The Secrets of Soil Building

The Secrets of Soil Building are practical how-to tips and practices, well-tested and evolved over years of experience in high-yielding community gardens and home gardens. Expained in straightforward, matter-of-fact style, these Secrets are easily accessible even if you are a newcomer to organic gardening. If you are a garden veteran working urban-scale vegetable gardens, particularly if you are growing year-round or nearly year-round, these are the Secrets that will boost your productivity and yields.

Reaching far beyond "no chemicals," this book considers localized inputs, the post-petroleum era, and what it takes to grow your own soil fertility. With this approach you can participate in soil sequestration -- carbon capture within live organic soils -- which cutting-edge soil science is now proving may be the cheapest, easiest, and largest-scale solution to global warming. The Secrets of Soil Building shows you how to build long-term resilience into your garden.

Author Joanne Poyourow runs a high-yield, charity-style community garden in Los Angeles, where vegetables are harvested every week of the year. The ultimate secrets, she says, are the "soil critters" -- the earthworms and the millions of soil organisms which work within organic soil to feed your plants. Take good care of those soil organisms, and you'll be an awesome gardener.