A witty, whimsical gardening primer for anyone who wants to tend their patch of earth with a truly green thumb.
A garden can either bring you bliss or drive you insane, but organic landscape gardener Ellen Sandbeck has spent a lifetime discovering creative, effective techniques for growing and tending a garden with ease—while being kind to the earth itself. Eat More Dirt is her delightful compendium of homespun tips and tricks for designing, planting, nurturing, and beautifying your land without the use of harmful chemicals and pesticides.
From peat moss to irksome pests and predators, Sandbeck explores the lively world of compost heaps (which can be used to naturally “vaccinate” your garden against disease), growing good soil, choosing plants well-adapted to your climate, weed warfare, planting protocols, and eco-friendly ways to quench your garden’s thirst. Whether you tend an acre or just a window box, Eat More Dirt is an essential guide to keeping your garden thriving, the natural way. • Build up topsoil without toxic fertilizers or noisy machinery • Compost, the other black gold • Eradicate weeds with sunflower seeds • Protect berries from birds with a sugar-water spray • Gentle pruning techniques • Banish beetles with wheat bran • Drive off furry pests with cayenne pepper • When life hands you a seep, dig a pond—transforming garden irritants into garden pearls • Pre- and post-gardening stretches • Dancing with tools • The Zen of puttering •
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For anyone who loved Slug Bread & Beheaded Thistles, Sandbeck's terrific guide to "nontoxic" home care and gardening, this guide to organic gardening will seem the perfect follow-up. A Duluth, Minn. based landscape gardener, Sandbeck remains just as thoughtfully practical about sustainable practices as ever, but browsers who pick up this book (or Thistles) for the first time will be struck foremost with its beautiful design (Sandbeck is also a graphic designer), which strikes an uncanny balance between archaic and modern elements. The fonts recall late 19th century pre-Raphaelite floridity without being florid, while the silhouette-style illustrations and icons used throughout are less decorative than integral to explaining techniques and even gardening postures. Chapters on soil health, balance in design, knowledge of differing plant needs, tools and pests ("Learning from Your Enemies") are concise and commonsensical, while those on "Gardening as Exercise" and "The Meditative Gardener" cover physical and spiritual ground directly, and without goading or sentimentality. Sandbeck offers just the right amounts of encouragement, healthy skepticism and experience; this book will be a favorite of experienced gardeners and novices alike. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Ellen Sandbeck was born in San Francisco in 1958, raised in Marin County, and graduated from the College of Creative Studies at U.C. Santa Barbara in 1979 with a B.A. in studio art. After graduation she quickly learned what "starving artist" meant. She and her future husband started an organic landscaping business in the S.F. Bay Area in 1980. They started with tools bought on credit from their first client, and commuted to their first job (tools and all) via the B.A.R.T. (Bay Area Rapid Transit). Huge amounts of library and field research helped Ellen Sandbeck formulate a philosophy and practice of organic landscaping which was efficient, healthy, and fun. Ms. Sandbeck lost 35 pounds in her first year of landscaping, without dieting or other exercise. Ellen Sandbeck and her husband moved to Duluth, Minnesota in 1985, in search of a slower pace of life. Their family has now expanded to include two children, two dogs, tens of thousands of composting worms, and a small flock of laying hens. Ms. Sandbeck grows and sells composting worms and has set up worm composting systems for individuals, schools, businesses, and the Federal Prison Camp in Duluth, where a one hundred foot long bin is used to compost food waste from the camp. Ms. Sandbeck became a writer when a landscaping client volunteered her to write a booklet about non-toxic gardening and housekeeping for a non-profit group. Due to an enormous amount of stockpiled material, the booklet became a book, "Slug Bread & Beheaded Thistles," which Ms. Sandbeck then self-published. A few years later, much to Ms. Sandbeck's surprise, a literary agent was able to sell the reprint rights to "Slug Bread" to a major New York publisher. Three books later, Ms. Sandbeck is still surprised to be a writer.
EAT MORE DIRT is fun! More than just a gardening handbook, it's about how to get what you REALLY want out of your garden (all the time -- not just when you're resting on the lawn, avoiding the mower.) It's about how to provide the very best for all involved by using what you have to your advantage, and refusing to poison your soil, your plants, and yourself. (You might be surprised at what constitutes poison.) It's also an acerbic sort of love song for the land, one that will inspire you to "sing" organically to your own little corner of Mother Earth. (Whether or not you choose to literally sing to your plants is up to you -- and perhaps your neighbors!)
As a novice gardener, I was raised by parents whom I always felt used too many chemicals and WAY too much water! Of course, their garden is beautiful, and in that I hope to emulate them, but I'll be using Ellen Sandbeck's organic advice, appreciating her alternately dry and silly wit along the way. Check out this book: it's a joy to read and a BIG help in the garden.
EAT MORE DIRT, by Ellen Sandbeck, is a fun and informative way to learn more about organic gardening. I laughed, I cried and I learned a lot! I loved the original art work by Sandbeck and all the tips that I can use right away to improve my garden's health! It was such a fun, painless read that I sat down and read the whole thing! Check out all the great illustrations, too!
