Editorial Reviews
Review
“Useful and practical information on soil testing, natural and synthetic fertilizers, factors influencing availability of nutrients, and the importance of proper fertilizing.” —Pacific Horticulture
“Lowenfels offers everyone else a crash course in discovering soil structure, fertility, and microbial actions powerful enough to turn a dry wash into a productive source of clean, slow, organically grown food, without a single bag of potting soil.” —The Desert Sun
“Lowenfels offers a deeper understanding of the major and minor plant nutrients and delivers the necessary science in a conversational style that most gardeners will appreciate.” —The Monterey County Herald
“You’ll never garden the same old way again.” —Muskogee Phoenix
“Colorful illustrations, plentiful and readable diagrams, and a well-executed chapter structure make this an indispensable resource.” —Publishers Weekly
From the Author
Teaming With Nutrients…how plants eat and what to feed them. We all learn about cation exchange capacity, CEC, but that always ends up as a discussion of how the soil particle holds nutrients. It never really explains how plants actually take up nutrients, ie how they eat. And, what about these nutrients once they get inside the plant? What happens to them?
This second Teaming book is a trip that delves into the cellular biology of plants in the same way Teaming With Microbes was a book that starred microbiology. This is, at least to me, a fascinating voyage that requires some chemistry and botany, too, but stars cellular biology. Don’t worry, the learning is fun and fascinating and I make it easy. In the end you will know how plants eat and, of course, what to feed them. It is not all biology and botany. Teaming contains the practical advice you need feed your plants properly and organically.
Teaming with Nutrients should change the way you farm and garden, for sure, but hopefully you will never look at plants the same way again. You will appreciate the 18 trillion cells in an apple tree and know how they work. And it all happens with just 17 nutrients!
From the Back Cover
This revised edition updates the original text and includes two completely new chapters—on mycorrhizae (beneficial associations fungi form with green-leaved plants) and archaea (single-celled organisms once thought to be allied to bacteria).
About the Author
Jeff Lowenfels is America’s longest running, weekly garden columnist having written a column, every week since 1976, for the Anchorage Daily News. He is the founder of Plant a Row for The Hungry, a program that has created over 76 million meals to feed the hungry. A popular national garden writer and leading proponent of organic gardening using the concepts of the soil food web, Jeff is the former president of the Garden Writers of America, was made a GWA Fellow in 1999 and in 2005, was inducted into the GWA Hall of Fame. He lives in Anchorage, Alaska and Portland, Oregon. His first book, “Teaming With Microbes: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web” won the 2010 Gold Award for Best Book from the Garden Writers of America.
