UNLESS YOU’RE a scientist who deals with mycorrhizae, you’ve probably never given much thought to how plants eat. Most gardeners think that growing a good tomato is all about photosynthesis and mixing in some nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (N–P–K). Jeff Lowenfels shows how wrong this assumption is.
This new book is the perfect companion to Jeff’s first book, Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web, which deftly explains the all-important workings of the soil food web in delivering nutrients to plants. Now you can learn what plants do with these nutrients, how they get them inside their roots, and what happens to nutrients once they are in the plant.
I’ve studied the science of how plants take in nutrients for most of my career. It’s taken a lot of chemistry and biology to get me to where I am today. I only wish I’d had this book as a much younger man just starting out in plant science and mycology—it would have saved me a lot of time and painful learning. Jeff has the knack of being able to explain complicated science in ways that are instantly understandable and even enjoyable. He holds your hand in the rough spots, walks you through the science, and then takes off once he knows you’ve grasped the concepts.
Jeff’s book is as timely as it is informative. Too many gardeners think they are taking the modern path by blindly pouring on synthetic N–P–K fertilizer in accordance with a picture on the label or an ad on television. We let chemistry take over. We know little about what we’re doing, but we do it anyway. The result has been an alarming spike in phosphorus and nitrogen pollution.
N–P–K gardeners owe their practice to the great scientist Justus Von Liebig, the father of artificial fertilizers. What most don’t know is that later in his life Von Liebig acknowledged a grave mistake in relying only on chemistry. In fact, he saw the negative impacts of artificial fertilizers on life in the soil in his own vegetable garden and thereafter preferred organic matter to the inorganic chemical fertilizers he invented. To quote Von Liebig, “After I learned the reason why my fertilizers weren’t effective in the proper way, I was like a person that received a new life.” Understanding how nutrients work will make us all see the light and ultimately make us better gardeners with more sustainable gardens.
I work with gardeners around the world. No matter their language, culture, or age, the story is always the same: all gardeners want to be successful. The good ones are those who learn as much they can about how plants function because they know this information will allow them to counter what they can’t control. I am quite sure the information in this book will greatly add to any gardener’s knowledge base and allow him or her to more perfectly balance those factors that can’t be controlled.
How plants eat—it’s about time we all learned.
—Dr. Mike Amaranthus
Chief Scientist and President, Mycorrhizal Applications, Inc.