Product Description

Barbara Pleasant and Deborah L. Martin turn the compost bin upside down with their liberating system of keeping compost heaps right in the garden, rather than in some dark corner behind the garage. The compost and the plants live together from the beginning in a nourishing, organic environment. The authors' bountiful, compost-rich gardens require less digging, weeding, mulching, and even less planting. And here's one of the best parts — no more backbreaking slogs from compost bin to garden. The authors even identify the plants that benefit most from compost and how the elements of a composted garden work together.

A natural Six-Way Compost Gardening System provides the ruling principles for successfully improving every garden with healthy compost. Readers will learn how to:

1. Choose labor-saving sites that keep gardens and compost piles as close to one another as possible.

2. Work with the compostable riches produced at home. Every yard and kitchen produces plenty of material — easily identified with at-a-glance charts — for a great start.

3. Help composting critters do their work by balancing ingredients, adding high-nitrogen meals when needed, and keeping the compost moist.

4. Reuse recycling bin items, such as large plastic buckets and cardboard boxes, as composting equipment.

5. Keep diversity in the mix. The magic is in the variety of the components and how they work together to create "gardener’s gold."

6. Customize composting to suit specific garden needs, always concentrating first on soil care.

Adhering to these guidelines, Pleasant and Martin bring readers on a thorough, informative tour of materials and innovative techniques, leading the way to an efficient and rewarding home gardening system. Their methods are sure to help gardeners turn average vegetable plots into rich incubators of healthy produce, bursting with fresh flavor, and flower beds into rich tapestries of bountiful blooms all season long.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16795 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781580177023
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Booklist
When heaping mounds of garden debris just sit there like so much, well, garbage, many frustrated garden composters bemoan their lack of success and throw in the old pitchfork. Some worry about becoming a slave to elaborate, multiplex bins requiring heavy maintenance, while others fret over locating a compost pile where it won’t draw the ire of neighbors. Based on their own trial-and-error experiences, the authors calm the fears that can wriggle through gardeners’ psyches like so many burrowing earthworms. Writing in an easygoing, conversational style, the authors introduce such novel practices as underground composting and vermicomposting. Including critical safety tips, indispensable tool recommendations, and extensive guidelines for compostable materials, this comprehensive how-to will persuade novices to give composting a try, and offer accomplished composters ingenious new methods for creating healthy gardens. --Carol Haggas

From the Back Cover
Turn the compost bin upside down! The nutritious, organic diet your garden craves is as simple as creating compost heaps right in the garden. Plants and compost live together in labor-and time-saving harmony, producing bright, sweet, juicy vegetables all season long.

About the Author
Barbara Pleasant has written five books for Storey, including the Garden Writer's Association 2003 Garden Globe Award of Achievement winner, Garden Stone. She lives in Virginia.

Deborah L. Martin's affection for compost dates back to The Rodale Book of Composting, which she edited. A former garden book editor at Rodale Press, Martin edited numerous popular titles and recently contributed chapters to Rodale's 100 Easy Garden Projects to Make, Build, or Grow. She has also written for Organic Gardening and Horticulture magazines. She lives in Pennsylvania.

Customer Reviews

Great practical ideas and a wonderful "compost philosophy"
My favorite passage from this book points out that buying hundreds of dollars of composting gear runs directly counter to the philosophy underlying a compost / organic garden. Composting is about using what you have where you have it, and that idea resonates throughout this book. While the basic methods will be familiar to experienced gardeners, it's still cheering and invigorating to see the many ways in which not only compost but also simple, raw organic matter can be worked directly into the garden. This book brings compost out of a complicated and expensive bin in the far corner of the yard and puts it back where it belongs, right in the center of the garden.

Its methods are also highly effective and nicely fleshed out, with the authors not only decribing how to set up sheet, crater, bin, and worm composts, but also giving invaluable tips on the types of crops that thrive in each. I took their advice and dug layers of leaves, grass, pulled weeds and food scraps directly into the earth, and the reward has been an most amazing crop of potatoes and squash - two plants that they rightly singled out as being particularly fond of a compost crater. Now, instead of trying to keep up with high-labor speed batches or buying a pricey tumbler, I'm letting my compost do the work itself, snuggled into the bottoms of dug or raised beds or, in the case of my pine needles, mulched right around the roots of the azaleas. It's a deeply satisfying feeling to stop lugging garbage bags full of organic material to the curb and instead look around at a yard that gives itself everything it needs.

Best Yet for Depth and Variety
I am a Master Gardener Educator with a special interst in organic, Mother Earth stewardship. Outside of Rodale's book on composting, this it the best overall guide on composting I have found. It is in-depth, yet takes us to practical ideas. Great photos and layout. Easy reading. Knowledgeable and inpiring. I think is a great choice!

The "IT" Guide for Composting
Everything you would seek to know about composting is within the pages of this book. It's easy to read. Understandable. Doable. Entertaining. Educational. And, once completed whether you put it into action or not you will be a composting expert.