Milton Public Library

The complete guide to restoring your soil, Dale Strickler

eng

no index present

non fiction

The complete guide to restoring your soil

electronic resource

dictionaries

Dale Strickler

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. This publication conforms to the EPUB Accessibility specification at WCAG 2.0 Level AA. Dale Strickler is the author of Managing Pasture and The Drought-Resilient Farm. He is a leader in the soil health movement and an agronomist for Green Cover Seed, the nation's top cover crop-specific seed company. Strickler holds degrees in agronomy from Kansas State University and has taught at the college level for 15 years. He farms and ranches cattle in Kansas. PREFACE: By the Skin of Our Earth PART I: Why Restore Soil? 1: Soil Salvation 2: How We Made a Mess of the Planet, and How Soil Restoration Can Save It PART II What Is the Ideal Soil? 3: Soil Oxygen 4: Water 5: Soil Biology 6: Minerals 7: Carbon Cycle and Energy Flow PART III: Practices That Build Better Soil 8: Farming without Tillage 9: Crop Rotations 10: Cover Crops 11: Pasture and Rangeland Management 12: Agroforestry PART IV: Once and Future Farming 13: Better Agriculture Systems of the Past, Present, and Future Resources Glossary Metric Conversion Charts Index 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. "Strickler gives us the tools to heal our damaged soil. This book should be on the shelf of every soil scientist, farmer, rancher, gardener, politician, landscaper, and informed citizen." - Hank Will, editor at large for Mother Earth News "A comprehensive, clear, and practical guide for growers of every scale. A must-read for anyone who cares for soil."- Daniel Mays, manager of Frith Farm and author of The No-Till Organic Vegetable Farm "[Strickler's] reader-friendly magnum opus, covering why we should restore soil, what ideal soil looks like, practices that build better soil." - Mongabay

adult

Restoring your soil