By Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis

“Should be required reading for everyone lucky enough to own a piece of land.”

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Smart gardeners know that soil is anything but an inert substance. Healthy soil is teeming with life — not just earthworms and insects, but a staggering multitude of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms. When we use chemical fertilizers, we injure the microbial life that sustains healthy plants and become increasingly dependent on an arsenal of artificial, often toxic, substances. But there is an alternative to this vicious cycle. We can garden in a way that strengthens the soil food web — the complex world of soil-dwelling organisms whose interactions create a nurturing environment for plants.

Teaming with Microbes extols the benefits of cultivating the soil food web. First, it clearly explains the activities and organisms that make up the web. Next, it explains how gardeners can cultivate the life of the soil through the use of compost, mulches, and compost tea. The revised edition updates the original text and includes two completely new chapters — on mycorrhizae (beneficial associations fungi form with green-leaved plants) and archaea (single-celled organisms once thought to be allied to bacteria).

With Jeff Lowenfels’s help, everyone — from devotees of organic gardening techniques to weekend gardeners who simply want to grow healthy, vigorous plants without resorting to chemicals — can create rich, nurturing, living soil.

By Jeff Lowenfels

If you really want to get a sense of how little we know about how plants use fertilizers…you should read Lowenfels’ latest book.…Suffice to say, Lowenfels is a man who knows his anions.

Washington Post

Just as he demystified the soil food web in his ground-breaking book Teaming with Microbes, in this new work Jeff Lowenfels explains the basics of plant nutrition from an organic gardener’s perspective.

Most gardeners realize that plants need to be fed but know little or nothing about the nature of the nutrients involved. Teaming with Nutrients explains the role of both macronutrients and micronutrients and shows gardeners how to provide these essentials through organic, easy-to-follow techniques. Along the way, Lowenfels offers accessible lessons in the biology, chemistry, and botany needed to understand how nutrients get tothe plant and what they do once they’re inside the plant.

Teaming with Nutrients will open your eyes to the importance of understanding the role of nutrients in healthy, productive organic gardens. In short, it will make you a better informed, more successful, more environmentally responsible gardener.

“This book accomplishes what few other books have—helping the public use these essential fungi to improve the immune systems of plants.” —Paul Stamets, author of Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World

From the bestselling author of Teaming with Microbes and Teaming with Nutrients comes an important guide to mycorrhizae and the role they play in agriculture, horticulture, and hydroponics. Teaming with Fungi is the first book to accessibly explain the essential symbiotic relationship between soil-dwelling mycorrhizal fungi and plants. Almost every plant in a garden forms a relationship with fungi, and many plants would not exist without their fungal partners. By better understanding the relationship, gardeners can take advantage of the benefits of fungi, which include an increased uptake in nutrients, resistance to drought, earlier fruiting, and more. Learn how the fungi interact with plants, how to grow their own, and how best to employ them in the home garden.