New organic garden book: Teaming With Microbes

For over 30 years, Jeff Lowenfels has written a free-lance gardening column in Anchorage. Among other things, Lowenfels and a couple of like-minded friends have patented a cool one-eye device for looking at plants and insects in the field, the macroscope, available now through Brunton. Lowenfels now has a forthcoming book on soil microbes, a subject he has written and lectured on abundantly for the last 5 years. He has been promising a book on this for most of those years and a lot of gardeners are looking forward to it. The subject of microbes and plant nutrition offers a lot to get excited about. I've mentioned some bits a time or two. And, as back40 reminds us, it was only in 1996 that glomalin was discovered. Glomalin is the durable soil carbon produced by mycorrhizal fungi and responsible for many positive attributes of soil function, plant nutrition and soil health.
According to a news article this week, Lowenfels book "Teaming With Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to Using the Soil Food Web." is being published by Timber Press and is due out sometime in late summer. Tag me "easily entertained", but I really like the double sens of the word "teaming" in the book title. In 2004, the working title was "Soil Science for Gardeners", and thankfully Lowenfels has wisely prevailed upon Timber Press to use "Teaming With Microbes" as he originally proposed.

Tech Tags: soil science research health fertilizer nutrition microbiology fungus glomalin bacteria nematodes new organic garden book microbes