The ByDesignSoil Compost System

Soil is never static. It is always moving-either toward greater stability and resilience or toward increasing dependence.

The ByBesignSoil Compost System presents a practical, succession-based approach to building compost with biological intent. Rather than treating compost as decomposed organic matter alone, Kent Holle explains how compost can be designed to support soil structure, moderated nutrient cycling, microbial diversity, and long-term resilience.

Inside this field guide, you will learn:

• How ecological succession shapes soil biology
• The five pillars of intentional compost design
• How carbon, nitrogen, moisture, oxygen, and time work together
• Practical temperature and turning protocols
• How to select materials according to biological function
• Compost formulations for gardens, market farms, row crops, turfgrass, orchards, and perennial systems
• How to prepare compost extracts and actively aerated compost tea
• How to assess compost maturity and biological quality

Grounded in decades of practical turf and land-management experience, Soil Food Web training, and field observation, this book connects ecological principles with workable composting methods.

This is not a book about chasing maximum heat or following a recipe blindly. It is a guide to understanding direction-where the soil is now, where the growing system needs it to go, and how intentionally designed compost can help move it there.

Compost is not the conclusion.

It is the beginning of direction.