Grow Your Soil!: Harness the Power of the Soil Food Web to Create Your Best Garden Ever

by Diane Miessler, Elaine R. Ingham (Foreword by)

Overview

Growing awareness of the importance of soil health means that microbes are on the minds of even the most casual gardeners. After all, anyone who has ever attempted to plant a thriving patch of flowers or vegetables knows that what you grow is only as good as the soil you grow it in. It is possible to create and maintain rich, dark, crumbly soil that’s teeming with life, using very few inputs and a no-till, no-fertilizer approach. Certified permaculture designer and lifelong gardener Diane Miessler presents the science of soil health in an engaging, entertaining voice geared for the backyard grower. She shares the techniques she has used — including cover crops, constant mulching, and a simple-but-supercharged recipe for compost tea — to transform her own landscape from a roadside dump for broken asphalt to a garden that stops traffic, starting from the ground up.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781635862089
Publisher:	Storey Publishing, LLC
Publication date:	02/18/2020
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	295,834
File size:	12 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Diane Miessler is the author of Grow Your Soil! She is a certified permaculture designer, a soil science enthusiast, and a gardener with more than 50 years of experience. She has a monthly column in The Union, a newspaper that serves Nevada County, California.
Dr. Elaine Ingham discovered the soil food web nearly 4 decades ago and has been pioneering research ever since. Widely recognized as the world’s foremost soil biologist, she’s passionate about empowering ordinary people to bring the soils in their community back to life.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Elaine R. Ingham
Beauty, Magic & Tomatoes: Why I Garden, and How the Soil Food Web Helps
10 Suggestions for Creating Healthy, Living Soil
Making Soil: Building a "House"

1  The Skinny on Soil: What Makes Soil Good & How Does It Get That Way?
  What Is Soil?
  What Makes Good Soil Good?
  What Good Is Good Soil?
2  Building a House: Start with the Roof (Mulch & Cover Crops)
  Mulch
  Cover Crops
3  Build the Walls: Organic Matter & the Soil Food Web That Sticks It Together
  Soil Organic Matter
  The Soil Food Web: A Gardener's Best Friend
  Biodiversity 101: Microbes
  Biodiversity 102: Algae, Bugs, Worms, and More
4  Install Ventilation, Plumbing & a Nice Pantry: No-Till Growing, Paths & CEC
  Step Away from the Rototiller!
  Make Paths
  What Is CEC?
  How to Increase CEC
5  Feed the Inhabitants: Photosynthesis, Minerals & Soil Testing
  Photosynthesis: Empty but Necessary Calories
  Macronutrients & Micronutrients
  To Test or Not to Test
6  Compost and Compost Tea: It's Not Rocket Science
  Benefits and Tools
  Is It Compost or Is It Mulch?
  How to Build a Compost Pile
  Maintaining a Compost Pile: It Needs Your Love
  When Is It Done?
  Growing Pains
  Fungally or Bacterially Dominated?
  Worm Bins
  Frequently Asked Questions, Answered
  Compost Tea for a Non-Rocket Scientist with a Bucket
7  Where Do I Start? Building a Garden That Feeds Itself
  Step 1: Pick a Spot
  Step 2: Get Water to It
  Step 3: Decide where You'll Walk
  Step 4: Soften the Soil
  Step 5: Pull Stuff Up, Throw Stuff Down
  Step 6: Mulch
  Step 7: Plant Stuff
8  Housework & Home Repairs: How Not to Make Your Neighbors Hate You
  Maintenance = Mulch
  Putter, Don't Work

Glossary
Bibliography
Metric Conversions
Index
 
 

 

Editorial Reviews

01/20/2020

Miessler, a gardener and permaculture designer, provides fellow horticulturalists with a guide to the mostly hidden but essential world of soil in her valuable book. She begins with a general breakdown of soil’s components: 45% minerals, 20%–30% air, 20%–30% water, and 5%–10% organic matter. Then, using a house metaphor, the book explores in detail the last of these “building blocks”—organic matter. All healthy soil, she writes, needs a good “roof,” that is, mulch and cover crop. The house’s “walls” comprise the microbes, fungi, protozoa, and other organisms that live in the soil. “In your quest for good soil,” Miessler notes, “the most important thing you can do is always this: add organic matter.” Completing the house metaphor, the book culminates in a section called “Feed the Inhabitants,” highlighting ways to nourish plants through soil rich in sugars (through photosynthesis) and minerals (via manure and other sources of nitrogen, an essential nutrient for plants). Miessler’s exploration goes to a level of organic chemistry that may not suit casual dabblers, but the richness of knowledge in her erudite work will excite any serious backyard or commercial organic gardener. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly