About this item
Great compost is one of the most important secrets of successful organic gardening. In this comprehensive guide, you'll learn everything you need to know about the various methods of composting and how to adapt them to your home and garden. With full-color photographs and easy-to-follow instructions, this will be a welcome addition to every organic gardener's library. Topics covered include: - What you can and can't throw on your compost pile- How to balance nitrogen and carbon in your pile for quick decomposition and rich compost- Buying or building the best tools and containers- Vermicomposting- How to compost indoors- Troubleshooting smelly compost, dry compost, and other problems- How and when to apply the compost to your garden bedsWith growing concerns about the use of pesticides, herbicides, and GMOs in mainstream gardening practices, more and more families are turning to their backyards to grow their own food using methods they know are safe. The need for clear, straightforward instruction on organic gardening techniques has never been greater. With The Organic Composting Handbook, readers will get the information they need to prepare their gardens for healthy, abundant crops.
About the Author
Dede Cummings is a poet/writer, award-winning book designer, publisher, and commentator for Vermont Public Radio. At Middlebury College, she was the recipient of the Mary Dunning Thwing Award and attended the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference as an undergraduate fellow. In 1991, she recieved a fellowship to study with Hayden Carruth at the Bennington Writers' Workshop. In 2013, she returned as a poetry contributor to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference to work on her poetry collection begun in 1978. Her poetry has been published in Mademoiselle, The Lake, InQuire, Vending Machine Press, Birchsong, Connotation Press, Mom Egg Review, Figroot Press, Bloodroot Literary Magazine, Green Mountains Review, Roads Taken: Contemporary Vermont Poetry, and Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection. She was a Discover/The Nation poetry semi-finalist. In 2016, she was awarded a writer's grant and a partial fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. Her first poetry collection entitled To Look Out From was the winner of the 2016 Homebound Publications Poetry Prize and was published in the spring of 2017. Her second poetry collection, The Meeting Place, was published in spring 2020 by Salmon Poetry. Her nonfiction titles are about holistic and alternative healthy lifestyles: organic gardening, beekeeping, herbal gardening and home remedies. Dede's first book (co-written by naturopath Dr. Jessica Black) , "Living With Crohn's & Colitis" is a bestseller in the field of medical memoir and coping with an incurable autoimmune disease. She is an advocate for people with Crohn's and colitis and has run three half-marathons to raise money for the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America. Dede lives in Vermont on a dirt road, in a solar-powered house her husband Steve Carmichael built, where she designs books and runs Green Writers Press. Her hobbies include hiking, yoga, running, reading, gardening, traveling, and backcountry skiing. Her publishing company, Green Writers Press, is distributed by IPG in Chicago (www.greenwriterspress.com) , and her personal website is https://dedecummingsdesigns.com
