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

I've been obsessed with this subject for years now and needed a stocking stuffer for myself and figured I could maybe learn something from This book. It was fun, great read that really lays the food soil web out. Definitely a recommend

If you asked me to give you one book recommendation for gardening (beginner, intermediate, advance) I’d tell you to get, “Grow Your Soil.” It’s got everything you will need to have a successful garden. The methods in this book are tried and true. I was already doing some of the approaches mentioned in this book for building soil health before I purchased it. And let me tell you, it only confirmed those approaches. But I have learned so much more in this book. Very well written with great humor throughout. Diane had a great way of breaking things down (dumbing thighs down) for the reader. I was starting to get discouraged with composting and she helped lay things out so simply that it encouraged me to get out and start a new compost pile! I will be posting pictures of this new pile tomorrow, if everything goes as planned. Anyways, guys and gals, I am not being paid for marketing this book. It’s not a scam. Just trust me. BUY IT! Amazing work. Thanks for sharing it with the world! God bless you, Diane.

I lived across the street from the author for 5 years. Her gardens mesmerized and inspired me and I would often pick up ideas about what to plant where based on what was thriving in her garden. And everything was ALWAYS thriving. I had an acre across the street with better sun exposure than her public right of way garden, but somehow her peach trees were always dripping with fruit while mine had four measly peaches, her tulips made the sidewalks shimmer with color in the spring while mine struggled to bloom, and her cut flower gardens were a marvel of ingenuity and abundance while mine were nearly non-existent. I couldn’t ever figure out what I was doing wrong. Until I met Diane one day puttering around her garden. I watched her chopping her perennials and dropping pieces of them everywhere. Then I looked more closely and realized all her soil mulch was actually chopped up bits of plant prunings and weeds. I thought she was crazy when she told me to just drop it all down without too much worry about seeds or disease... I went home and started trying it... and within 6 months my garden went from sad to thriving. I have since taken a permaculture design course, and studied soil science- but honestly, Diane’s book offers more down to earth, applicable explanations of the soil food web and no-till gardening than most more technical books will. I think even master gardeners will find at least a few new tidbits of understanding in these pages. Plus, Diane’s voice is witty and funny and brilliant. I predict this will become an instant classic for homesteaders/gardeners!

First, I love this book! It is the most approachable gardening book I've ever read. Just the right amount of humor and technical information, with a healthy dose of "just try it, you're not going to break the world".My only issue with it is that some of the pages are printed on colored paper, and the chosen font colors on those pages can be difficult to read. Orange on orange is not a very readable combination, for example. Color can be fun, but in a book, readability is king.

This had a lot of visuals.The pictures helped me really remember the terms, which is what I really wanted.This is a great book to bring up to speed on soil science.Even a very curious 11 year old could read this book, but it is no way too simple.

Author distills information in an informative and humorous way that makes a book about Soil easy to read and understand

This comprehensive guide to enriching your soil reads like a beach book, thanks to the author's sense of humor and playful attitude. She says building good soil is like building a house, from the roof (mulch and cover crops) to the walls formed by organic matter and soil microbes that glom it all together into rich crumbles. I especially like her tips for building soil the lazy way while using everything your garden produces to regenerate the soil. For instance, instead of tossing weeds in a compost bin, why not pull them up and throw them down on the spot, adding an instant layer of green mulch that when layered with leaves and other brown stuff will turn into compost right there? Another tip: To sow cover crops, scatter seeds before you weed; then when you pull the weeds and shake the dirt from the roots it mixes the seeds into a bed of loosened soil. The chapters on composting and worm bins, soil nutrition, tools (a machete! cheap gardening socks! but never, ever a rototiller) and how to turn garden chores into puttering are both detailed and fun to read, and the list of references suggests that it's all deeply researched.

This may look like a simple book but the info has depth and importance to gardeners. It may require a second reading to retain some of the finer points. The author does repeat a few statistics a bit too much but guess I can ignore that for the overall important message of respecting soil since it does so much for nature.

Muito acima da média os aprendizados que estou tendo com a leitura desse livro, muita técnica e uma ótima forma de aprender o inglês também

Easy to read very good advice , although aimed at the US market

Packed with lots of knowledge and how to to get your soil healthy and stay healthy. Worth the read easy.