of old paper boxes against weeds. Then planted my seedlings on these, with worm poop and for some phosphate loving plants bat guano as fertilizers around the plants, topping of with hemp mulch and cacao shell mulch as topping. When this soil has sunken enough, topped off with 2-3 cm compost and mulched again. I have sprinkled insect friendly flowers to attract insects too. This was an amazing succes with not only plants flourishing, fighting diseases much better and resulting in an amazing yield. I didn't need to water as often as before (4x less frequent than before in the soil, 8x less frequent than in the pot). After year 3 I stopped all fertilization and introduced cover crops that could be used as mulch and fertilizer at the same time.

This process though is not linear. I still have plants which are not successful at all. I can grow juicy tasty watermelons in a northern European country but no parsnips or carrots or cauliflowers yet. This is what I love though, I'm interacting with a living microbiome rather than executing lab experiments. Failures are keeping it interesting and improving learning.

We use a Lomi to convert our organic waste into compost I can add to my worm farm

and then from the worm farm, mix with outdoor soil and grow in that. A automated a flood and drain system with our fish and cultivate nitrogen fixing bacteria with that, and water the plants with this water every couple of days.

Using these two approaches I have not had to buy any nutrients in years and our soil is doing well.

https://lomi.com/?srsltid=AfmBOor2uvg1DJ2J1E6rXh-8L3iAqzeSD0...

Why get an electric powered gadget made of plastic and proprietary soft/hardware that will 100% for sure end in a dump in less than 20 years when all you need is a good ol compost bin?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bXZG-kzlhPY

I was originally pretty skeptical of the Lomi as well after seeing this very same video. But my friend got us one and we have been using it for a while now. Sure, it has the same parts as a breadmaker, and it's mostly just drying out and cutting down the organic material into more useful sizes, exactly like he says, but when you put in the enzymes and have it run its dirt cycle it does actually produce meaningfully good compost all with much lower footprint a garden composting setup. I'm not sure I'd pay to buy one new, but but it's not a scam.

Just remember that any positive effect you might achieve by a lifetime of composting is grossly negated by the production, usage, and inevitable way to the landfill of this thing. Startups like these are part of the problem, not the solution.