JADAM / Korean farming - any experiences outside the tropics?

Hi, I am reading Cho's global Natural Farming (Korean natural farming KNF), and there are three JADAM books available on what I gather is the same subject.

As this method originated in the tropics, I am wondering if any of you have tried it in temperate regions? (I am in Switzerland) What can you replace ingredients with that cannot be had here (seawater, molasses...)?

My interest is in good soil for home gardening, and chicken husbandry.

Yes, I highly recommend Chris Trump.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCus0ZO165qzh6KPlULSzs4w[/youtube]


I am very big into natural farming but I am not certified or anything.  I have made for several years most of the inputs.  I do not know it on a large scale, mostly nice size gardens and I used to grow seedless tomato indoors.  I am making an information site for some of natural farming but is more hobby.  I has instructions on some of the inputs and about natural farming.  I hope it helps!
http://culturalhealingandlife.com.www413.your-server.de/index.php?/forum/28-natural-farming/

Susan Wakeman wrote:Hi, I am reading Cho's global Natural Farming (Korean natural farming KNF), and there are three JADAM books available on what I gather is the same subject.

As this method originated in the tropics, I am wondering if any of you have tried it in temperate regions? (I am in Switzerland) What can you replace ingredients with that cannot be had here (seawater, molasses...)?

My interest is in good soil for home gardening, and chicken husbandry.

Even in Switzerland you can get sea salt that has not been purified, with that product you can create your own sea water (1.5 cups to 4 L)
Even though many people recommend and use molasses, I don't simply because that is a sugar and I have plenty of ants already and I have better uses for molasses (rum).

The great thing about KNF is that you can substitute items to fit your particular soils needs.
The book Harry recommends is a super one.

Redhawk

Susan Wakeman wrote:Hi, I am reading Cho's global Natural Farming (Korean natural farming KNF), and there are three JADAM books available on what I gather is the same subject.

As this method originated in the tropics, I am wondering if any of you have tried it in temperate regions? (I am in Switzerland) What can you replace ingredients with that cannot be had here (seawater, molasses...)?

My interest is in good soil for home gardening, and chicken husbandry.

Brand new member here.  Been absorbing lots of good information on these forums for awhile now, but never had anything to contribute until now.  I wanted to say that JADAM did not originate in the tropics.  Korea is quite temperate, with cold snowy winters and hot summers, similar to most of the US and Europe.  

KNF is a technique taught by Han Kyu Cho.  Jadam is taught by his son.  KNF has roots in traditional east asian farming practices ... and there are a surprising number of things they got right despite most of modern soil science not having been discovered yet.  All the techniques are simple and accessible for the small scale gardener or farmer, eapecially if you substitute different but similar plants growing locally for the plants recommended by the method.

Jadam in my opinion is more pragmatic and less steeped in "ancient" or "wise" methods.  Youngsan Cho saw what his father was doing, saw that it worked amazingly well, and proceeded to re-examine it with a scientific eye.  He further simplified what was already a simple method.

One example of this ... KNF uses brown sugar in almost all its methods.  Jadam says it is not necessary.  The main practical difference is the KNF fermentations do not smell putrid.  For the home gardener this probably matters, but the plants themselves could care less.  When you are at farm scale though, Jadam will save you money by removing an unnecessary input.

As someone else mentioned, unprocessed sea salt mixed with water is practically the same thing as seawater.  In the mountains, you may have access to rock dust, which serves a similar purpose of providing trace minerals.

I have no connection to KNF or Jadam.  I have bought and read the orange Jadam book (also the first green one, but didn't find it had much to add that wasn't already covered in the orange one), and have read a fair amount on KNF, along with watching the excellent Chris Trump videos on youtube.  What I've written is simply my interpretation of the two methods.

Susan Wakeman wrote: What can you replace ingredients with that cannot be had here (seawater)

Hello Susan,
about seawater you only need non chlorinated water and sea salt. 20lt of sea water are 500gr of sea salt. The very fascinating thing for me it's the minerals content of the sea water is very similar to the mineral content of the amniotic liquid!

Ciao.
F.

Susan Wakeman wrote:Hi, I am reading Cho's global Natural Farming (Korean natural farming KNF), and there are three JADAM books available on what I gather is the same subject.

As this method originated in the tropics, I am wondering if any of you have tried it in temperate regions? (I am in Switzerland) What can you replace ingredients with that cannot be had here (seawater, molasses...)?

My interest is in good soil for home gardening, and chicken husbandry.

KNF was started by the father of the promoter of JADAM, so the two methods are very closely related (both work just fine in temperate zones like Korea, Japan, and the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc.)

The thing to keep track of for Switzerland would be state of fermentation (it needs to be at least at the sauerkraut stage and preferably around 2 weeks past that point).
You can make other additions but really the mineral base of your soils is probably just fine as is.
Most of your mountains are granite composition, which has more minerals available than a sandstone based soil system.
You can use any of the use methods in those books or you can add a step to add air so the anaerobic bacteria we don't really want (ciliates) are reduced in number prior to adding to the soil.
Spreading the fermented materials less than 4 cm thick not only gives you more coverage but also speeds up the incorporation into the surrounding soil so you actually see more benefits faster than if you just dug a hole and piled it in.
I've tried both ways and the trench and spread then cover back works best in my own area, try a few different styles of incorporation to determine what works best for your conditions.

Redhawk