He claims that bacteria that fix nitrogen and plant roots require oxygen, which isn't strictly true on either count. For example, some of the things he had to say about well-oxygenated soils are possibly up for debate. In fact, at times I felt like he was moving TOO breezily, to the point of being misleading. But this is pretty dense reading even though the author is trying to move breezily along. It was as in-the-weeds (yuk yuk) as I wanted. I'm guessing this would be a great companion guide to a plant biology course, but may be less useful to your average nerdy gardener. I didn't get far and hope to pick it back up again, but that won't be until I'm ready to really study. And the topic is that which most of us do not really need to engage- compost produced from diverse waste material provides enough plant nutrition (and the resulting veggies provide enough human nutrition) that few home-scale producers need to test soil mineral content and tailor their practices to alter their soil makeup (beyond general compost & mulch type stuff, already covered in Teaming with Microbes). Because it focuses much more on the microscopic processes happening within plant cells, this book is quite abstract, several layers removed from what an average gardener can touch, smell, taste, or see. While Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web was the perfect mix of scientific detail and practical, fun gardening guide, this follow-up is much more textbook-y. In short, it will make you a better informed, more successful and more environmentally responsible gardener. Teaming with Nutrients will open your eyes to the importance of understanding the role of nutrients in healthy, productive organic gardens and it will show you how these nutrients do their jobs. To fully understand how plants eat, Lowenfels uses his ability to make science accessible with lessons in the biology, chemistry, and botany all gardeners need to understand how nutrients get to the plant and what they do once they're inside the plant. It shows organic gardeners how to provide these essentials. Teaming with Nutrients explains how nutrients move into plants and what both macro-nutrients and micro-nutrients do once inside. Most gardeners realize that plants need to be fed but know little or nothing about the nature of the nutrients involved or how they get into plants. Where Teaming with Microbes used adeptly used microbiology Teaming with Nutrients employs cellular biology. Just as he demystified the soil food web in his ground-breaking book Teaming with Microbes, in this new work Jeff Lowenfels explains the basics of plant nutrition from an organic gardener's perspective.
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