What you will learn

The Organic Soil Guide is a detailed system for testing and improving your soil. Follow the 12 step ‘self soil assessment’ checklist to see how healthy your soil really is. There are also lists of common problems and how to overcome them and maintenance tips to keep your soil at its optimum.

Here’s a quick preview of the valuable information you will receive through the Organic Soil Guide.

• Why soil is THE MOST IMPORTANT part of your garden
• Soil Testing
  Step by step instructions to find out how healthy your soil really is. Identify and fix common problems.
• Step by step guide to improve your soil
  Save $$$ – don’t buy new topsoil, build on what you already have
• Soil preparation
  Preparing your garden for planting
• Composting
  Make composts that rebalance your soil’s health
  Learn to deal with problems such as ants, rodents and odours
• Mulching
  Read about the different types of mulches and their benefits
  Includes a comprehensive list of mulching materials with tips for using each
• Improve Soil Fertility
  Feed your soil (and your plants) with the best organic supplements
• Worm Farms
  Which worms to use and what to feed them
• Soil Inhabitants
  Keep your good soil dwelling creatures happy and remove the bad without pesticides!
• Water Wise Gardens
  Drought proof your garden

Whenever my plants looked unwell, I thought they just needed more water – so I kept on watering. Alisa showed me that was the last thing I should have done! I was making the plant roots rot.
- Jessica T, Glenbrook NSW

 

Chapter 1 – Physical Soil Understand the texture, structure, colour and depth of your soil. Step by step exercises to assess these properties and what they mean for your garden. Chapter 2 – Soil and Water Learn how to assess the infiltration rate of your soil. Fix problems with waterlogging, drainage and water repellence. The best place to store water is in your soil. Learn how to calculate how much water your soil can hold, and how you can increase the size of your ‘soil water tank’. Chapter 3 – Soil (and Plant) Nutrition Why plants need nutrients and where nutrients come from. A comprehensive list of nutrient deficiency symptoms with accompanying pictures – learn to know what your plant is craving. Instructions to assess soil pH, how pH affects nutrient availability and how to fix your pH organically. Chapter 4 – Organic Matter and Soil Life Forms Understand how organic matter helps your garden – what exactly does it do? Insights into soil dwelling creatures. Know how to make your own worm farm, what type of worms to get and what to feed them. Chapter 5 – Composting Turning death into life. Lists of composting materials, why they’re beneficial and what nutrients they contribute. Pages of composting recipes to tailor your compost to your plants nutritional needs. Follow the general composting rules and how to solve composting problems such as maggots and spiders. Learn what mulch to use in your garden, how much to use and where to put it. Chapter 6 – Common Soil Problems Learn how to recognise soil problems such as water repellence, shading and tree root competition, salinity, surface crusting, sodicity, dispersion, perched water and frozen soil. Do the ASWAT test to see if gypsum will work in your garden. Includes instructions on how to fix each of these problems organically. Chapter 7 – Preparing Your Soil for Planting Complete the Pre-Planting Preparation checklist to make sure you’re soil is ready to sow. Chapter also includes a comprehensive list of common vegetables and their preferred soil type. Chapter 8 – Water Wise Gardening Seven ways to drought proof your garden. Save your plants from the scorching summer. Save water as you follow the water wise gardening tips. Appendix A – How do I fix it? A comprehensive list of the soil problems with step by step instructions to fix them.

 

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Some Soil Facts

The healthier your soil, the healthier your plants. It’s that simple. Consider your own diet. If you are malnourished, you get sick. The same goes for your plants – they need food to survive. Plants feed off the nutrients in your soil. Except for sunlight, plants draw all their water and food from the soil.

A stressed plant wilts – this may be from too much water, too little water, not enough air or a nutrient deficiency. To know why your plant is wilting, you need to understand your soil.

‘It took me nearly a decade of farming to realise that healthy soil means healthy plants.
- Jackie French

Fertiliser is a requirement of most gardens. The ‘Organic Soil Guide’ shows you how to make your own organic fertiliser, to get the most out of your soil and garden. You can improve productivity and plant health without using traditional chemical fertilisers.

In order for plants to obtain the nutrients, water and air they need, you need to have good soil structure. The typical Australian garden has soil that is too compacted. This means there’s not enough air and water in the soil for the plants. Just like you and me, without air and water, plants will die. You can easily tell if your soil is too compacted by digging a small hole. If the soil is solid, and doesn’t crumble, it is compacted and you need to aerate.

Almost all other gardening books lightly brush over the subject of your soil. ‘Add organic matter and some gypsum if you have clay.’ Your soil is far too important! The soil is what supports, feeds and waters your plants. Did you know there are right and wrong soil compositions for each plant? It’s not ok to choose your favourite plants for your garden and forget to prepare the right soil. Azaleas, for example, need a very rich and slightly acidic topsoil. This book shows you how to understand the right soil for your plant and to improve your soil using organic techniques.

Many people think that adding gypsum will improve their soil. But what most people don’t know is that gypsum won’t work on all soil types! It’s only certain soil types that respond to gypsum. The organic soil guide will teach you how to test your soil to see if gypsum will work.

Most people buy topsoil, not realising they can easily create a far better soil themselves. Why pay $10 dollars a bag for soil mix, when you can transform your whole garden into higher quality soil for a fraction of the cost. By following the tips in this book, you can save $$$ and improve your soil yourself. Most of the time, you can significantly improve your soil by adding the right compost, mulch, and having good soil structure. This book contains a variety of different compost “recipes” to rebalance your soil.

With Alisa’s help, I made my own topsoil. It’s so much cheaper than buying.
- Alex, Leichhardt, NSW

Compost is the best organic fertiliser around. Most people simply throw their kitchen scraps onto the garden. It’s better than nothing, but you could create turbo-charged composts, tailored to your specific garden soil. Is your soil low on nitrogen? Grass clippings are an excellent source. Are you plants suffering a potassium deficiency? Add citrus skins and pulp.

The Organic Soil Guide helps you identify where your soil is lacking and the best compost for it. You can easily create your own compost, tailored to the nutritional needs of your plants. Compost bins are useful, but what you put in them is more important. Using the art and science of compost, I’ll give you easy compost recipes to make the best food for your garden. These recipes will improve your soil fertility, using easily accessible products like egg shells, manure, kitchen scraps and hay.

Worm farms, or vermiculture, are another great way create your own fertiliser. Despite having over 350 species of earthworm in Australia, only 3 types are commonly bred for worm farms (tiger, red and blues). This is because regular garden worms won’t survive in a worm farm. The Organic Soil Guide outlines good bedding materials for your worms, good food, bad food and how to protect your worms from predators.

Adding worm compost to your garden will help increase the biological diversity of your soil. A rich, healthy, organic soil will have a balance of microbes, bacteria, fungi and garden dwelling worms. Yes – the worms in your worm farm can help stimulate the population of the worms in your garden.

“A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself.”
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

The pH of your soil is crucial. Each plant has a preferred soil pH range. Outside of this range, the plants struggle. If the pH is too low, nutrients like Nitrogen and Phosphorus become unavailable to your plants, and unwanted metals like Aluminium are present in toxic amounts. The Organic Soil Guide shows you how to test the pH of your soil, how to change the pH to be optimal, and the preferred soil pH of common garden plants.

Your soil is your best water tank. The better your soil is, the more water it will hold. For example, a deep, well structured loamy soil will hold more than double the water of a shallow sandy soil. This means you need to water your garden less, saving time, water and money. A deep, well structured soil is very important over summer, as your plants will have access to more water (your soil water tank).

Despite having gardened for 20 years I’ve learned a great deal. The “soil as water tank” idea and explanation was particularly new and interesting.
- Penny, Lane Cove, NSW

People see an unhealthy plant an instinctively add more water. You can add too much water! Far more plants die from over-watering than under-watering. The book contains 7 strategies to provide the optimal amount of water to your plants, including how to deal with water repellent soil. In water repellent soil (or hydrophobic soil), water won’t filter into the soil, it instead just pools on top. I’ll show you ways to reduce water repellence, without the use of chemical wetting agents. The Organic Soil Guide also shows how to drought-proof your garden, so your garden can survive the summer heat.

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What You Get

Buy now and you will receive:

1. A copy of the Organic Soil Guide

2. A free iPad friendly version of the Organic Soil Guide

Got an iPad? Use the iPad friendly version to read and learn.

3. Bonus Chapter – Organic Pest Management.

The chapter outlines the most common garden pests and ways to control them organically. Techniques in this chapter rarely use organic pesticides – most of the remedies you can make from ingredients in your kitchen!

4. An Infiltration Rate Calculator.

In the Organic Soil Guide you learn how to measure the infiltration rate of your soil, and what it means for your plants. This does involve maths! So to make things easier, we’ve built a calculator to do all the maths for you! All you have to do is follow the instructions to do the test, and enter your data into the calculator, and the calculator will do the maths.

5. Free updates for 2 years

The Organic Soil Guide is electronic because it is a working document (and it’s environmentally friendly). Every time the book is updated with the latest research and information you will receive the updated version. These updates will last for 2 years.

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About

Alisa Bryce has extensive knowledge in soil research and consulting. She has worked on   Australia’s most loved gardens including major football stadiums, professional cricket grounds, golf courses, hundreds of public parks and suburban back-yards.

A Certified Professional Soil Scientist (CPSS), Alisa’s work has been published by ReNEW Magazine, the Journal of Water Science and Technology and CSIRO.

I want to share my knowledge about the soil with other passionate gardeners. I realised that existing books glossed over the subject, even though soil is the most important part of your garden.

- Alisa Bryce

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