Teaming With Microbes - Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis

Teaming With Microbes
by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis

Published by Timber Press - February 2010 - Hardcover - 220pp - 24cm x 16cm

Healthy soil teems with life not just earthworms and insects, but a staggering multitude of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms. Chemical fertilizers injure the microbial life that sustains healthy plants, and the soil becomes increasingly dependent on artificial, often toxic, substances. But there is an alternative: by strengthening the soil food web the complex world of soil-dwelling organisms gardeners can create a nurturing environment for plants.

Teaming with Microbes extols the benefits of cultivating the soil food web. It clearly explains the activities and organisms that make up the web, and explains how gardeners can cultivate the life of the soil through the use of compost, mulches, and compost tea. With Jeff Lowenfels' help, everyone from devotees of organic gardening techniques to weekend gardeners who simply want to grow healthy, vigorous plants can create rich, nurturing, living soil.

'A breakthrough book. . . . well worth owning and reading. No comprehensive horticultural library should be without it.' — American Gardener.

Jeff Lowenfels is a well-respected and popular national garden writer. The former president of the Garden Writers of America, he was made a GWA Fellow in 1999. He is also the founder of Plant a Row for the Hungry, a program that advocates for food donation and has led to over a million pounds of produce being donated to the hungry every year. He currently resides in Anchorage, Alaska. He is the author of Teaming with Fungi and Teaming with Nutrients.