Back in April I attended a workshop on edible gardening and didn’t learn much for my $20 except that I already know quite a lot, and I learned the title of a book, Teaming with Microbes by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis. This little book alone was worth the class. It manages to put two of my favorite geeky things together: science and gardening.
The first half of the book covers the science of the “soil food web.” The soil food web consists of all the bacteria and insects and fungi that go into creating healthy soil. There are blown up photos of bacteria under electron microscopes that science fiction and horror writers could definitely use as the basis for aliens and monsters. The authors have a sense of humor and, after chapters detailing various critters and what they do and why they are important and how voracious they are, they comment that the reader is probably never going to want to put her hand in the soil again. Yes, that’s exactly how I was feeling, suddenly worried that I might be mistaken for something edible and be swarmed by bacteria that would immediately ingest me and turn me into compost for the tomatoes. But the authors kindly pointed out that I have been putting my bare hands in dirt for many years and hadn’t been eaten yet and I can rest assured that I wasn’t going to be. Nonetheless, it is very creepy. Science is not for the faint of heart!
Sometimes the science was a bit dull, but overall they do a good job at keeping it interesting. Between the photos of monstrous bacteria and stories of scientific discovery, they keep the pace moving along.
The second half of the book is applied science, taking everything learned in the first half and putting it to use in the garden. And it is good stuff! All the garden books I read always talk about the importance of good soil and how I should spend most of my time working on improving my soil because it means I will have to work less to do other things like water and weed and fertilize and kill invading pests. Good soil is the foundation of a good garden. But all those books never talk about how to get good soil other than to say compost and mulch. Teaming with Microbes explains the intricacies of soil ecology and how to create a healthy system. Yes, it is work, but the gardener only gets it going by making sure the right conditions are created, nature does the rest. And once the soil ecosystem is healthy, the gardener doesn’t do much at all except stand back and stay out of the way.
If you are a gardener, this is definitely a book you want to read. And if you are a nature or science geek, you’ll find the book extra fascinating.
For a science geek, you sure seem like a nice person.
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Sounds like a really interesting book – don’t know if i would be too keen at seeing the pictures though!
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Ian, it is an interesting book but yeah, the photos are potentially nightmare inducing!
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booksandbuttons, LOL, thanks! I think. 😉
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“But the authors kindly pointed out that I have been putting my bare hands in dirt for many years and hadn’t been eaten yet and I can rest assured that I wasn’t going to be.” I loved this. So often, it seems, we are told things that sound really scary or dangerous and so we decide we must avoid whatever it is or we’ll be done for – but when you stop and think, you realise that most people actually do survive (whatever the situation is) and the risks are low. For example, our daughter says that some of her Canadian friends are genuinely terrified of coming to Australia because of our reputation for dangerous creatures (snakes, spiders, crocodiles, sharks, etc). But, if they actually looked at it logically they’d realise that most Aussies manage to survive to a decent age! I reckon more people would die in Canada of really scary things like avalanches or hypothermia than Aussies of spiders and snakes!!
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whisperinggums, it’s funny the things we imagine, isn’t it? I had to laugh at your daughters comment because I was talking to a colleague recently who has never been to the American southwest and never wants to go because she is terrified of all the dangerous biting stinging poisonous creatures. I jokingly told her that yeah, every morning when you get up you have to shake your shoes out before you put them on to make sure you don’t get bit by something nasty. She believed me! The look on her face said I had just confirmed all her fears. Even when I started laughing and said I was only joking that you only had to worry about stuff like that if you were camping in the desert she didn’t want to believe me! Trust me, I grew up there I told her but now it seems I’ve become some sort of crazy survivalist who escaped terrible danger. It would be funny if it also weren’t so sad.
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Hahs, Stefanie … sometimes I joke that we Aussies are so brave! Perhaps we shouldn’t disabuse people of how special we are …
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There’s a good chance that sticking your hands in that dirt might actually be good for you, or at least good for children! There’s still a lot of research to be done, but there’s more and more evidence that some of our modern health problems stem from a lack of exposure to beneficial bacteria. On my reading list: Missing Microbes by Martin Blaser.
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biblioglobal, yes, I’ve seen articles about that recently! Good for children and i bet good for adults too. I hope you plan on writing about Missing Microbes. If you like it perhaps I will read it too!
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If I am learning one thing from my monthly reading of the Anna Pavord book–it is how important your soil is when creating a garden! This sounds right up your alley–and a good book to at least take a peek at if you are planning a garden. It might be a little more than I would want to see…but you never know when a book like this would come in handy!
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