It was an interesting book about the importantance of having healthy soil. And how it's being depleted. It was very stat heavy and very well researched.

Restoring your soil is one of the most important tasks a farmer, homesteader, or home gardener can do. This is a handy reference guide on a topic that can be hard to find literature on. "The Complete Guide To Restoring Your Soil" is a great jumping-off point for tangible steps to improve soil ASAP. Soil regeneration happens at glacial slows speeds typically but all knowledge and action inches progress forward. I am very much down the soil rabbit hole in my own life and it is handy to have a printed field -guide in hand.

The title of this book doesn't really represent the content. Instead of an approachable guide for home gardeners, this is geared more toward farmers. Strickler also spends a lot of the book talking about ecology and the science behind soil--which makes sense, given his agronomy degree, but isn't quite what the cover advertises. A good read for professional food growers and others who need a comprehensive look at soil.

My husband and I are amateur, backyard gardeners. I had been so looking forward to reading Restoring Your Soil as we use the same small plot of ground each year, and worried about depleting its nutrients. I was disappointed not by the lack of information contained in this book, but rather by the over abundance of it. Where I was seeking a step-by-step guide, something easily read and followed, what I discovered was more like a textbook for people with a background in agriculture. Even though the book did not meet my needs, I have rated it four stars because, as far as I am able to understand, I believe the book to be well written for its intended audience.

I am grateful to have received a complimentary copy of Restoring Your Soil from Storey Publishing via NetGalley without obligation. All opinions expressed here are my own.

I wasn't expecting this to be so geared toward professionals It was filled with useful and relevant information but it wasn't really for the household gardener, it was more large scale than that.

2.5/5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Storey Publishing for sending me a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Soil is an issue that should concern everyone: it’s the foundation to every aspect of our lives, whether you are consciously aware of it or not. Our current farming practices (whether you are looking at a local, national, or global scale), are overall not sustainable in the long-term and changes need to be made. Restoration of our soils is vitally important to our future, and not just because an overwhelming amount of our food security depends on agricultural land.

This book seems to have two main focuses: describing the elements that make the ideal soil (for farming, anyway), and convincing the reader that no-till and rotational grazing are the way forward. It does feel as if the intended audience is large-scale farmers in the Corn Belt, but there are some examples feasible for smaller farms or home gardens and a section on small-scale (less than 10 acres) no-till farming in Ghana.

There are so many aspects of this book that should have made this a 5-star read for me, and the author and I agree on a lot, but unfortunately most of this book just didn’t work for me. I have a degree in Natural Resources and Rangeland Ecology, and several soil science courses were a requirement of that. While I don’t have a ‘traditional’ range science job, my knowledge is put to use on my family homestead and large home garden. I do not claim to be an expert in soils (or necessarily up-to-date with cutting-edge research), but I do at least have a background and a bit of experience with managing some soils.

Let’s begin, though, with my favorite parts. The strongest parts of this text, I felt, were the informational side bars. They were engaging and interesting and I wish each had been given more space to be expanded on. Two of my favorite side bars were the role of the water cycle in climate change and the best crops to begin no-till farming.

The hands-down, best part of this book was the section on the author’s dream silvopasture farm (part of Chapter 12). I LOVED getting to see exactly how the information covered in the book would be adapted and put to practical use. The author did mention that this is his dream future farm, so I would have appreciated a quick note of why this is a “future” farm instead of a current one (and, if parts of the silvopasture farm are currently in practice on the current farm, it would be nice to know). If the whole book had been structured around the dream silvopasture farm (ie. use an example from the dream farm and then explain why it was the right solution for a particular problem, and why it would work), I think the book as a whole would have been much more engaging and effective.

Now, unfortunately, for the parts that didn’t work for me.

My primary issue with this text is the lack of basic information on soil identification. This is the first soil book I’ve read that hasn’t insisted on digging a soil pit and figuring out your local soil profile. In fact, soil profiles (and soil taxonomy in general) aren’t even mentioned. While the entire second section of the book (and 5 of the 13 chapters) was devoted to what makes an “ideal” soil, at no point was it mentioned how to do a soil test, determine soil texture, or even identify what kind of soil you have. Do you need to be able to classify each soil horizon in order to have a productive soil? No. But how can you make restoration decisions if you can’t recognize what your soil needs? Being able to identify your soil can give you an incredible amount of information on soil history and management strategies so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. The chapters that make up Part II: What Is The Ideal Soil? in this text provide valuable information…but only after you know how your soil compares.

Second, whether it was intended or not, this text implies several things: the largest being the overwhelming assumption that your soils may be degraded now, but at one point in the past they were excellent, productive soils (or at a very minimum decent productivity). My local soil is the series “Windygap” which belongs to the Xeric Haplohumults in the Utisols order and is characterized by red clay. My soils have never been - and never will be - the fertile “black gold” Mollisols you think of when you hear the of “great” or “productive" soil. Management styles might have some crossover between soil orders, but they are not identical.

Another difficulty I had with this text was the changes in tone: it seems to alternate at will between college professor (niche academic, where the ‘speaker’ is not part of the reader’s audience) and conversational neighbor (where the ‘speaker’ is part of the reader’s audience and with common terms such as ‘drought’ explained)…without successfully integrating the two.

Finally, I do feel the title is misleading. While I know authors sometimes don’t get to choose their titles, the introduction of this text mentions it is not intended as a comprehensive overview and rather a starting point for soil restoration. With that said, the reader should at least feel everything has been satisfactorily covered, and I felt there were missing sections (such as how to adapt management for different factors, like drought conditions, and how this text wants to be the first book on soil restoration, but then doesn’t cover how to determine if - or how much - your soils need to be restored).

Overall, this text does have a lot of valuable information in it and raises some good questions, but without covering the basics of soil identification, general assumptions and changes in tone (whether intended or not), and the feel of a misleading title, I don’t think it’s nearly as effective as it could be. Although I did not enjoy this book as much as I wish I had, thank you again to NetGalley and Storey Publishing for the privilege of reviewing an ARC.

The Complete Guide to Restoring Your Soil is a well written and layman accessible guide to soil building and restoration by Dale Strickler. Due out 26th Oct. 2021 from Storey, it's a comprehensive 352 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook formats.

The author is an agronomist with a lot of experience in the field. He explains in the intro that he intended to write the definitive volume on soil-building and discovered along the way that there was already vast amounts of academic research on each facet of the information he originally intended to include. A great deal of the research on soil and the biome was so technical it was difficult to access and understand. The original scope of this book became impossibly huge and he decided to simplify and streamline the concepts into layman accessible and understandable language. In this goal, he has succeeded. This is a book which doesn't go into unnecessary depth on any one facet of soil building, but does manage to give the highlights over a wide spectrum of practical information.

The information is grouped thematically into sections: why build up soil, what ideal soil structure is made of, practice and practical methods for soil-building, and comparisons of previous and possible future improvements in systems and protocols. Graphically appealing and easy to understand, it's full of graphs and tables, simple illustrations, and clear color photographs.

The broad focus here means that not all the information included will be relevant for all (or even most) readers. There are significant takeaways for the home gardener here, but there are also many relevant practices aimed at large scale farmers (and even mega-agribusiness models). The relatively callous treatment of our soil over decades and non-sustainable agricultural methods of post WW2 mean that most people are looking at a real crisis of depleted and infertile land, destroyed microorganism populations, and loss to erosion. This book covers some of the ways to rebuild and turn around the destruction we've wrought before it's entirely too late.

This would be a good choice for public or school library acquisition, gardening groups, maker's and outdoor activity groups, agriculture trade schools, smallholders, and gardeners. There's a lot of good information here.

Four and a half stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

The premise of this book says it’s meant to be a starting point for an ordinary person to learn from, which made it perfect for me. That being said, I felt like this went quite a bit more in depth than just a beginner’s level. It has a lot of information, a bit of it repetitive and some just way too complex. I did enjoy reading it, but I think it could have been a bit more simplified.

Written for US farmers but plenty for gardeners to use

Dale’s book may be written with US farmers in mind but while the scale may differ there is plenty of information that can be scaled down to far smaller plots.

He is passionate about building healthy sustainable soils that support plant growth and healthy varied ecosystems. A lot of this is common sense when you think about it and feels like ‘going back to nature’. The truth is that we shouldn’t have messed with Mother Nature in the first place - she has millenia of experience and definitely knows best.

I found the book full of fascinating information and I learned a lot from reading it. It covers everything from drainage, irrigation, techniques to minimise soil erosion, remove the need for pesticides and fertilizers, and balance soil organisms to maximise plant health, and even how to help fight climate change. Having recently read ‘Finding the Mother Tree’ this really chimed with me and I had many ‘light bulb’ moments of finding things I can use to improve the soil in my own plot while making life easier for me and better for wildlife as well - what’s not to love?

My only niggle with the book is that Dale says that he repeats information to reinforce the messages he’s trying to get across. While I can see his point of view as the information combines to give different insights as he works through the various topics but it does make the book rather long and may put some people off. I think some editing to make it easier to see the key points and a closing summary of key bullet points as an aide memoire and easy reference for readers would help.

Bottom line - This book is full of useful info for anyone who grows plants, has an interest in gardening, wants to encourage wildlife into their garden. Dale show us how important and valuable soil really is to all life on earth and that we can all do our bit to help.

I think this man needs a Nobel peace prize, restoring the soil describes the end of our existence if we don’t act. This book was very good at describing how we got here and what we can do to fix it.

What did I like? This is a very in depth book to use no till gardening to help bring back the topsoil that is speeding up climate change. I’m in agreement that we haven’t learned much from the dust bowl era and that history has a way of repeating itself. Highly informative book and a huge wake up call.

Would I recommend or buy? I’m inclined to recommend this book to anyone I can citing that the four horsemen are imminent at the rate our world is changing. We need to separate ourselves from dependence on grocery stores and put ourselves in survival mode. Sounds a bit much but I’d rather be over prepared than under. Dust storms and flooding could be alleviated using methods in this book. Five stars!

I received a complimentary copy to read and voluntarily left a review!

We owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil which is unfortunately continuously being degraded while the amount of world population depending on it for its survival is exponentially growing. Topsoil doesn’t only grow our food, it plays a major part in the water cycle and climate change.

“The Complete Guide to Restoring Your Soil” is a perfect middle or high school non-fiction text that addresses soil organic matter loss, which is a major contributor to global climate change, famine, war, and disease. It makes an ideal cross-curricular companion text for the recent “Kiss the Ground” documentary. Highly recommended!

I found this book to be really interesting and informative! It is probably a bit dense for the average reader, as it is literally 400 pages about soil, recognizing deficiencies, restoring said soil, and the like. There are some pictures, but not as many as most gardening books I have read. However, if you would love to learn about soil, this book is a fantastic guide. This is the most comprehensive book that I have come across on the subject. This book is perfect for the farmer or dedicated gardener. Each chapter also contains a summary to simplify what was taught into a page.

An overview of industrial farming USA style! I come from an agricultural/equine background and watched as a child, often from the tractorcab as crops were rotated including leaving a field to grass over. What has horrified me is the removal of hedges to make superfields. A reversal of that is something I could get behind!

Conservation messages are often interpreted to require sacrifice—giving up wants, doing without, doing your part. Dale Strickler, multigenerational farmer and agronomist dismantles that assumption with timely and relevant solutions to securing sustainable farming practices in his book, “The Complete Guide to Restoring Your Soil”.

And only a farmer could bring these credible and practical solutions forward. Early in the book, he recounts sage advice from a bumper sticker decades ago which read, “Don’t cuss farmers with your mouth full” and it’s clear: no one else can “climate proof” the agricultural industry than farmers themselves. With full appreciation for the narrowing margins farmers face, he shares his learnings so that others can benefit from the improved yields and climate resilience his methods bring.

Pointing to the biological principles that allow natural ecosystems to thrive, Strickler provides compelling testimony and research to transform monoculture farming (single cash crop) to polyculture (multiple crops in rotation) to sustainable, vibrant, biodiverse “permaculture” in which farming practices coexist within natural systems. It’s a transformation, readers learn, that requires equal parts 1) courage to buck the system, 2) stubbornness to ignore naysayers, and 3) time to observe and adjust. Strickler demonstrates the risk is worth the reward with countless examples of improved yields and decreased reliance (if not reduction) of “jug-based” solutions like herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers.

But we can’t fix what we don’t understand (nor what we can’t see). He devotes nearly half the book to explain what constitutes soil health. Much like a nutrition guide might describe the necessity of various vitamins and minerals for a robust immune system, he examines the physical, chemical, and biological conditions that define healthy, regenerative soils. With this technical foundation in place, he then walks the reader through specific methodologies refined from his practice of “learning by doing” to achieve it.

The transformation begins with a commitment to no-till practices (a point to which I held loosely until his eye-opening comparison between its alternative and road construction methods). He revisits this non-negotiable throughout the book, and rightfully so: tilling destroys matured root systems and their microbial counterparts—critical passageways for water to penetrate the soil vertically as well as for nutrients traveling horizontally between the soil and plants. Above the surface, tilling is just as damaging, accelerating erosion and nutrient depletion. Organic-rich soil begins with parking the plow (and doing so comes with the added benefit of lower fuel consumption).

Having removed such a cornerstone of agricultural tradition, he unpacks detailed strategies to optimize cover crops and their rotation, pasture management, and landform design. Here, his guidance is exhaustive. The plants, readers learn, “fix” depleted soil by replenishing organic content as well as provide supplemental nutrition to grazing livestock (the “contributions” of whom, eliminate the need for most if not all externally sourced fertilizer). Rotating crops ensures soil cover year-round and replenishes a variety of nutrients back to the ground season over season. Other chemical additives such as insecticides are replaced naturally with competing insects as biodiversity increases. He cautions it doesn’t happen overnight, but with consistency and diligence, the monochrome of brown, bare land transitions to wide spectrums of life-giving color and diversity. It’s no wonder Strickler writes with such enthusiasm—he’s seen it for himself!

This comprehensive guide is a must-read for anyone working in industrial agriculture. The climate conscious, gardeners, teachers looking to inspire students in science, and anyone concerned about the future of farming will all benefit from this book’s clear, practical guidance.

Thank you NetGalley, Storey Publishing, LLC, and Mr. Strickler for the opportunity to read and review this advance reader copy.

Dael's book is very well researched and a useful resource. Lots of new facts about the components of soil. Probably for the very keen gardener or farmer rather than flower grower. I learn a huge amount, much of which made sound sense. Recommended.