1: Bio for Jeff Lowenfels

Jeff Lowenfels is co-author of "Teaming with Microbes, The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web" published by Timber Press in August 2006 to great acclaim and revised in 2011. It is touted as the most important gardening book published in the past 25 years and won the prestigious Garden Writers of America Gold Award for gardening books. Its been translated into Korean and French and soon Slovenian.

Jeff is also the author of "Teaming with Nutrients, The Organic Gardener's Guide to Optimizing Plant Nutrition" published by Timber Press in May, 2013. The short hand title is "how plants eat and what to feed them" and it is sure to make you appreciate the beauty of how plants operate as well as make you a better gardener and steward of the earth.

In 2016, Timber Press published Lowenfels' third book, "Teaming with Fungi, The Organic Growers Guide to Mycorrhizae." These important relationships are the result of important fungi that literally allowed plants to colonize land. And, now many are commercially available to gardeners and growers. This is a must read and completes the trilogy. Lowenfels is "Lord of The Roots."

Jeff is the Cal Ripken of North American Garden columnists. His weekly column has run in the Anchorage Daily News for over 36 years, never missing a single week even for vacations. One of the most humorous and entertaining lecturers on the circuit, Jeff is also a lawyer and the combination of garden writing and law have earned him the moniker of "America's Dirtiest Lawyer."

Jeff grew up as an indentured servant on his parent's hobby farm in Scarsdale, New York. There he was forced to plant, weed, mow, pick fruits, flowers and vegetables on 8 acres replete with acre vegetable gardens, a Versailles style formal flower garden, a 100 tree fruit orchard and enough rhubarb to have to have it every day, all year long until he went to college.

One day back in the early 70's, he was held up and shot in Boston. As a result he ran as far away as he could go without a passport and ended up in Anchorage, Alaska where he has practiced law and been able to translate his work-filled childhood into a meaningful and enjoyable hobby.

Jeff hosted one of Alaska public televisions most popular shows "Alaska Gardens with Jeff Lowenfels." The show was so popular, at one point it ran four times a week and played in Barrow. He is host of a weekly, two hour call in radio show..

Jeff is an extremely respected and popular national garden writer. He is the former president of the Garden Writers of America, was made a GWA Fellow in 1999 and was inducted into the GWA Hall of Fame, the highest honor a garden writer can achieve, in 2005.

Most important, Jeff is the founder of a now national program that started as "Plant a Row for Bean's," the soup kitchen in Anchorage, and is now "Plant A Row for The Hungry." The program is active in 48 states and resulted in over a million pounds of produce being donated to feed the hungry every year.