Since I picked up gardening as a hobby, I have installed in June a drip irrigation system on my vegetable beds and tomato container plants. The drip irrigation system is essential if you don’t want to be tied down to water your plants daily, turning a good hobby into a chore. For me, it was prompted by a one and a half week of business travel that resulted in the death of nearly half of my plants. (My delegated helper, my daughter, got sick during the time and neglected to water my plants half way during my drip.)

I read this book hoping I could pick up some nuggets from the author’s experience. And I surely did. The author provided a more scientific approach to how to scale the system and which how many of emitters to use for each branch and for what types of plants or trees. had some insights on the plumbing of the drip irrigation system like the use of anti-siphon devices and filter.

When I reached the end of the book, I wondered if I read the book before I installed the system, I would still continue with the project. Maybe not, as the book seems to make it sound daunting. Unfortunately, the drip irrigation system in retrospect is not a simple DIY project, nor a complicated project that would require a contractor. It’s in between, which makes it a perennial procrastinated project. But the benefit is really worth the effort; I encourage to read the book before you take on installing your own drip irrigation system.

A quick summary:
1. Chapter 1: Why drip irrigation works. The author made a compelling argument that most of aerobic activities take place on the top few inches of soil and is where the nutrients are fed into the plants and where the drip irrigation would do the most good. Also frequent, shallow watering is best, which drip irrigation does the most good.

2. Basic Drip Irrigation Stuff: This goes into the basic structures and elements of a drip irrigation system: anti-siphon, filter , pressure regulator, and emitters (nice explanation of how emitters are made of long tortuous path or complex maze), holders, goof plugs, and etc.

3. Your First Drip Irrigation Project: This goes into how to put the system together step by step.

4. When and How Long to Irrigate: The author presented the scientific/mathematics background on how much water to irrigate, based on ET (Evapotranspiration) rate of your specific area. This took me a while to understand but seems to make sense. But if you’re just starting out, this could be overwhelming. For me, I just adjust the water volume by trials and errors until you’re not drowning the plants nor dehydrating your plants.

5. Hiding and expanding your drip system: If your irrigation system becomes too unsightly for you, you may follow the advises here to hide them.

6. Drip Irrigation for Containers: The author offers some idea to route the tubes through the bottom drainage holes of the container pots or to the top of the pot. Use of mister emitter may be necessary for certain plants.

7. Drip Irrigation for trees and shrubs: Other than routing the drip tubes around the tree on the drip line circle and beyond, the amount of water is critical.

8. Drip Irrigation for Vegetable beds: The use of U branches along the bed with 12″-spaced emitters and cutting an opening for the feeding tub to come in the center are a good suggestion. The author offers another suggestion for a raised without the wood box. Also the use of spiral-pattern distribution is another good idea.

9. Grey Water and Drip: The author discusses the pros and cons of using grey water (waste water from kitchen or urinals) to feed the irrigation system. The use of a special surge tank, filter and special plumbing needed to catch the grey water make it less than practical. I wouldn’t try it. But if you must use the grey water, this chapter serves as a good starting point. More researches are needed.

10. Drip Irrigation with Cistern and Tanks (from raindrops to drip drops): A special tank and down spouts with diverters are needed to catch the raindrops. It’s a good idea if your local weather warrants it with consistent rainfalls. In California where I live, this is not practical.

11. Controlling your drip irrigation: There is some discussion about the use of electronic timer. The author is not really crazy about electronic gadgetry besides the timer information here may be a bit outdated due to rapid advances of electronics nowadays.

12. Keep Your Drip Together: This chapter is about maintaining your drip system. The author recommends flushing of the drip irrigation system every season. This is something new to me but makes senses due to mineral accumulation.

I grabbed this out-of-print book from the library to brush up on pruning to prune the trees/plants during the winter dormant time.

I have been successful at pruning my fruit trees last winter that resulted in a wonderful crop of Fuji apples this summer. Thought I might learn a few more things from the book and I learned there is a science to pruning – not just caring for the direction of the shoots and inside opening that I knew. Overall, this makes a good reference book.

The “tip” bud (the highest bud on each shoot) produces two hormones: one encourages the shoot or grow vertically and the other prevents dormant buds below the tip bud from producing shoots that will compete with it. Wow, what an amazing communication mechanism within the tree.

Various types of flowering shoots:

1. Terminal-flowering shoots (plants the grow only once on the current year’s growth, partially or fully leaved-out before flowering begin)
2. Second-Year Flowering Shoots (current spring’s bloom comes on last year’s growth). They are constantly producing flowers farther and farther from their center. E.g. Peaches
3. Summer Flowering Trees/Shrubs (plants that make new shoot growth in the spring to store up enough food for blooming in the summer through the fall).
4. Spur-type Flowering: flowering at the same location. E.g. apple, plum, cherry and pear.

Tree Shapes:

1. Decurrent and Excurrent Crowns: Decurrent trees are trees with wide, rounded corwns with may tip buds completing for the dominant position are called decurrent trees. Has more than one trunk. Excurrent trees maintain one trunk up through the entire height of the crown – have strong tip-bud dominance at the top of the central trunk.
2. Primary and Secondary Scaffold Shapes: Standard Scaffold, central leader scaffold, open-center scaffold, delayed open-center scaffold.

When to prune:

1. Spring pruning (or dormant or winter pruning): no leaves when stems are still dormant. Can stimulate new branches.
2. Summer pruning: thinning the canopy (reduce the size after all the bloom from spring has died back).
3. Winter pruning: most dangerous time to prune in cold climates. In moderate-winter climate like California, it’s common to complete all pruning by Thanksgiving.

Tools of the Craft: hand clippers, loppers, pole pruner, ladder, large handsaw, chainsaw, hedge clippers, sharpeners, wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses or screened goggles.

Method of pruning: pinching back, shearing, disbudding/rubbing, deadheading.
Anatomy of a proper cut: correct cuts next to the dormant buds, clip for direction, identify the branch collar, cut big branches in 3 steps, removing suckers.

Special measures to encourage growth: I’ve heard about this but it seems counter-intuitive. Notching (scarring) the bark below a bug on a fruit tree can turn a dormant bud into a flower bud. Ringing (removing a strip of bark from around the entire circumference of a branch – width of 1/4″ or less): a courageous measure used for branches that refuse to flower.

The rest of the book goes into detailed pruning techniques per chapter for specific type of plants like roses, perennials, vines, hedges, shrubs, and trees, fruit and nut trees, and espalier. I didn’t bother to read them as they get too specific for me.

As a follow on to the “Teaming with Microbes” book, I decided to dive in more to learn about the biology behind the plants. And lots of biology I’ve got. First, the book is simply beautifully done; it’s made of glossy paper with lots of pictures and diagrams to back up the science. However, the science was over my head. Honestly, I read this book for a week to help with my jet lag during my travel to Asia – it was very effective in putting me to sleep when I couldn’t fall asleep due to the time zone shift. Nevertheless, I did learn something from it. Mainly, the plant is full of miracle of life: the cells, the DNA, and survival mechanism. The theme is the same for all the living things on earth; plants are equipped with the “magic” recipes to sustain themselves and to thrive. The general recipes are described in great details in this book.

The first three chapters are the most difficult barrier to finishing the book because it involves the science and biology of plants and gets pretty boring. Many times I wanted to put down the book and forget about it. But I kept going perhaps because I needed the sleep. I’m not sure if one must go through the first 3 chapters to learn about how the plants consume/digest the nutrients but I suppose they do pave the foundation for later chapters. The rewards were at the end – how to use the fertilizers to provide the nutrients and why. Most of the gardening books would not be able to explain why. But this book achieves its objectives of educating the readers what the plants eat and why. For occasional gardeners this book is not necessary, but for the hard core gardeners who are interested in knowing the biology behind seemingly benign gardening without taking on an agriculture degree this book serves well.

A summary of the book is as follows:

The book starts with the smallest element of the plant – the plant cell. A lot of people learned about this in middle school. I probably did but I either forgot about it or learned in Chinese that are no long retained.

The key structures of the cell: cell wall, aquaporin (protein that assists water transport), cytoplasm (all the stuff inside the plant cell except the nucleus), mitochondria (“power generator” that produces energy from the sugar made from photosynthesis), chloroplasts (one of the 3 plastids, “solar cell” absorbs light then converts CO2 and H2O into sugars and startch), robosomes (sites where messenger RNA sequences are read and proteins are synthesized), Golgi Apparatus (where the final packaging is done, and then molecules are shipped out in vesicles).

Chapter 2 covers the basic chemistry; lots of chemical reactions happen in the plant cells, mostly, exchanging of electrons. Oxidation loses electrons; reduction gains electrons. ATP serves as the currency of energy in plant cells to link chains of molecules during synthesis, makes proteins change shape, break apart water. Enzymes are protein catalysts that increase or decrease the rate of chemical reaction. Diffusion (high concentration to low concentration) and osmosis (diffusion of water: movement of water from low solutes to high solutes) vs. active transport (moved against concentration gradient, which requires energy).

Chapter 3 contains the science behind the plant nutrition. 4 groups of plant cells: meristemic (generic, undifferentiated), vascular (“plumbing pipes” composed of xylem, transports water and nutrients from the root, and phloem, transports water and sugars and others produced by a plant up and down the plant), dermal (provides protection to outer surfaces of a plant, a specialized dermal cells is the root hairs), ground (makes up the bulk of the plant body). Stomata are leaf pores that let in CO2 and let out H2O (evaporation of which is what draws water in). Plants form symbiotic relationships with specialized nitrogen-fixing bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi – partnerships are key for the uptake of nutrients by plants. Why does water enter the plant? Osmosis: more nutrient concentration inside the plant than outside. Sap flows through the phloem to the roots where sugars are stored for the winter. In the spring these stored sap nutrients move from the roots up through xylem. Two parts to the dermal tissue: epidermis (in plants) and periderm (in woody plants or trees). A typical leaf is comprised of the leaf blade or lamina, the petiole (the stalk that attaches the leaf to the stem), leaf axial.

Root cap cells help build the mucilage that lubricates the root and the soil. Mucilage is the mixture of sloughed off root tip cells, exudates from root tips and microbial populations and by-products. It has a great influence on the uptake of metal nutrients like phosphorus, zinc, iron and magnesium.

Chapter 4 covers the nutrients: Macronutrients (needed the greatest amount) mostly carbon dioxide, water (96%) and obtained in mineral form: nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and sulfur. Micronutrients (needed only trace amounts) obtained from the soil such as boron, chlorine, copper, iron, manganese, zinc, molybdenum, and nickle. Only 17 elements are needed to sustain life including ours. Nitrogen is the backbone of amino acids, the structural building blocks of proteins. No nitrogen, no proteins. 78% of atmosphere is made of Nitrogen but not usable by plants. Nitrogen-fixing organisms, diazotrophs, like Rhizobia and Frankia, which converts ammonia (NH4+) from decomposed organic materials to nitrite (NO2-) and then nitrate (NO3-). See the nitrogen cycle (from Wikipedia) below:

Mobility of nutrients: nitrogen, potassium, calcium, and magnesium are more mobile than copper, iron, manganese, nickel, and zinc. Deficiencies of mobile nutrients within plants tend to show symptoms in older leaves, whereas newer leaves and growing tips show signs of deficiencies in less mobile or immobile nutrients.

Chapter 5: Water movement: apoplastic pathway (porous space between the cellulose fibers of cell walls that allows water to travel into a plant without actually entering any cells) and simplastic pathway (guarded by the plasmalemma, which regulates what can enter a cell). Much of this chapter has been repeated from previous ones.

Chapter 6: Nutrient movement through plants. 4 methods of getting nutrients to the root: interception (accidental contacts), mass flow (sponge effect of the root, especially for nitrate), and diffusion (nutrients ions move toward the low-concentration near root), mocrobial partners such as mycorrhizal fungi (seduced by the root exudates of lipids, and carbon-based molecules. Active and passive transport methods to get through the cell membrane barrier. Calcium, sodium, magnesium, aplant-made sugar, and hydrogen ions are all actively transported. Transport protein: channel membrane proteins (tunnel, no energy used) and carrier membrane proteins (requires substances to bind to hem for their movement across the membrane, like enzymes), protein pumps (proton pumps or ATPases). Once inside the plant, nutrients move with water as a result of transpiration. They follow the symplastic or apoplastic pathway until they enter the xylem and are transported up and throughout the plant.

Chapter 7: the molecules of life (the end synthesized products of the nutrients): carbohydrates (glucose: monomer, fuctose, maltose, polysaccharide or starch), proteins (made of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen – amino acids up to 20 types. Make up cells. Enzymes are made by linking mino acids in specific orders), lipids (stores energy – 9 categories of fatty acids: fats, oils, waxes, glycolipids, phospholipids, lipoproteins, steroids, terpenes, and carotenoids) , and nucleic acids (DNA and RNA enables life to replicates itself).

Chapter 8: Soil testing. Use fertilizers based on information obtained by soil testing.

Chapter 9: Factors influencing nutrient availabilities: temperature, pH levels (soil locks up certain nutrients in certain pH range, see lock up charge below from this source), soil aeration, mineral and organic composition (affects the electric charges), soil moisture.

Chapter 10: what and when to feed plants: Natural Nitrogen Fertilizers: bat guando, blood meal, corn gluten meal, feather meal, fish emulsion, fish meal, fish powder, hydrolyzed fish, soy bean meal, chilean nitrate, human hair and urine. Phosphorous fertilizer: bone meal, bad guano, colloidal rock phosphate, and crab shell meal. Potassium: greensand, wood ashes, and sulfate of potash. Calcium: Calcitic limestone, and dolomitic limestone. Micronutrients: shrimp shell meal, kelp meal, kelp powder, and liquid kelp. Biofertilizers: Rhizobia and Frankia (bacteria), Azotobacter and Azospirillum, phosphate-solubilizing bacteria and fungi, mycorrhizal fungi, comopost, earthworm castings, and manures.

My first time with the book review on video: It’s a lot of work but worth a try.

Learned a lot of bacteria and fungi and how they affect the plants – the symbiotic relationship among them. Very interesting. This is a must read for any one aspiring to be have a green thumb – gardener.

The book starts out with the basic science of the food web – how the roots secretes exudates to feed the microbes which in turn feed the the root. The nutrients come from the microbes in the organic world instead of the N-P-K petroleum-based fertilizers.

The food web from USDA.

Chapter 2 goes into the soil science – informative but not very interesting.

Chapter 3 covers the bacteria. Now that’s the half of the magic. The two groups: aerobic and anaerobic bacteria. The good soil smell comes from the volatile chemicals given out by the actinomycetes – particularly adept at decaying cellulose (long chain of carbon-based glucose that gives plants structure) and chitin. The Nitrogen cycle is introduced here.

Chapter 4 covers the fungi. The job of fungi is still mysterious to many scientists and it’s a huge topic by itself. I think this chapter added more confusion than clarification. I’ll find other sources to dig deeper.

Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 cover the Algae and Slim Molds. (Not much there). Protozoa (single-cell organism that eats bacteria), Nematodes (nonsegmented, blind roundworms), antropods (flies, beetles, and spiders), earthworms, and gastropods (snails), reptiles, mammals, and birds.

Part 2: is about applying soil food web science to yard and garden care.

I got the most out of the compost tea making. But for the most parts the following 19 rules are the key points:

1) Some plants prefer soils dominated by fungi; others prefer soils dominated by bacteria.
2) Most vegetables, annuals, and grasses prefer their nitrogen in nitrate form and do best in bacterially dominated soils.
3) Most trees, shrubs, and perennials prefer their nitrogen in ammonium form and do best in fungal dominated soils.
4) Compost can be used to inoculate beneficial microbes and life into soils around your yard and introduce, maintain, or alter the soil food web in a particular area.
5) Adding compost/ compost teas and its soil food web to the surface of soil will inoculate the soil with the same soil food web.
6) Aged, brown organic materials support fungi; fresh, green organic materials support bacteria.
7) Mulch laid on the surface tends to support fungi; mulch worked into the soil tends to support bacteria.
8) If you wet and grind mulch thoroughly, it speeds up bacterial colonization.
9) Coarse, dryer mulches support fungal activity.
10) Sugars help bacteria multiply and grow; kelp, humic and fulvic acids, and phosphate rock dusts help fungi grow.
11) By choosing the compost you begin with and what nutrients you add to it, you make teas that are heavily fungal, bacterially dominated, or balanced.
12) Compost teas are very sensitive to chlorine and preservatives in the brewing water and ingredients.
13) Applications of synthetic fertilizers kill off most or all of the soil food web microbes.
14) Stay away from additives that have high NPK numbers.
15) Follow any chemical spraying or soil drenching with an application of compost tea.
16) Most conifers and hardwood trees (birch, oak, beech, and hickory) form mycorrhizae with ectomycorrhizal fungi.
17) Most vegetables, annuals, grasses, shrubs, softwood trees, and perennials form mycorrhizae with endomycorrhizal fungi.
18) Rototilling and excessive soil disturbance destroy or severely damage the soil food web.
19) Always mix endomycorrhizal fungi with the seeds of annuals and vegetables at planting time or apply them to roots at transplanting time.