Soil & Compost
Smelly compost: why it happens and how to fix it
An ammonia or rotten-egg smell means too many wet greens and not enough air. How to rescue the pile, and how to build the next one so it doesn’t happen again.
Ruth Okafor · · 4 min read
Ruth Okafor
Living Soil
Garden Solutions
Ruth Okafor
Living Soil
Garden Solutions
Printed book
Living Soil
How garden soil works, how to test it, and how to rebuild tired or difficult ground
by Ruth Okafor, soil scientist
$65
Free US shipping over $100- Ships in 1–2 business days, arrives in 3–5 business days
- Free US shipping over $100
- 30-day returns
About the book
Fertilizer can feed a crop for a season, but it can’t fix a soil that has stopped working: compacted, short of organic matter, with little life in it. Living Soil explains how garden soil works, from sand, silt and clay to the fungi and earthworms that build its structure, and how to rebuild it with methods that fit a home garden and a home budget.
Ruth Okafor starts with what you can observe yourself: the jar test for texture, the spade test for structure and worms, a simple pH kit. Then she explains how to take a sample for a lab and read the report line by line, including lead in city soils. The practical chapters give quantities and timings for hot and cold compost, worm bins, leaf mold, mulch, cover crops and no-dig beds, and a chapter on problem soils deals with heavy clay, sand, alkaline desert ground and caliche, acid soils and compacted new-build yards.
This isn’t a chemistry textbook. Concepts are explained with garden examples and drawings, and the numbers are the ones you need, such as how many inches of compost to spread or when to cut a cover crop. Soil changes over seasons, not weeks: most gardens improve noticeably by the second year, and the book closes with a three-year plan to follow. Living Soil Masterclass covers the same ground on video.
What’s included
- 256 pages, clothbound, with drawings and worked examples throughout
- Home tests for texture, structure and pH, and how to read a lab report line by line
- Hot and cold compost, worm bins and leaf mold, with materials, quantities and timings
- Cover crop mixes for fall and summer, with seeding rates and when to cut
- Problem soils: clay, sand, alkaline, acid, caliche and compacted fill
- A three-year plan for rebuilding any garden soil
Who it’s for
- Gardeners whose yields keep falling despite fertilizer
- Anyone gardening on heavy clay, sand, caliche or compacted new-build soil
- Compost makers who want to understand what they’re feeding
Contents
14 chapters · 256 pages
Clothbound hardcover, 7 × 10 in. Ships in 1–2 business days.
- 1What soil is made of
- 2Sand, silt and clay
- 3Structure, pores and water
- 4The life in the soil
- 5Testing at home and at the lab
- 6Reading a soil report, line by line
- 7Organic matter and how to build it
- 8Compost, hot and cold
- 9Worms, leaf mold and bokashi
- 10Mulch
- 11Cover crops for gardens
- 12Digging less
- 13Problem soils
- 14A three-year plan
About the author
Ruth Okafor
Soil scientist
Works with community farms and home growers on soil testing, compost and cover crops, from heavy clay to desert sand.
Common questions
From the journal
Soil & Compost
Mulching the vegetable garden: when to do it and what to use
Straw, shredded leaves, cardboard or plastic: how to choose a mulch, how thick to spread it and why it pays to wait until the soil has warmed up.
Ruth Okafor · · 4 min read
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