Great Winter Leisure Reading: Fascinating Book on Soil

Teaming with Microbes – A Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web
By Jeff Lowenfels & Wayne Lewis Timber Press 2006 $24.95 US

Ninety-five percent of your success or failure as a gardener relates to your soil. Soil is to gardening as water is to fishing—the amount of fun you’re going to have on the weekend depends on what’s living in the medium. Here, at last, is one book that gives gardeners an advanced understanding of the astonishing, magical world of sex, violence, sharing, peace, joy, community building, treaties, treachery, life and death that takes place underfoot across every square inch of your garden.

Healthy soil—soil that will do more to keep your annuals, perennials, trees and shrubs stress- and disease-free and flourishing than every fertilizer, fungicide and pesticide on the shelves of the grandest garden center—is teaming with life. Macroorganisms, such as earthworms and insects, combine with a staggering multitude of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms that have as big a say in how well your plants grow as do you.

The term “soil food web” refers to the interaction of these organisms, which feed on one another and in so doing provide an environment in which plants grow and prosper—particularly if you do your part. As the book points out, when we use synthetic chemical fertilizers, we injure the microbial life that sustains healthy plants, and thus begins the cycle of reliance on an arsenal of artificial, synthetic substances. After conveying a thorough understanding of the workings of the soil food web, Part 2 of the book explains how to foster and cultivate the life of the soil through the use of compost, mulches, and compost teas.

Why we need to create and maintain healthy soil, and how to do it, is what this book teaches. Rather than reading like a university textbook, however, the authors eschew horticultural geek jargon and overly technical language. Wonderfully written in straightforward, friendly prose, this book conveyed to me more useful gardening advice in the first half-hour reading than the university soil science class I took in the ‘90s.

Some of this may be due to the fact that it is only very recently that a more advanced understanding of the science of soil has come to light. All the newest research and advice is in these pages. But the soul of the book captures much more than the workings of soil. Teaming with Microbes is thought provoking and forward reaching; the authors (each a longtime gardener and esteemed garden writer) are setting forth a bold new vision of how we must view our gardening habits from this day forward. I predict this book will become a mainstay of college horticultural programs around the world.

Click on the Table of Contents page for a thorough review of content. The title of the final chapter—No One Ever Fertilized an Old Growth Forest—gives an inkling of what’s in store.

This is the book that shows us how we all should garden, for the benefit of ourselves, our fellow creatures and the entire planet. Highest recommendation.

The Renegade Gardener’s Soul Sister Web Site

In the earlier days of establishing this site I would on occasion receive an e-mail from a woman in Seattle, or a man in Philadelphia, asking if I knew of other sites in different zones that delivered the same brand of stripped-down, non-pandering, gut-honest horticultural heresy as the originator, good ol’ RenegadeGardener.com.

And I would answer, in all honesty, no.

I can’t do that anymore. I’ve become far too big a fan of the best gardening blog on the planet to not give it an appreciative and congratulatory nod. If you want to have your faith in gardening restored, your curiosity piqued, your instincts rewarded, and, when necessary, your hand slapped, start hanging out at www.gardenrant.com.

The botanical bastard lovechild of four deliciously filthy female gardeners (each an established and splendid writer), Rant is a snoot full of hoot. Be sure to check out the site’s Manifesto scrolled down the left column; Renegade Gardeners should sense immediate kinship.

Michele Owens (New York), Susan Harris (Washington, D.C.), Elizabeth Licata (New York) and Amy Stewart (California, and author of the current New York Times bestseller, Flower Confidential) chime in from their home states and elsewhere, covering and commenting on virtually every facet of our grand and peaceful passion.

Keep in mind, it’s a blog—you can interact with the beast—so for readers unfamiliar with blogsites, look for the simple instructions showing how to register for a blog account (free), enabling you to add your own fuel to the fire.

Terrific Mail Order Perennial Nursery
Ambergate Gardens

Their 2007 catalog just arrived in my mail, and flipping through it immediately as I always do I was again reminded of the amazing selection of “Distinctive Perennial Flowers” contained within its pages. Sometimes I forget that not all visitors to this site live nearby a good specialty perennial nursery. Ambergate’s catalog certainly makes up for that.

Established in 1985, Ambergate Gardens has grown into one of those specialty nurseries appreciated by gardeners “in the know.” Their selection of perennials is not gargantuan, but if it’s in the catalog, two things are known: First, it’s a perennial worthy of space in your garden. Second, when your plants arrive, you will be impressed by their size and vigor. Ambergate ships all their plants “bare root,” in sealed plastic bags with damp peat moss, as mail-order perennials should be sold and shipped.

You’ll find plenty of wonderful perennials for sunny sites, a deep selection of shade plants and a fine selection of grasses. And I don’t mean to imply that every perennial in the catalog is hugely esoteric—you’ll recognize many solid, widely grown, standard plants. But you’ll also find amazing perennials such as Senna hebecarpa (Wild Senna, a ravishing late-summer bloomer that will hit six feet tall), Kirengeshoma palmata (Yellow Waxbells, a Japanese woodland native that stuns in shade) and Lysimachia ciliata ‘Firecracker’, a red-leaved fringed loosestrife that will never be found at your standard garden center.

Lysimachia ciliata ‘Firecracker’

One of their specialties is Martagon Lilies, and if you’ve never grown Martigons, get on with it. This shade and part-shade species of genus Lilium is not widely known or grown by American gardeners, but buy a half dozen bulbs and you’ll soon see why they are touted in the Ambergate catalog.

Proprietor Mike Heger (co-author of the unsurpassed Zone 2-5 perennial book, Growing Perennials in Cold Climates) is a noted plantsman, lecturer and author. Assisted by his wife Jean, Mike grows and knows everything he sells, in his Minnesota fields and gardens, to make sure that a new variety of perennial that has caught his eye isn’t some over-hyped flash in the pan.

Ambergate ships healthy, hearty perennials to healthy, happy gardeners across 48 states and Canada. To order their bare root catalog, visit www.ambergategardens.com. Their growing range and retail nursery, where they sell their perennials in containers, is located near Victoria, Minnesota, just west of Minneapolis. Visit the site for directions and hours.

Heavy Duty Garden Hose Reel
Triton Rapid Reel

Tired of those cheap, awkward, infuriating, plastic hose reel systems that you are forced to buy, because there is no alternative? They should be advertised as disposable, because they are. You buy one in the spring and throw it away at the end of the season. They appear to be manufactured by Playskool.

A very good, family owned business in Lincoln, Nebraska named Eley Corporation has brought to market a series of high quality garden hose reels made with heavy-duty aluminum, stainless steel and brass components. There are two wall-mount models, plus large reels mounted on two-wheel and four-wheel carts.

Good design is evidenced throughout. The wall-mount plates feature holes drilled for standard sixteen-inch stud walls, the carts feature ten-inch, pneumatic tires, and all reels incorporate a unique braking system, brass fittings, and leak-proof design.

The Renegade Gardener always endorses well-designed, high quality products that replace anything made of plastic. To learn more, visit www.rapidreel.com

Top Pick will be updated December 1.

Handy Moisture Indicator Gizmo
Thirsty Light™

What a great little gadget, and perfect stocking stuffer for that garden goon in your life. The Thirsty Light Digital™ moisture sensor continuously monitors the moisture level of a potted plant. Featuring drypoint digital circuit technology, you simply slip the small, slender gizmo into the soil of a potted houseplant, and when it starts to blink, you know the plant is getting dry.

Except I hate houseplants, of course, and don’t grow them. My problem with houseplants is they’re needy. So when I asked the manufacturer why a fellow couldn’t use it outside in the garden, as a quickly-check-this-bed, quickly-check-that-bed moisture indicator, they replied of course, botanical gardens, landscapers, and gardeners slip one into the back pocket and use it anytime they want an accurate read on soil moisture around this or that plant.

So I got one and I love it. I used to own an antiquated implement with long double prongs and an arrow gauge that was some form of moisture indicator, except it wasn’t very accurate. The Thirsty Light checks soil moisture once per second, discerns five moisture levels, and then blinks to tell you what it’s found. No blink means ample moisture is detected. A slow blink tells you the soil holds adequate moisture. Medium blink tells you the soil is dry, a fast blink means very dry, and the dreaded double blink with pause means that while you were on vacation, not only didn’t it rain, the teenage kid you hired to water your garden blew the money you gave him on pot.