The Art of Balancing Soil Nutrients: A Practical Guide to Interpreting Soil Tests

Great beginner's book

Great book for balancing soils, easy to comprehend and follow

It is very good because has examples and explanation is good also.

If you ever wanted to better understand what inputs effect in your garden, this is a great book! By better understanding the processes and effects of inputs, I no longer need or want to just buy a fertilizer or input that I can "throw and hope"! He breaks it all down in simple sections that are not too overwhelming and are easily revisited.

Good information. Learning all I can about gardening

Author did a great job showing good quantified results from personal studies he has done. Well worth the reading through this.

This is a decent place for a novice to start with interpretation of soil test results. The first half of the book is spent on a pretty basic overview of the function of nutrients and general ideas for balancing them in different soil types. The entire 2nd half of the book is sample test results and an accompanying analysis (ie: practical examples). I have a few problems with the text. Personally I'm not a fan of reprinting material verbatim that is available for free online - it just always feels lazy to me. Woven into the 1st half of the text are brief essays that were previously published in the Logan Labs soil newsletter. I also found it very annoying that the sample soil test results often appear many pages after they are initially discussed. I'd rather see the results up front and have the analysis follow so that I can bookmark the result and move back and forth - rather than trying to skim ahead and find it. I also wish the 2nd half of the book had been distilled into a more abstract ruleset. The practical examples are nice (and will be particularly helpful for some people) but I would rather have an entire book devoted to that (some kind of workbook or companion) and have a more compact and incisive work just on the logic/rules/approach to interpretation. It's not bad and it does live up to its description: it's practical and it does offer good advice. I would say that if you're spending money on a soil test and getting back very basic analysis or none at all - then this will be money well spent. But the book could be much better than it is. More detailed, denser, concise, smaller print, etc.

Very good book, walks the reader through a lot of real world examples which I found very useful.

👍

It's just ok. Plenty of soil test reports. Actual Guide to manage ratios is poor. Please buy only if your interested in seeing soil tests and there references.

Painful to read. Table are sometimes several pages away from their references in the text. Doesn't really give you a method on how to use the data you get from the lab, for that purpose I would strongly recommend Steve Solomon's book "The intelligent gardener" who also make a strong case of why to balance your soil. I'm very disappointed by The art of balancing soil" and would not recommend it.