by Gene Logsdon and the editors of Organic Gardening and Farming. 1975. Rodale Press.The thing is, the most important thing to know about a book is whether the author writes well. That goes double for non-fiction writing. I really don't care whether Mr. Logsdon knows how to garden if he doesn't know how to write. Thankfully, he knows how to do both well. And the book holds up well for its age, written in the 1970s, during the last oil (and chemical fertilizer) crisis. While most of us conveniently forgot for the intervening 30 years about the limits of fossil fuels, a small cadre of organic gardeners and farmers continued to ask how to produce food in sufficient quality and quantity when (not if) the oil runs out.
Logsdon's genius for spinning a yarn is evident on nearly every page. The book contains everything a gardener would ever want to know about the soil, and then some. But it also drops other gems of gardening knowledge and lore along the way. For example, chapter 2 begins with a "conversation" between two gardeners on a road trip and continues with a recommendation for (and description of) a cross-country "Soilwatching Trip" from the Pine Barrens to the mountains and deserts of the West. And the itinerary includes a short course in the basics: soil types, soil maps, soil texture, soil tests, nutrients (N-P-K), micronutrients, organic matter, humus, drainage, pH, mulching, composting, organic fertilizers, and green manures. And somewhere along the way, Logsdon finds the time to talk about buying good farmland and to explain such gardening essentials as crop rotation, even offering examples of useful rotations and gardening tool recommendations.
There are a few caveats. One is that the dichotomy between "chemical" and "organic" fertilizers is too starkly drawn. The gardener worthy the name will neither dump chemicals willy-nilly on the garden nor avoid them altogether. Chemical fertilizers will have their place in growing vegetables so long as they are inexpensively available. (That they will not be available indefinitely is a reason to know and begin to use the alternatives.) Another example is Logsdon's east-Ohio centric vision of farming and gardening. When he approves without reservation most things that raise the pH of the soil, it is fairly clear that he has usually gardened and farmed an acid soil. Gardeners in central Indiana will want to approach with caution any soil emendation that raises a pH that is probably already too high for optimum plant growth. But these are really quibbles with a great literary romp through what every gardener should know about the ground under his feet.
