Oliver, George Sheffield. _Our Friend the Earthworm. _Library no. 26. Emmaus: Rodale Press, 1945. During the 1940s Rodale Press issued an inexpensive pamphlet library; this is one of the series.
Pfeiffer, E.E. _Biodynamic Farming and Gardening. _Spring Valley,
New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1938.
Poincelot, R.P. _The Biochemistry and Methodology of Composting. _Vol. Bull. 727. Conn. Agric. Expt. Sta., 1972. A rigorous but readable review of scientific literature and known data on composting through 1972 including a complete bibliography.
Russell, Sir E. John. Soil Conditions and Plant Growth. Eighth Ed., New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1950. The best soil science text I know of. Avoid the recent in-print edition that has been revised by a committee of current British agronomists. They enlarged Russell's book and made more credible to academics by making it less comprehensible to ordinary people with good education and intelligence through the introduction of unnecessary mathematical models and stilted prose. it lacks the human touch and simpler explanations of Russell's original statements.
Schaller, Friedrich. _Soil Animals. _Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1968. Soil zoology for American readers without extensive scientific background. Shaler was Kuhnelt's student.
Stout, Ruth. Gardening Without Work: For the Aging, the Busy and the Indolent. Old Greenwich, Connecticut: Devin Adair, 1961. The original statement of mulch gardening. Fun to read. Her disciple, Richard Clemence, wrote several books in the late 1970s that develop the method further.
Of interest to the serious food gardener
I have learned far more from my own self-directed studies than my formal education. From time to time I get enthusiastic about some topic and voraciously read about it. When I started gardening in the early 1970s l quickly devoured everything labeled "organic" in the local public library and began what became a ten-year subscription to Organic Gardening and Farming magazine. During the early 1980s the garden books that I wrote all had the word "organic" in the title.
In the late 1980s my interest turned to what academics might call 'the intellectual history of radical agriculture.' I reread the founders of the organic gardening and farming movement, only to discover that they, like Mark Twain's father, had become far more intelligent since l last read them fifteen years back. l began to understand that one reason so many organic gardeners misunderstood Albert Howard was that he wrote in English, not American. l also noticed that there were other related traditions of agricultural reform and followed these back to their sources. This research took over eighteen months of heavy study. l really gave the interlibrary loan librarian a workout.
Herewith are a few of the best titles l absorbed during that research. l never miss an opportunity to help my readers discover that older books were written in an era before all intellectuals were afflicted with lifelong insecurity caused by cringing from an imaginary critical and nattery college professor standing over their shoulder. Older books are often far better than new ones, especially if you'll forgive them an occasional error in point of fact. We are not always discovering newer, better, and improved. Often we are forgetting and obscuring and confusing what was once known, clear and simple. Many of these extraordinary old books are not in print and not available at your local library. However, a simple inquiry at the Interlibrary Loan desk of most libraries will show you how easy it is to obtain these and most any other book you become interested in.