The Complete Guide to Restoring Your Soil: Improve Water Retention and Infiltration; Support Microorganisms and Other Soil Life; Capture More Sunlight - Paperback

by Dale Strickler (Author)

Healthy soil is key to sustaining life on Earth. While more and more people are starting to see the need for soil restoration, there is very little understanding of just how it can be accomplished. There is a rapidly emerging demand for a "how to" manual for soil restoration. Dale Strickler is an expert on building healthy soil and restoring degraded soil, and in The Complete Guide to Restoring Your Soil, he presents the science of soil, along with proven methods of restoring depleted soil and agricultural practices from around the world that continue to build soil, rather than cause it to deteriorate.

Strickler provides a solid foundation in the science of healthy soil, explaining how soil has become so degraded over time and the dire consequences for the human species, not just in terms of food scarcity but also the social, health, and environmental consequences of growing food in poor soil. He addresses the chemical, physical, and biological principles behind soil function, and presents actual farming practices that can be used to regenerate soil, techniques and strategies for remediating contaminated soil, and agriculture systems both past and present that functioned to build soil, such as the ancient chinampas systems of Mexico and the permaculture systems of today.

Back Jacket

Whether you farm cropland, grow specialty foods, or raise animals on pasture, healthy soil is the key to producing healthy food. It promotes microbial life, holds moisture, resists erosion, stores carbon, withstands droughts and floods--and boosts your bottom line.

But much of our soil has become too degraded to repair itself. Dale Strickler shows you how to create carbon-rich soil using a range of regenerative farming practices including no-till farming, cover crops, crop rotation, landforming, intensive grazing, agroforestry, and innovative Indigenous farming practices from around the world.