Comprehensive NFT Listing

What are NFT’s?

NFT stands for Nitrogen Fixing Trees, which are not specifically limited to only trees, but rather includes annuals, shrubs, food trees and wilderness trees. These plants will pull nitrogen from their environment and transfer it down into their root system where it is then distributed into the soil. Nitrogen is a requirement for plants to grow and is one of the keys to a strong root system for many edible crops.

Unfortunately, our agriculture system tends to use a method of growing that depletes soil of its nitrogen, due to monocropping the same plants over and over again. It’s a vicious cycle that doesn’t replace natural nitrogen, but rather saturates the soil in something made in a lab. There are a few farmers who monocrop that are now seeing the benefits of rotating nitrogen fixing plants within their main crops. And with the ever-mysterious explosions, fires and train derailments involving fertilizer shipments, we need to work with nature not against it.

Nitrogen Fixing Plants:

• Black Locust
• Mimosa
• Alder
• Redbud
• Autumn Olive
• Kentucky Coffee Tree
• Golden Chain Tree
• Acacia
• Mesquite
• Alfalfa
• Clover
• Green Beans
• Annual Peas
• Peanuts
• Soybean
• Perennial Pigeon Peas
• Sea Buckthorn
• Ceanothus
• Russian Olive
• Goumi Berry
• Elaeagnus
• Gorse
• Spanish Broom
• American Bayberry
• Buffalo Berry
• Mountain Mahogany
• Mountain Misery
• Cliff Rose
• Everlasting Sweet Pea
• Wood Vetch
• American Vetch
• Tufted Vetch
• Licorice
• Lupins
• Honey Locust
• Mexican Sunflower
• Foxglove
• Sea Berry
• Siberian Pea

A word of caution with using nitrogen fixing plants, more does NOT equal better for your garden as you can certainly get to a place where you have too much nitrogen in one location. The standard formula to planting nitrogen fixers seems to be for every third perennial, make the fourth a nitrogen fixing shrub, food or wilderness tree. If you are using annual nitrogen fixers, you will need to actually till them into your soil so that the nitrogen from the pods (where nitrogen accumulates), actually get placed into the soil during decomposition.