Leisha September 23, 2026 | Living Ground Project, Ecuador
Whew! What a marathon. My Plant & Kitchen Alchemy book is finally finished, uploaded to Amazon and waiting to be published. After months of writing, experimenting, editing, illustrating and wrestling with page numbers, indexes, formatting and Amazon’s publishing requirements, I can hardly believe I am putting this one down. It has been an enormous undertaking, but also an opportunity to bring together so much of what I have learned and experienced throughout my life.
There is something quite wonderful about reaching the end of a project like this and looking back at everything that found its way into it. Many of the subjects I have spent decades exploring, sometimes separately and sometimes together, now belong to one much larger story.
Bringing decades of work together
Two of my earlier books became important foundations for this one. The Inner Garden explores the human microbiome, while The Soil Microbiome: Field Guide: Learning to Garden with Microbes for Soil, Plants, and People takes us beneath our feet into the incredible biology of living soil.
Over the years, I have also written more than 50 eBooks on fermentation, sprouting, medicinal vinegars, herbal tonics, food preservation, plant medicine and all kinds of kitchen experiments. Much of that knowledge has found its way into Plant & Kitchen Alchemy, along with new research, discoveries and practical experience gained through my work with projects, clients, plants and microbes.
The finished book is 604 pages, with more than 80 recipes, illustrations, science, personal experience and my tried-and-tested food-as-medicine preparations. It begins with the soil food web, travels into the extraordinary chemistry of plants, follows the harvest into the kitchen and explores the transformations that happen through sprouting, cooking, fermentation, culturing and preservation. We then follow our food into the human body, where another enormous microbial community continues the work.
I have included my practical approaches to digestive nourishment and food tolerance, exploring the intestinal environment and the conditions that support our microbiome. There are nourishing broths, herbal preparations, fermented foods, medicinal vinegars, oxymels, cultured dairy, medicinal chocolate and plenty of opportunities to experiment with the plants and foods growing around us.
The living connection that brought it all together
What has fascinated me throughout this process is how closely these subjects are connected. The soil food web, the plants growing above it, the microbes transforming food in our kitchens and the microbial communities living inside our bodies are all part of an incredible living story.
The microscope opened an entirely new world for me when I began studying soil biology. Suddenly, the relationships I had spent years exploring in human health began appearing beneath the roots of my plants. Habitat, nourishment, microbial diversity, nutrient cycling and the conditions that support living communities were just as important in the garden as they were in my work with the human microbiome.
That understanding changed the way I gardened, prepared food, worked with medicinal plants and approached health. It also changed the way I looked at the ordinary things happening around me. A fermenting jar of sauerkraut, a sprouting seed, a piece of dark compost and the food on our plates all became opportunities to explore how life continually transforms itself.
We are nature. Our bodies belong to the same living world as the soil, the plants, the fungi and the countless microorganisms that make life possible. The connections are far too important to remain separated into subjects such as gardening, nutrition, herbal medicine and human health. Plant & Kitchen Alchemy grew from wanting to bring those relationships together and make them useful in our daily lives.
A book grown at Living Ground
This book has come directly out of our Living Ground Project in the mountains of southern Ecuador. Our gardens, kitchen, apothecary, microbe laboratory and café provide a wonderful environment for experimentation, and many of the recipes are preparations we actually make, use and share.
There have been fascinating discoveries, experiments that didn’t quite go as planned and countless hours spent following another microbial or botanical rabbit hole. A plant growing beside the path may end up in a salad, a medicinal vinegar, an herbal preparation or a ferment. Something happening in the kitchen may send me back to the microscope, while an observation in the garden may open another question about the human microbiome.
I wanted the book to share that process of discovery, giving readers enough understanding to begin experimenting with the plants and foods available to them. The recipes are there to be made, adapted and explored, while the science helps explain what is happening during each transformation.
The digital edition is now available
The complete 604-page illustrated digital book is available directly through Living Ground. The paperback has been submitted to Amazon, where publication may take up to 72 hours.
Now it’s time to bring the book to life!
And now I get to close the manuscript, leave the computer for a little while and return to the gardens and kitchen. Our next Plant & Kitchen Alchemy workshop is November 8–13, and there is a great deal to prepare. We have only four spaces remaining for this workshop, which will be held here at Living Ground in southern Ecuador. It will be wonderful to take everything I have been writing about and share it through practical, hands-on learning.
We’ll be growing and harvesting plants, exploring the soil food web, sprouting, fermenting, preparing medicinal foods, making herbal preparations and discovering what microbes are doing under the microscope. Our gardens, apothecary, kitchen and café will become our classrooms, allowing us to follow plants from living soil into the foods and medicines we prepare.
I’m particularly looking forward to sharing the connection between the soil and human microbiome through practical experiences. Understanding fermentation becomes much more interesting when your hands are in the jar, and soil biology takes on an entirely different meaning when you can actually see the organisms participating in it.
After spending so many months writing about all of this, I’m looking forward to getting my hands back into other projects and preparing to share the experience with our next group of participants.
You can explore the Plant & Kitchen Alchemy workshop and reserve your place here . Four spots left!
Thank you to everyone who has followed Living Ground, shared in our experiments, participated in our workshops and encouraged this work. The book represents a tremendous amount of learning, curiosity and practical experience, and I hope it encourages others to explore the extraordinary living world we are all part of.
Onward to the next alchemy adventure!
Leisha
