What I'm actively doing to replenish nutrients without commercial fertilizers
I'm assuming everyone here is up to speed with the middle east conflict and the world wide fertilizer shortages and food prices.
I want to share some tips and strategies that you may not know about and why they are important.
I assume most people that are heavy into gardening are doing some level of composting not only for their gardens but also keep trash to a minimum.
With that baseline what people may not know is composting and other nutrient recycling only goes so far.
Every time you harvest from your yard or garden you're causing a net loss over time of nutrients in your soil. Even if you use organic fertilizers.
Unless you have new inputs you will eventually get less and less production over time.
It's important to do all of this to minimize the need for new inputs organic or otherwise.
Some things I have actively done with my grow space and some that are work in progress.
Manures: these can be used as inputs if you have a vegetarian loving animal such as guinea pigs, rabbits etc.
Beach collections: these can give you good amounts for trace minerals as well as phosphorus and potassium depending on the items collected.
Check local rules you don't want to go to a state or national park and harvest live sea weed. I live within 2 hours of a beach and go once in awhile to collect the dried sea weed in buckets washed ashore, dead sand dollars as well as sea shells on the beach. All of those can be processed at home fairly easily and tossed into beds or in compost.
Fire pit: if you have access to hard wood you can burn it and use the ash to add potassium.
Volcanic and basalt decorative rocks: these are extremely good for releasing stored potassium, phosphorus and trace minerals back into the soil where they are placed. they're available at big box stores.
for these even if you buy one bag of each and put them in a small spot in your soil. you can actively mix that soil over time with compost and then spread that mix when and where it is needed. these are very good 'charge batteries' for replacing nutrients. they will slowly release the nutrients and minerals as it rains and keep long term reserves healthy for the rest of your space if you actively dig in the run off areas and under them.
There are many other ways to replenish your soil and many more ways besides veggie scraps and cardboard to recycle those nutrients for years.
Just trying to spread awareness around what we can individually do to replenish nutrients to our setups without commercial fertilizers.
Some of this depends on what you need for your soil, your climate and what you have access to.