 Hi, back again with another book. My book of the month this time is to do with soil, having been out in the garden a lot the last couple of months doing things starting to pick some fruit. It's I think important to appreciate the the value of the soil and what's important about soil is the life that's in the soil. We often we have grass tube perhaps for the plants and the sun and the rain and so on that helps grow the plants but it's very easy to overlook the tiny things that we can't see that are living in the soil that make it possible for plants to do what they do. So my book of the month which has been around for a few years now now in a second edition is this one called Teaming with Microbes. There's a joke in the title pun in the title so of course I love it immediately. I could possibly even put this in my top 10 books, top 10 permaculture books anyway and the reason for that is that it's a book about the life in the soil that describes what's going on in a way that's understandable for those of us who have less familiarity with all the kind of technical stuff that's going on. Written by a couple of gardeners, American gardeners who essentially wanted to learn more about what was going on in the soil and so they wrote the book that they wanted to be able to read the one they wanted to buy. It's written by Jeff Loengfels and Wayne Lewis and this is the first it's turned into the first in the series of three books all with similar titles. So we have this one which is about the life in the soil then there's Teaming with Nutrients that's Jeff on his own and this one is all about how to plants feed and then Teaming with Microbes, Teaming with Fungi and this obviously is to do with mycorrhizal fungi, the fungus, the fungi that grow with living plants and make their living that way if you like, that plants feed sugars amongst other things to the fungi and the fungi are able to do some very special things in the soil including taking many minerals and making them into food because minerals in an inorganic form and not something that plants can use directly any more than we can. So anyway coming back to the first book I'd recommend you buy the revised edition the second edition because it has two more chapters than the original and this one only came back came out in so what's the date on this 2006 2006 such their understanding of soil life is growing very rapidly that they had to re-revised the book and had two more chapters. So it's in two parts really this book the first part is to do with what lives in the soil it describes those different organisms from the perspective of basically putting them into classification so we start with here we are just talks about the soil food web in general and then it introduces the different organisms that live in the soil let's do a bit more classic soil science all good stuff good stuff here we are okay so then page 43 we get to the first group which is bacteria and so there's a chapter for each collection of organisms if you like so you've got your bacteria you've got your arthropods you've got your gastropods and you've got your fungi obviously algae and slime odds there's your arthropods and so on and so forth earthworms of course and each one describes what they do what they eat your protozoa is another one and where they fit in the the soil food web if you like who eats who and what is the consequences of those things so in order to understand how to improve soil we need to understand who lives in the soil what they do and how we can care for them and how we can build those populations populations are the good things so the second part of the book is here we are finishing off the big stuff reptiles mammals and birds and then how the soil food web applies to gardening so they then go on to describe how and the understanding of these organisms and what they need helps us to feed the right things and ultimately feed the plants that we're wanting to grow and they include recipes for things like compost teas which is a way of taking the compost the microorganisms you have in your compost which you might have a small amount of compost in a large garden how can you make the best of that rather than just putting a little bit in one place is the compost tea is a way of feeding the microorganisms what they need which is essentially oxygen and sugars and water in order to proliferate and then you can you breed a large number of them and then you can spread them across your garden and so on there we are and it talks about mycorrhizal fungi and mulching and so on and for me this was it's just an excellent book it's not so long that you feel like you'll never get to the end of it but there's a lot in here and for me this was reading this book was a great education in what lives in the soil and how I can work with them in order to get more for my garden and ultimately for me and my family so highly recommended but by the revised edition because you've got two extra chapters