A Soil Owner's Manual

How to Restore and Maintain Soil Health

By: Jon Stika

Narrated by: Greg Young

A Soil Owner's Manual: How to Restore and Maintain Soil Health is about restoring the capacity of your soil to perform all the functions it was intended to perform. This book is not another fanciful guide on how to continuously manipulate and amend your soil to try and keep it productive. This book will change the way you think about and manage your soil. It may even change your life. If you are interested in solving the problem of dysfunctional soil and successfully addressing the symptoms of soil erosion, water runoff, nutrient deficiencies, compaction, soil crusting, weeds, insect pests, plant diseases, and water pollution, or simply wish to grow healthy vegetables in your family garden, then this book is for you.

Soil health pioneer Jon Stika describes in simple terms how you can bring your soil back to its full productive potential by understanding and applying the principles that built your soil in the first place. Understanding how the soil functions is critical to reducing the reliance on expensive inputs to maintain yields. Working with, instead of against, the processes that naturally govern the soil can increase profitability and restore the soil to health. Restoring soil health can proactively solve natural resource issues before regulations are imposed that will merely address the symptoms. This book will lead you through the basic biology and guiding principles that will allow you to assess and restore your soil. It is part of a movement currently underway in agriculture that is working to restore what has been lost. A Soil Owner's Manual: How to Restore and Maintain Soil Health will give you the opportunity to be part of this movement. Restoring soil health is restoring hope in the future of agriculture, from large farm fields and pastures, down to your own vegetable or flower garden.

©2016 Jon Stika (P)2017 Jon Stika

Mind blown

Information provided changed my paradigm regarding soils. My required garden work and expenses have been decreased. Thank you Jon Stika!

a lot of time on bibliography....too much time...

way too much time for reference credit, should be clumped at the end for audiobook. otherwise I would recommend this book, good info and good narration..

something every gardener and farmer should read

this is a great introduction to soil health and it's workings. I highly recommend it.

A treasure trove of information

I enjoyed hearing all the details involved in how to manage and care for healthy soil. It was great to hear all the bits of trivia and background on how we got to where we are today with a hopefully restorative pathway illuminated. Thank you Jon Stika for your commitment and dedication to making a difference with large scale farmers to the everyday gardener. This information is also of tremendous value to those wanting to know how we improve our environment moving forward.

Excellent!

What a great book thank you for sharing this with the world I wish it was mandatory for 5th graders to read!

informative

I found it very informative. I am excited about farming but have no prior knowledge of what plants needed for food or amount of water. it was very enlightening to hear all the factors that come into play on a farm.

Incredible eye opener

I'm not a farmer or gardener, but I loved this book. The author doesn't just give us the technical details of soil ecology, but also threads through little nuggets of philosophy and also examples and analogies to illustrate his points. It sounds silly to say this about a book about the biology and chemistry of soil, but I was rivetted.

Hopefully these new revelations will give us a new, greener revolution.

sounds like a "book of quotes"

This book has great content but the constant citation of other books is a good way for me to lose interest fast.

Must read regardless of Agriculture involvement

I highly recommend this wether you're involved in Agriculture or not. Small scale, large scale; conventional, strip or no tillage; this is a must read. The least we can do as humans is understand what is beneath our feet.

Recommended for anyone who touches the soil

A very important topic that the author makes easy to understand. An eye opener for new and old gardeners alike. Recommended for anyone who touches the soil and a must read for all in the horticulture field.