Demystifying Nitrogen Fixation to Create a Self-Sufficient Food Forest

Springtime at Goldie Farms is leaving us absolutely giddy. It's been exciting to see how what was once just something I imagined is now a reality. Goldie Farms is a thriving food forest full of food and medicine. Medicine that has helped me heal from my injury and surgery and an abundance of nutritious food not only for the bees and butterflies but for us and our neighbors as well. It's also been exciting to see how Goldie Farms is inspiring others. So today I'm helping my friend and neighbor Brisa plant a nitrogen fixing tree and I'm going to demystify nitrogen fixation and share how you can leverage this natural process to create a Hello. I am with my dear friend Brisa. Hello. I live a few doors down from Erin. She's a good friend of mine. She's teaching me how to build my own magical garden here, food forest. I'm really happy to have her and get started on my food forest. Okay, where do we start? Okay. So perhaps like you, Brisa wants to grow food and flowers and create some shade in her yard, but she wants a fairly low maintenance garden that thrives without relying on synthetic fertilizers. Plants need more than just water to survive. All plants need nutrients and nitrogen is often the most limiting nutrient for plant growth. Many of the plants that make up our diet, like fruit trees and veggies, are heavy feeders, meaning they need a lot of nitrogen and other nutrients year after year in order to thrive and bear fruit. Oftentimes industrial farmers use synthetic nitrogen made from petroleum products to feed their soil, but this has led to pollution and other problems that if you're here, you're probably already aware of. But nitrogen can also be added to the soil through the use of plants. In the United States, crop rotation is a common practice with 82 to 94% of crops grown in some sort of rotation. Where I grew up in Indiana, it was common that a farmer would plant corn one year and soybeans another year because soybeans replenish the soil with the nitrogen that the corn used up. So using nitrogen fixing plants is a tried and true practice and we can leverage this same principle in our garden, but make it a lot less labor intensive by planting nitrogen fixing perennials. Here's how it works. Our atmosphere is 78% nitrogen and the rest is almost entirely oxygen and then there's roughly 1% made up of gases like argon, carbon dioxide, and methane. Certain plants like beans and clover but also some trees and shrubs such as acacia trees, ceanothus, or peppermint willows, which is what Brisa and I are planting. These plants have a symbiotic relationship with nitrogen fixing bacterium. These bacteria live in the nodules on the plant's roots and engage in a symbiotic relationship with the plant. The bacteria are often rhizobia and frankia but it depends on the type of plant. These bacteria convert atmospheric nitrogen into a form that the plant can use such as ammonia or nitrate. This process is called nitrogen fixation. The plant provides the bacteria with carbohydrates and other nutrients while the bacteria provide the plant with fixed nitrogen. But how does this benefit our food for us you may ask? While some cultures eat varieties of acacias and mesquite, most nitrogen fixing plants are not the tasty ones we see at the grocery store. But nitrogen fixing plants release nitrogen back into the soil which surrounding trees and crops that can't fix nitrogen for themselves can take advantage of. There are three ways this fixed nitrogen is released into the soil so that it can be utilized by other plants. Leaf fall, root turnover, and fungi. Let's first talk about leaf fall. The plant matter of nitrogen fixing plants like the leaves, stems, and flowers are high in nitrogen and thus they add nitrogen to the soil when they decompose. This is called decomposition transfer. So you can just let your leaves fall or you can chop and drop the stems when pruning your nitrogen fixing plant. It's best to prune before the plants go to seed. We're actually striving to prune them right before they flower but that's a topic for another video. The second form of nitrogen transfer is through root turnover which is now believed to release as much nitrogen as leaf litter. This happens when roots die back. Some of the really small roots die naturally seasonally but root dieback can also happen when a tree is pruned especially when pruned heavily as the tree then has less ability to photosynthesize and produce carbohydrates and the root system can die back a bit and again through decomposition transfer it becomes available in the soil for the other plants. The third and most interesting way of nitrogen transfer is through fungi. Fungi play a crucial role in facilitating the movement of nitrogen from nitrogen fixing trees to other plants such as your fruit tree through a process called mycorrhizal symbiosis. In a healthy garden ecosystem fungi play a crucial role in decomposing dead organic matter and recycling nutrients back into the soil. Some of this fungi is mycorrhizal fungi. These fungi colonize the root system of plants forming a network of fungal hyphae which is the thread-like structures that extend into the soil. The mycorrhizal fungi associated with nitrogen fixing trees can access and absorb some of this nitrogen from the roots. They then use their mycorrhizal network to transfer nutrients including nitrogen between different plant species. This is happening even over distances of many meters. This network is one reason why tilling is detrimental to your garden and why choosing perennial nitrogen fixing trees and shrubs is great because you only have one disruptive planting event and then you can enjoy the benefits of your tree fixing nitrogen for years and even decades to come as this mycorrhizal network becomes more robust and complex year after year. So if you're growing a lot of food in your food forest you need a lot of nitrogen and other nutrients in your soil to feed your hungry fruit trees and your hungry crops. Nitrogen fixing trees and shrubs can supply nitrogen to your entire garden without any excess effort or resources on your part and you can use them for multiple purposes such as attracting pollinators, shade, medicine, beauty, privacy, and wind breaks. If you'd like a list of nitrogen fixing plants that we use at Goldie Farms, I've included it in my plant list link below. In the description, I've also included a list of common nitrogen fixing plants that may work well where you live. Just always be careful to ensure that what you're planting is appropriate for your site as many nitrogen fixing plants are pioneer species and some species may be invasive in your area. For example, there are over 1,000 recognized species of acacia though some of which are invasive in California such as the silver wattle, the blackwood acacia, and the coastal wattle. So always do your own research before planting. Thank you so much for watching and subscribing and we'll see you next time at Goldie Farms. Looking to experience the magic and vitality of Goldie Farms? Give our best-selling skin cream Goldie Glow a try. Handcrafted from the calendula grown regeneratively at Goldie Farms, the most magical food forest on the central coast of California. Visit our Etsy shop to experience how Goldie Glow can nourish and fortify your skin while also contributing to regenerating the earth. Join us in finding love for yourself and the planet at Goldie Farms.