Discover how you can tell what fertilizers to use to optimize your garden’s health and productivity, simply by observing the plants growing in your garden. Building on an informative back grounding section, this book is full of charts and tables showing you how to get a detailed soil analysis from the indicators given out by your plants. Then see how to correct the deficiencies using organic materials. Learn to avoid false indicators. Covers vegetables and field crops and looks to weeds and wild plants as well. Illustrated with examples, this book teaches you to be an intuitive farmer or grower.
"John Beeby has condensed the wisdom, skill and science from a five-foot pile of hard-to-find publications into Test Your Soil With Plants. Now we can begin to rediscover this very practical art without the use of expensive soil tests.
Divided into three parts, the first discusses how wild plants can be used to determine the characteristics of a soil. Beeby has organized a "Wild Plant Indicator Chart" that takes up 16 pages and is amazingly detailed. From it you can find out what rough pigweed (Amaranthus retroflexus) means regarding the structure of a soil and its possible utilization; what common burdock (Arctium minus) means relative to soil pH, calcium, phosphorus and aluminum concentrations; what common horsetail (Equisetum arvense) tells about a soil’s history, moisture, drainage and texture. Combine this information with that in Part II about cultivated plants, and you are on your way to Part III—Improvement of Soil Conditions. If wild and cultivated plants suggest that you need to add potassium but not nitrogen and phosphorus, you can use Beeby’s charts to find out how to amend the soil organically—how much of which materials to add each year, when to add them, and more. - Unknown Binding: 91 pages
- Publisher: Ecology Action (1997)
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