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The Ultimate Guide to Soil: The Real Dirt on Cultivating Crops, Compost, and a Healthier Home
Grow twice the fruits and vegetables in half the space on the farm, in the backyard, or in your window!
Have you noticed the extraordinary flavors and yields emanating from even a small garden when the soil is just right? If you’ve ever been envious of your neighbor’s dirt or just curious about homesteading, then The Ultimate Guide to Soil is perfect for you.
The book begins with a personality test for your soil, then uses that information to plan a course of action for revitalizing poor soil and turning good dirt into great earth. Next, you’ll learn to start and maintain a no-till garden, to balance nutrients with remineralization, and to boost organic matter with easy cover crops.
Don’t forget the encyclopedic overview of organic soil amendments at the end. Old standbys like manures and mulches are explained in depth along with less common additions such as bokashi compost and castings from worms and black soldier fly larvae. Learn when hugelkultur, biochar, paper, and cardboard do and don’t match your garden needs, then read about when and how to safely use urine and humanure around edible plantings.
With an emphasis on simple techniques suitable for the backyard gardener, The Ultimate Guide to Soil gives you the real dirt on good soil. Maybe next year your neighbor will be envious of you!
Have you noticed the extraordinary flavors and yields emanating from even a small garden when the soil is just right? If you’ve ever been envious of your neighbor’s dirt or just curious about homesteading, then The Ultimate Guide to Soil is perfect for you.
The book begins with a personality test for your soil, then uses that information to plan a course of action for revitalizing poor soil and turning good dirt into great earth. Next, you’ll learn to start and maintain a no-till garden, to balance nutrients with remineralization, and to boost organic matter with easy cover crops.
Don’t forget the encyclopedic overview of organic soil amendments at the end. Old standbys like manures and mulches are explained in depth along with less common additions such as bokashi compost and castings from worms and black soldier fly larvae. Learn when hugelkultur, biochar, paper, and cardboard do and don’t match your garden needs, then read about when and how to safely use urine and humanure around edible plantings.
With an emphasis on simple techniques suitable for the backyard gardener, The Ultimate Guide to Soil gives you the real dirt on good soil. Maybe next year your neighbor will be envious of you!
296 pages, Paperback
First published July 5, 2016
127 people are currently reading
487 people want to read
About the author
Anna Hess
53 books111 followersAnna Hess dreamed about moving back to the land ever since her parents dragged her off their family farm at the age of eight. She worked as a field biologist and nonprofit organizer before acquiring fifty-eight acres and a husband, then quit her job to homestead full time. She admits that real farm life involves a lot more hard work than her childhood memories entailed, but the reality is much more fulfilling and she loves pigging out on sun-warmed strawberries and experimenting with no-till gardening, mushroom propagation, and chicken pasturing.
She also enjoys writing about the adventures, both on her blog at WaldenEffect.org, and in her books. Her first paperback, The Weekend Homesteader, helped thousands of homesteaders-to-be find ways to fit their dreams into the hours leftover from a full-time job. The Naturally Bug-Free garden, which suggests permaculture techniques of controlling pest invertebrates in the vegetable garden, is due out in spring 2015 from Skyhorse Publishing. In addition, a heaping handful of ebooks serve a similar purpose.
(As a side note, I use Goodreads more as a personal way of keeping track of the books I read than as a way to share the books I write. If you're here to learn about me as an author, check out my gardening-homesteading shelf and ignore all the fluff. You can also drop by www.wetknee.com for my authorial musings.)
She also enjoys writing about the adventures, both on her blog at WaldenEffect.org, and in her books. Her first paperback, The Weekend Homesteader, helped thousands of homesteaders-to-be find ways to fit their dreams into the hours leftover from a full-time job. The Naturally Bug-Free garden, which suggests permaculture techniques of controlling pest invertebrates in the vegetable garden, is due out in spring 2015 from Skyhorse Publishing. In addition, a heaping handful of ebooks serve a similar purpose.
(As a side note, I use Goodreads more as a personal way of keeping track of the books I read than as a way to share the books I write. If you're here to learn about me as an author, check out my gardening-homesteading shelf and ignore all the fluff. You can also drop by www.wetknee.com for my authorial musings.)
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
June 27, 2019
Easy read about soil with science you can understand! Book covers the whole gamut of soil and soil amending. A little heavy on large gardens but recognizing most gardens are larger than mine!
July 15, 2016
A must read!
One of the best books I have ever read on soil building basics and no-till gardening . I have read this as an ebook because the hardcopy is not yet available. I plan to buy several books to give as gifts, especially at Xmas
One of the best books I have ever read on soil building basics and no-till gardening . I have read this as an ebook because the hardcopy is not yet available. I plan to buy several books to give as gifts, especially at Xmas
December 15, 2020
I enjoyed reading The Ultimate Guide to Soil. Anna Hess did a good job of making a lot of information easily understandable for anyone's expertise level. I learned a lot and was happy to see suggestions of other books to continue to learn more.
The only constructive criticism that I would offer is that I think the photographs could use more attention and time, there were many that you could not interpret what was being showed even when the subject matter was explained. Direction of light, framing the subject matter clearly, and making sure that the photograph is properly metered (so its not blown out or lost in shadow) can make huge improvements!
The only constructive criticism that I would offer is that I think the photographs could use more attention and time, there were many that you could not interpret what was being showed even when the subject matter was explained. Direction of light, framing the subject matter clearly, and making sure that the photograph is properly metered (so its not blown out or lost in shadow) can make huge improvements!
August 5, 2017
More than I ever thought I would EVER want to learn about soil and the science behind gardening. Took awhile to get through it and I know that I will have to re-read it a few times to absorb the MASSIVE amount of information that is in this book.
THANK YOU SO MUCH ANNA HESS! When I pick a subject to learn more about, I like to imerse myself in the subject so that I become more than just a novice with the bare minimum of knowledge, and the illusion that I know my A$$ from my elbow on said subject. I am now closer to my goal in your area of expertise, so again thank you much!
THANK YOU SO MUCH ANNA HESS! When I pick a subject to learn more about, I like to imerse myself in the subject so that I become more than just a novice with the bare minimum of knowledge, and the illusion that I know my A$$ from my elbow on said subject. I am now closer to my goal in your area of expertise, so again thank you much!
May 14, 2018
Pretty informative book on soil, how to care for it, and a variety of options to improve it. If you own a garden or are even thinking of growing food for consumption this is a pretty good 101 course level text that can get you thinking in the right direction. Personally its already given me loads of ideas on how to improve my own garden patch that I'm eager to put to use. So darn helpful she even suggests further reading if you're extra interested in a subject.
October 1, 2017
Super helpful for starting my compost journey!
November 15, 2019
Highly recommend purchasing this one for your shelf.
June 21, 2022
Not for me. This book taught me that the key to healthy soil is lots and lots of inputs, and a husband who is willing to do all of the heavy lifting for you.
July 21, 2023
I believe this would be a good book for me to look at.
October 3, 2020
Reading as a reference. Needed to return to kindle. Informative. Readable. Good advice.
March 8, 2016
Not everyone is able to throw themselves wholeheartedly into small-scale farming. Ms. Hess is one of the few who has gone ahead and learned, through experience, what we readers can now learn from our armchairs. Here in this book, without painfully going through several of the same time-consuming experiments in order to find out what might possibly work, we can benefit from the end results of her multi-year observations. Not to say that all of the information in this book is applicable to all situations, but no matter what type or quality your soil is, you can get a general idea of what may work well in your area, and why. Then, continue on with the grand experiment that gardening is – try something, if it works, great; if it doesn't work, try something else. This book is an excellent springboard for whatever your gardening goals may be.
February 7, 2017
well organized, good info, and conversational writing style. she almost seems to catch you when she realizes you may be skimming a section.
April 10, 2017
Really enjoyed this. The whole book is written in the chatty style of a blog, and it has plenty of colour photos.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews