The Intelligent Gardener: Growing Nutrient-Dense Food

So, whenever I'm thinking of buying a book, I read the negative reviews first. They are much more revealing than the positive ones--frequently they are revealing not so much of the book's quality or content as they are of the assumptions readers bring. And so it seems to be with Solomon's books. I know this review is kind of long--the next paragraph plus the last one are my quickie summary review; if you want more specifics read the 3rd paragraph too.If I could give half-stars, I'd give this 3.5. The information is useful (albeit really dense in places...but we're talking about soil amendment recipes here, so, you know) but it's not entirely practical especially if you're low on capital at the outset. What specifically was useful? Solomon's basic argument is that plants contain nutrients derived from the soil, ergo if the soil is low in nutrients so are your vegetables. Plants are more than N, P, and K. They may look ok, you may even have good yields, but wit modern soils they are not as nutritious as they should be. Now this may not be an earth-shattering revelation (although many reviewers are surprisingly resistant to the concept...see below), but Solomon couples it with some suggestions on how to test your soil nutrient levels, how to improve them (this is where the big expense may come in, depending on your situation), and also challenges gardening orthodoxy that suggests that veggies will be nutritionally perfect as long as they're organic. The reason I deducted 1.5 stars is that after reading the book one may not be in a position to apply what they learned; which maybe is not the author's fault, but it could arguably have been addressed in the book...perhaps a chapter on "What to do if you can't access such-and-such or can't afford to shell out hundreds of dollars on amendments or can't wait three years to build your soil."Apparently gardening is a topic like health and diet in that everybody seems to think theirs is the Only Right Way to Do It. (This goes for Solomon too, although I think he's mostly right.) The #1 thing that strikes me about the negative reviews on Solomon is that people base their ideas on a very faulty understanding of the history of agriculture. I keep seeing the claim that people have been gardening for millennia and doing just fine without adding the amendments Solomon recommends (see reviews on Gardening When It Counts for more of the same), but this is simply not true. It is because of the bad methods used in the past that we are now reaping the whirlwind of nutrient-depleted soil. People have always done the best they could, but for most of history humans have not known about things like microscopic organisms in the soil or mycorrhizae, etc. "Put poop on it and keep digging until nothing grows there anymore" was basically the rule, until it was replaced in the 20th century by "put chemicals on it and keep digging until nothing grows there anymore." Analysis of skeletal remains shows that compared to ancient hunter-gatherers, agriculture resulted in people with rotten crooked teeth, stunted growth, crippling arthritis, and yes, major nutrient deficiencies. Remember rickets and scurvy? They still exist, you know. THIS HAS BEEN TRUE SINCE THE INCEPTION OF AGRICULTURE 10,000+ YEARS AGO AND IS STILL TRUE TODAY. Just because we're accustomed to it doesn't mean it's "natural" let alone optimal. Gardening and agriculture should never be compared to "nature" because they are examples of human INTERFERENCE with natural processes for our own ends. (This doesn't mean they are necessarily bad--but we need to be realistic.) Meanwhile, I also see many reviews saying Solomon's method is wrong because so-and-so does something different and their plants produce just fine--but unless they are doing a chemical analysis of the nutrient levels in their food, they can't compare their results to Solomon's, because he's not talking about yield, but nutritional content. It's comparing apples to oranges (har har).Conclusion: I'm a pretty inexperienced gardener. I haven't been able to apply all of Solomon's recommendations. But I accept his basic premises based on my very rudimentary knowledge of botany and my somewhat less rudimentary knowledge of history. if you accept the abundant scientific data, archaeological remains, and historical records that show our soils are badly eroded and depleted of nutrients; if you accept that plants get their nutrients from that soil and therefore soil chemistry is the limiting factor in how nutritious your plants can be; if you want your veggies to be as nutritious as possible; and if you are willing to read a book that is dense and has formulae and stuff, then you'll benefit from this one. If on the other hand you are already convinced your way of gardening is the Right Way, why are you even buying books on the subject? Just go do your thing.

So, this book is a good book that I hunted down for a while. I bought this as a source to examine the dirt in both my yard and my garden. I found his life experiences homesteading in various areas very compelling and how his and his wife's health varied based on the nutrients available in the dirt was very interesting. He also introduces resources to examine the soil composition in your yard and gives his own recommendation for how to balance it out. He also describes the rises and falls or historical civilizations due to the potential of their soils. He also debates the organic grower's movement.It can be a little technical especially when he breaks down the varying elements that the soil should contain but don't let that deter you. It's important to recognize that most of this work is derived from his years of hands on work and self study but he doesn't consider himself a scientist nor an expert on the subject. He, however, does include resources for you to take advantage of and a bibliography to research yourself.The only part that I found distasteful was a completely unnecessary speculation stating that Indigenous people in the Great Plains should have been better able to fight off diseases from English settlers, blaming an unbalanced diet derived from unbalanced soil composition rather than lack of exposure (p 39-40). It felt like blame-shifting. That little slick statement was followed by a brief, typically smug statement about the superiority of European guns and their attempts to tame the land. In my opinion, if you are going to include an opinion like so, at the very least, add a citation. I don't have to like it, but I would like to know where your opinion ends and the historical accuracy begins.

Near the end of his new book, The Intelligent Gardener, long-time garden guru Steve Solomon makes a significant point: "There is no place on this planet that remains free of toxic residues." He then suggests we would be far better off if we quit worrying so much about toxicity and, instead, concentrated on growing and eating nutrient dense food.I've been able to follow, and participate to a degree, in Mr. Solomon's metamorphosis from expert "organic" gardener to expert "nutrient dense" gardener. Solomon, in my opinion, has long been ahead of the pack as evidenced by his books "Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades" and "Gardening When It Counts." Through his early gardening experiences and from starting the Territorial Seed business he devised his Complete Organic Fertilizer (COF) which was an attempt to balance garden soil. COF is still a good way to go for people who don't wish to go any farther and the formula is easily found on the internet. (Also in The Intelligent Gardener pps. 84-85).In the last half dozen years through association with Michael Astera's Nutrient Dense Project and a re-study of the work of scientists like William Albrecht and Victor Tiedjens, Steve Solomon has become a convert to the concept of "nutrient dense."The concept of nutrient dense food is pretty simple. The gardener works over time to balance the soil with the proper mix of minerals. The result will be soil that encourages the life forms (worms, bacteria, etc.) that help with soil symbiosis and soil that provides the nutrients plants need to grow properly. Balanced soil will mean healthier plants, resistant to pests. Balanced soil will result in food that is nutrient dense, providing us with the vitamins and minerals we need to be healthy.Steve Solomon spends a lot of time debunking the concept promoted by J.I. Rodale that compost would solve all problems and that by continuing to heap organic matter on a garden a garden would only get better and better. This is not the case as Solomon explains in detail in a chapter titled: SAMOA (The S*** Method of Agriculture). More important is bringing calcium and magnesium into proper balance. When garden soil is properly balanced, according to Solomon, the garden will create its own nitrates.Balancing calcium, magnesium, potassium, sulphur, sodium and other minerals is the key to nutrient dense food. Getting this balance correct begins with a $20 soil test. Then, with a copy of The Intelligent Gardener in hand, one can use the worksheets provided to come up with a prescription for a custom fertilizer designed for one's own garden. Solomon's colleague and co-author, California gardener Erica Reinheimer has developed a website where you can find copies of the worksheets found in Steve's book. On this same website you will find a link to "OrganiCalc" which allows you, for a small fee, to compute your custom fertilizer prescription on line.

I have been applying what might be called the ‘Solomon Method’, as closely as I am able, for a couple of years now. I’m pleased with the results and I intend to go on using it.The method is based on the pioneering work of the American agronomist, Professor William Albrecht. He discovered a relationship between leaching of soils - due to high rainfall or humidity - and the nutrient content of crops grown in them. From the 1930s onward, when the accepted wisdom was that crops required just nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, with lime to counteract acidity, Albrecht was demonstrating that a much wider range of elements, crucially in the correct balance with each other, were essential to the nutritional value of food crops, and those elements were likely to be deficient in leached soils.Albrecht and his followers such as Michael Astera are largely unknown in the UK, so Steve Solomon has done growers here a service by building on their findings and translating them into a method that can be used by gardeners. More than that, he has scanned a substantial number of relevant documents, including Albrecht’s Soil Fertility and Animal Health, and made them freely available on his website, soilandhealth.org.Basically the ‘Solomon Method’ shows how to determine which elements are deficient or excessive in your soil, and how to formulate a corrective prescription. It goes on to advise on sources of the necessary elements, enabling you to mix a compound fertiliser that is unique to your soil type. As long as care is exercised in sourcing the necessary ingredients there is nothing in this approach that runs counter to standard organic practice.So why have I only given The Intelligent Gardener three stars? Largely because it’s of limited practical value to UK growers, for a couple of reasons. The method requires that you get your soil analysed as a first step, and it assumes that the testing regime will be one known as Mehlich 3. The book warns that any other method will not give comparable results, and in fact it endorses a single US laboratory that uses it. I may be wrong but as far as I know no UK laboratory uses Mehlich 3 to assay the full range of elements, so the test results will be at best an approximation to the values that are to be used to formulate a soil prescription.Second, many of the fertiliser ingredients that Solomon recommends are not readily available in small quantities, if at all, in the UK. These include Azomite, langbeinite, soft rock phosphates, feathermeals and others. In their absence formulating a compound organic fertiliser is not at all easy.Finally, oh dear, there is his writing style. He’s certainly a man who can bear a grudge, as his relentless sniping at Jerome Rodale, one of the founding fathers of the US organic movement, attests. His casual sideswipes at vaccination and his assertion that the principal cause of the decline of First Nation populations in the US was a poor diet and not diseases introduced by settlers, set my teeth on edge, and I think are likely to irritate other UK readers.So, for anyone really interested in the subject and willing to work hard at the necessary soil chemistry while looking beyond his infuriating homespun whimsy, this book could be a good investment. For anyone else I would recommend Erica Reinheimer’s website, growabundant.com. It will provide much of the information in The Intelligent Gardener, in a more measured way.

This book is a revalation for anybody who is looking for a science led approach to healing themselves through their diet.Incredible book worth 3x the money and you only have to buy it once!!!!

If you are interested in alternative methods for gardening then this is an excellent book. I really like Steve Solomons way of explaining his methodology and it is clear over his different texts he is not afraid to admit mistakes which i really admire in a writer.

Inteesting if a little crazy

If the right minerals are not present and available in your soil, they won't be in your plants or you. Anybody who is growing a significant proportion of their own food will learn a lot from this book.