Leisha I am deep into writing a new book, Plant & Kitchen Alchemy, and it is will become the foundation for the student manual and teaching material for our upcoming Plant & Kitchen Alchemy workshop at Living Ground. The next workshop will be held November 7–13, 2026, here in southern Ecuador, and the deeper I go into the research, the more excited I become about what we are going to explore together.
This workshop moves between the garden and the kitchen because I do not believe we can understand food by beginning with a recipe. We will work with living soil, plants, microbes, sprouting, fermentation, herbal preparations and the transformations that take place before food ever reaches our digestive system. You can read the full workshop information here: Plant & Kitchen Alchemy: Food, Medicine & Microbes
While writing the book, a story about sauerkraut started circulating online. Several people sent it to me because they knew immediately that it was exactly the kind of story I would want to investigate. Apparently, a commercial producer had lost around a million dollars when organic cabbage turned soft and mushy during fermentation, the problem was traced back to the way the cabbage had been grown, and sauerkraut juice was later used in experiments to help restore the affected soil.
It sounded almost too perfect. Soil, mineral nutrition, microbes, cabbage and fermentation were all tangled together in one story, so I went looking for the actual research to find out how much of the viral version was true.
I found the paper, published in HortScience in 2024, with the wonderful title “Saga of Soggy Sauerkraut.” The basic story was real, but the research behind it was far more interesting than the shortened version being passed around.
A Million Dollars of Soggy Sauerkraut
In 2022, a commercial producer in Wisconsin lost approximately one million dollars worth of organic sauerkraut because some of the cabbage became extremely soft during fermentation. The harvested cabbage could be processed normally, yet the finished ferment did not behave normally.
The researchers first looked at the obvious possibilities. They compared salts and fermentation conditions, trying to understand why some batches remained crisp while others lost their structure. Those differences did not explain the problem, so the investigation moved back toward the cabbage itself.
Mineral analysis revealed deficiencies and imbalances involving iron, copper, manganese, boron and zinc. Several of these minerals are involved in the enzymes, tissues and structural processes a plant uses while building itself.
That caught my attention because the cabbage had still managed to become a cabbage. It grew, formed a head, was harvested and entered the food system, yet something about the internal quality of those tissues was different enough that fermentation exposed the weakness.
The Ferment Revealed What We Could Not See
We judge food heavily through appearance. We like the large cabbage, the red tomato, the perfect carrot and the bright green lettuce, and it is very easy to assume that a plant has everything it needs because it looks good.
The inside of a plant carries far more information than we can see from the outside. While cabbage leaves are developing, minerals are being incorporated into enzymes, proteins, cell walls and many other structures. The strength and chemistry of those tissues are being established while the plant is still rooted in the field.
By harvest time, much of that work is complete. Fermentation can transform those tissues, but it cannot go back and rebuild the cabbage that grew in the field. That is what I find so interesting about this study. The fermentation did not create the original problem. It revealed something that had already happened while the cabbage was growing. The microbes in the ferment received the plant exactly as it had been built.
The Story Went Back to the Manure
The researchers kept following the trail and eventually examined the agricultural inputs being used on the organic cabbage fields. The paper reports glyphosate residues in poultry manure used on the fields, with the source traced to conventionally raised poultry feed.
The authors connected those residues with disruption of micro nutrient availability and the deficiencies they found in the cabbage. Whatever we think about the larger agricultural debate around glyphosate, the interesting lesson here is that the history of an agricultural input can continue traveling through the system.
Manure has a history. Compost has a history. Plant residues have a history. What we return to the soil has already been through other biological and chemical processes before it reaches the root zone. I think about this constantly when working with living soil. Adding organic material is not enough for me. I want to know what it is, where it came from and what happened to it before it arrived.
Then They Took Sauerkraut Back to the Soil
The research became even more interesting when the team began experimenting with biological approaches to the affected soil. One of the materials they tested was raw sauerkraut juice from the fermentation process.
The liquid carried living fermentative microbes, and the researchers used it in field trials along with other microbial treatments. They reported reductions in measured soil glyphosate residues over time, improvements in mineral availability and changes in subsequent crop performance.
I love the circularity of that. The field grew the cabbage, the cabbage entered fermentation, the fermentation produced a microbial liquid, and that liquid was taken back to the field as part of an attempt to restore biological function in the soil.
Agriculture, fermentation and microbial ecology suddenly stop looking like separate subjects. They are different parts of the same living conversation.
This Is Plant & Kitchen Alchemy
The timing of this study could hardly have been better for me because I had been writing about this exact connection.
The first part of Plant & Kitchen Alchemy begins underground with roots, microbes, the soil food web, compost and humus. I wanted to understand what happens before we ever bring a plant into the kitchen, because the quality of our food has already been shaped by an enormous amount of biology before we pick it.
One passage from the new book says:
“A plant does not arrive in our hands as an isolated thing. Its color, flavor, aroma, strength and chemistry have all been shaped by what happened around its roots, by the microbes that lived there, the fungal networks that moved through the soil, the minerals that became available, the water that carried dissolved compounds and the carbon the plant itself sent back below ground.”
The sauerkraut research gave me a commercial-scale example of that idea. The field was still present inside the ferment. The cabbage carried its mineral history into the vat, and the microbial community working on that cabbage encountered the tissues the soil had helped create.
Sauerkraut Is Much More Than a Recipe
Sauerkraut looks wonderfully simple when we make it at home. We shred cabbage, add salt, work the cabbage until the juices begin to appear, pack it beneath its own brine and allow the microbes to begin their work.
Inside the jar, conditions change continually. Plant sugars become microbial food, organic acids accumulate, the pH changes and different microbial populations become more or less active as the fermentation progresses. Texture, aroma and flavor develop while raw cabbage becomes something distinctly different.
I have always loved that transformation, yet the soggy sauerkraut story pushes the beginning much farther back. Before we shredded the cabbage, the plant had to build those leaves. Before the leaves existed, its roots were exploring soil, interacting with microorganisms and taking in water and minerals. The plant was assembling sugars, fibers, pigments, amino acids and cell-wall structures long before a knife touched it.
Fermentation continues the transformation. It does not begin it.
What Are We Giving the Microbes?
We talk a great deal about salt percentages, fermentation temperature, vessels, brine and timing. All of those things matter, and understanding them makes us much better fermenters.
I want to add another question: what quality of plant are we putting into the jar? A fermenting microbial community can only work with what we give it. A cabbage grown with strong mineral nutrition and healthy tissue development is not necessarily the same raw material as a cabbage that reached harvest while struggling with important micro nutrients.
That difference may not always be obvious while standing in the garden. The sauerkraut study reminds us that the plant can carry information that our eyes miss.
Why the Workshop Begins in the Garden
This is exactly why Plant & Kitchen Alchemy is not simply a fermentation or cooking workshop. We will make sauerkraut and other ferments, but I want participants to understand what happened before the cabbage entered the jar. We will look at living soil, plant quality, microbial relationships, sprouting and the biological transformations we can continue in the kitchen.
The upcoming workshop runs November 7–13, 2026, at Living Ground in southern Ecuador. The new book is growing alongside it, and the research I am doing for the book is becoming part of the deeper teaching material for the workshop.
You can find the details here: Plant & Kitchen Alchemy: Food, Medicine & Microbes
I want people to leave understanding processes, not merely collecting recipes. If you understand what salt is doing, why the cabbage stays beneath the brine, what the microbes are eating, how temperature changes the environment and why the quality of the cabbage matters, you can begin thinking like a fermenter. The same applies in the garden. When we understand the biology around a root, we start asking very different questions about the food we are growing.
My Sauerkraut Jar Looks Different Now
I have watched a lot of cabbage bubbling beneath brine, yet this study added another layer to what I see. I still see the fermentation happening in front of me, but I also see what came before it. I think about the roots that built those leaves, the minerals available while the plant was growing, the microbial community surrounding those roots and the organic material feeding that soil.
Then my attention comes back to the jar, where another microbial community has inherited everything the cabbage brought with it.
That is what I found after so many people sent me the viral story. I went looking to see whether it was true and found something much richer underneath it. The million-dollar sauerkraut loss was real, the mineral problems were real, the investigation traveled back into the agricultural system, and raw sauerkraut juice really did become part of the soil experiments that followed.
The research did not make me want to change my sauerkraut recipe. It made me want to understand the cabbage much better, and that may be the more important lesson. If we want extraordinary food, perhaps we need to start much earlier than the kitchen.
Research
Harle, D., McNeill, M. J., Huber, D. M., Maney, M., Cano, R. J., & Carlin, M. (2024). “Saga of Soggy Sauerkraut.” HortScience, 59(11), 1618–1628. https://doi.org/10.21273/HORTSCI18041-24
