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: #16053 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 2.50 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

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.