Everyone is concerned about issues of animal welfare, transparency from our corporations and food safety. Whether you are vegan or not, these concerns are real and the issues surrounding them have a big impact on our lives.

From my many years teaching organic vegetable gardening and installing and maintaining hundreds of gardens I have become to feel uneasy about the amount of animal products that go into organic fertilizers and amendments and soils. And I’ve registered the shock on students’ and clients’ faces when I explain what their organic vegetables are grown in.

I wanted to create an alternative, animal-free fertilizer and have done so for my circle of clients for years. But now I want to make it available to all peoples in garden centers all over the country.

Organic vegetable gardening should not be reliant on the by-products of slaughterhouses and factory farms. There are alternatives that are sustainable, ethical, safe and healthy. Vegetables should not be meat-based. Plants should be plant-based. Fertilizers should be made from plants.

Romaine does not get E. coli by itself. It gets it from animal crap being put on it as a fertilizer. Organic vegetable gardening should not live downstream from polluting killing yards. Once you know, it’s hard to look at a bag of organic vegetable fertilizer the same way again. Even the gold standard for organic gardening, OMRI, allows the use of blood, bone, skin, urine, carcases and all manner of crap in their OMRI-approved soils and fertilizers.

There’s a better way.

I hope to make these plant-based products available to home gardeners everywhere and for all their gardening needs! Not just vegetable gardening, but for your roses and azaleas and fruit trees and grasses and indoor plants. And in dry fertilizers, liquid fertilizers, composts, soil amendments and soils. Eventually Plant-based Plants™ can release its own line of plant-based seedlings as well. Then we can hopefully influence agriculture at large and set a new standard for animal-free fertilizing.

This is the beginning of this journey. Plant-Based Plants LLC is continuing research and development and hope to have our products available next year. If you would like more information, please email yourhopegarden@gmail.com.