Secrets of the Soil: A Fascinating Account of Recent Breakthroughs-Scientific and Spiritual-That Can Save Your Garden or Farm

Tompkins, Peter; Bird, Christopher

ISBN 10: 0060158174 / ISBN 13: 9780060158170

Published by Harpercollins Publishers (Harper Collins), USA, 1989

About this Item

444 pages. Bibliography. Index. Black and white illustrations. "Explores what innovative farmers and scientists are doing now - as well as during the past fifty years - so strengthen and purify the soil on which we - and the plants and animals we live on - depend; how new, healthier, and more productive ways have been found to raise food crops, thus eliminating reliance on petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides with their serious side effects." - from dust jacket. Book clean, bright and unmarked with light wear. Moderate wear and no tears to dust jacket preserved in a clear protective cover. Nice copy of the increasingly scarce hard cover version of this classic work on healthy soil enrichment. Seller Inventory # 152a7834

Bibliographic Details

Title: Secrets of the Soil: A Fascinating Account ...

Publisher: Harpercollins Publishers (Harper Collins), USA

Publication Date: 1989

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Very Good

Dust Jacket Condition: Good

Edition: First Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

Explores scientific and mystical developments that renew and enhance the soil, among them rock dust fertilizer, biodynamic agriculture, and other highly unusual fertilizers

From Publishers Weekly:

To those who practice it, biodynamic agriculture is almost a religion, in which Rudolph Steiner serves as high priest, his Agricultural Lectures as bible. Steiner's dubious faith calls for packing manure into cow horns, burying it for a specified period, then digging up the mixture and diluting it to manufacture a spray that apparently eliminates chemical poisons commonly added to the soil. Tompkins and Bird, coauthors of The Secret Life of Plants , cite the work of scientists and philosophers such as Steiner to support their extravagant claims; they report on the special qualities of glacial water and efforts to produce it in the laboratory, and tell of a plant breeder who believes that birdsong, music and a natural foliar fertilizer can stimulate plant growth ("sonic bloom"). Such exotic journeys into the fringes of agriculture, best appreciated by true believers, make ordinary organic farming and integrated pest management, though perhaps more effective, seem positively mundane. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.