All New Square Foot Gardening

All New Square Foot Gardening

Do you know what the best feature is in All New Square Foot Gardening?

Sure, there are ten new features in this all-new, updated book. Sure, it’s even simpler than it was before. Of course, you don’t have to worry about fertilizer or poor soil ever again because you’ll be growing above the ground.

But, the best feature is that anyone, anywhere can enjoy a Square Foot garden. Children, adults with limited mobility, even complete novices can achieve spectacular results.

But, let’s get back to the ten improvements. You’re going to love them.

The Vegetable Gardeners Bible Discover Eds High Yield W O R D System for All North American Gardening Regions

The Vegetable Gardeners Bible Discover Eds High Yield W O R D System for All North American Gardening Regions

Discover the last W.O.R.D. in vegetable gardening with Ed Smith’s amazing gardening system. By integrating four principles — Wide beds, Organic methods, Raised beds, and Deep beds — Smith reinvents vegetable gardening, making it possible for everyone to have the best, most successful garden ever. By following this complete system you cultivate deep, powerful soil that nourishes plants and discourages pests and disease. The result is fewer weeds, healthier plants, and lots of great-tasting vegetables. Plus, you’ll enjoy gardening as you never have before. The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible — the last W.O.R.D. in vegetable gardening.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars The Gardener’s Bible
Bravo! Been gardening off and on for years, but didn’t know there was a book out there which makes gardening soooooooo easy!!! Buy the book, till your garden area, and follow the simple easy directions to create a veggie/herb garden that will have your neighbors drooling and your kitchen full of all things good.

5 Stars Informative Gardening Instruction
There was a detailed negative review that almost turned me off from buying this book. I’m glad I thought twice. What the normal vegetable grower doesn’t find here you could only find in a plants genetics college course. It covers most vegetables individually, your garden or fields as a whole, soil nutrients, composting, which plants to put next to each other (and which to not put together), common pests and diseases and what to do about them, and has plenty of pictures. I would even recommend this book for a small vegetable and fruit farmer. It has helped me with my melon crops with things I hadn’t thought about, like different ratios of fertilizer at different times of the plant’s growth. QUITE detailed. This book is also entertaining. I enjoy reading when the author loves what he is writing about.

5 Stars best gardening book
I am new to gardening and this book is the best I have come across. I covered every topic from building beds to companion gardening for pest control. I was very impressed and found this book to be very helpful.

5 Stars One of the BEST Gardening books to reference
This book is full of sustainable gardening information, from picking the garden site, to digging it up, to starting seeds, transplanting seeds, fertilzation, composting etc. It also includes garden bed pictures and graphs. The best part is that it is easy to understand and user friendly. Very comprehensive book. I am an experienced gardener but wanted to get away from the single row garden so I originally borrowed this book from the library for more information but after reading it will definately be purchasing it!

5 Stars If I could have only one gardening book, this would be it.
Like most gardeners, I have a ton of gardening books. Some are general like this one, but many are specific to one genus of plants. Of the general vegetable gardening book, this is the one book I use over and over again.

When I bought it I thought I was mostly interested in the garden construction and bed layout parts of the book, but now I keep coming back for the individual garden crop information at the back. Using ideas from this book, my vegetable garden has been much more productive than ever before and has taken less time, water and personal attention than ever.

I have converted an unused area to Ed’s system rather than try to remake my old row-style garden. No more rototilling for me, fewer weeds and more food from the same square footage. Easier to drip irrigate too.

There is good information about succession planting too, which will make any garden more productive. Ed tells you when to sow seeds for crops throughout the season. With this approach you will always have new plants ready to fill in the holes left by harvesting root and leaf crops.

I was inspired to try Artichokes as a direct result of the information in the crop section and had more than I could use from just 6 plants in my zone 6 upstate NY garden. Perennial crops like Asparagus and Rhubarb are not ignored like they are in many other books. Many greens and most common herbs are included too.

There is no aspect of vegetable gardening that’s not included here, even storing the harvest, discouraging animal pests and composting. I would not hesitate to recommend this book to any gardener or anyone interested in growing their own food for the first time.

A good, old-fashioned common-sense approach with the added modern benefit of great color pictures and diagrams. If I could have only one gardening book, this would be my choice.

Good luck and happy growing!

Buy/More Info

Animal Vegetable Miracle A Year of Food Life P S

Animal Vegetable Miracle A Year of Food Life P S

Starred Review. [Signature]Reviewed by Nina PlanckMichael Pollan is the crack investigator and graceful narrator of the ecology of local food and the toxic logic of industrial agriculture. Now he has a peer. Novelist Kingsolver recounts a year spent eating home-grown food and, if not that, local. Accomplished gardeners, the Kingsolver clan grow a large garden in southern Appalachia and spend summers “putting food by,” as the classic kitchen title goes. They make pickles, chutney and mozzarella; they jar tomatoes, braid garlic and stuff turkey sausage. Nine-year-old Lily runs a heritage poultry business, selling eggs and meat. What they don’t raise (lamb, beef, apples) comes from local farms. Come winter, they feast on root crops and canned goods, menus slouching toward asparagus. Along the way, the Kingsolver family, having given up industrial meat years before, abandons its vegetarian ways and discovers the pleasures of conscientious carnivory.This field—local food and sustainable agriculture—is crowded with books in increasingly predictable flavors: the earnest manual, diary of an epicure, the environmental battle cry, the accidental gardener. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is all of these, and much smarter. Kingsolver takes the genre to a new literary level; a well-paced narrative and the apparent ease of the beautiful prose makes the pages fly. Her tale is both classy and disarming, substantive and entertaining, earnest and funny. Kingsolver is a moralist (”the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners”), but more often wry than pious. Another hazard of the genre is snobbery. You won’t find it here. Seldom do paeans to heirloom tomatoes (which I grew up selling at farmers’ markets) include equal respect for outstanding modern hybrids like Early Girl.Kingsolver has the ear of a journalist and the accuracy of a naturalist. She makes short, neat work of complex topics: what’s risky about the vegan diet, why animals belong on ecologically sound farms, why bitterness in lettuce is good. Kingsolver’s clue to help greenhorns remember what’s in season is the best I’ve seen. You trace the harvest by botanical development, from buds to fruits to roots. Kingsolver is not the first to note our national “eating disorder” and the injuries industrial agriculture wreaks, yet this practical vision of how we might eat instead is as fresh as just-picked sweet corn. The narrative is peppered with useful sidebars on industrial agriculture and ecology (by husband Steven Hopp) and recipes (by daughter Camille), as if to show that local food—in the growing, buying, cooking, eating and the telling—demands teamwork. (May)Nina Planck is the author of Real Food: What to Eat and Why (Bloomsbury USA, 2006).
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Enjoyable, Engaging, and Educational!
This is one of my favorite books of the year! It reads like a novel, and I didn’t want to put it down. That’s high praise for a non-fiction book that educates about the health of our food and the economy, and how directly they are linked.

5 Stars Back to the Simple Life
I’m sorry to say, when I first read the title of the book “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life” it sounded too boring for me to even pick it up. But one day, when I had run out of audio books to listen to, during my long commute, this book fell into my hands again. So I decided, this audio book would be better than having nothing at all to listen to.

Now I am glad I gave this book a chance, because it was a very interesting and inspiring story. In this non-fiction narrative Barbara Kingsolver, her husband and two daughters embark on a one year project to live off the land. Anything they consumed would have to be grown or raised by them, or by local farmers. Barbara’s husband and her oldest daughter also contributed articles to the book, sharing what their experience of living in season and becoming self sufficient was like. They cover topics as diverse as: growing heirloom veggies, heritage livestock, cheese-making, bread-making and turkey sex.

Barbara Kingsolver read the audio book edition and I found her voice to be very pleasant and not preachy at all (as another reviewer suggested).She didn’t try to impose any of her values on the readers, rather she just let us in to see how one can live differently.

I thought “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” was a great introduction to living and eating in sync with nature and it gives you a basic idea of what it takes to live off the land. It’s not a How-To book, so don’t expect any detailed instructions of building your own farm. For that I would suggest “The Backyard Homestead” by Carleen Madigan.

5 Stars A Must Read For Everyone
This is the first Barbara Kingsolver book I’ve ever read and it’s amazing! I couldn’t put it down. She writes so wonderfully, everyone should sample a bit of her work. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a must-read for anyone interested in where their food comes from…and that should be everyone.

5 Stars Inspires Me to Eat Local!
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a tale by Barbara Kingsolver of how she and her family lived for a solid year eating primarily local foods. Most of it she grew herself in her back yard garden, but she also went to local farmer’s markets and bought food grown by her local area.

Some might complain that Barbara was “able” to grow her own food for this project, as she owns several acres of farmland in a rural area. However, the point of her story wasn’t that we all had to grow our own food - just that we should try to eat local food, whoever grew it. She was quite happy to visit other markets. Also, I know many people who grow tomatoes in their sunny windows, cucumbers on their tiny back porch, and herbs in every corner of their home. We all have the potential to grow at least some food, if we just make the effort.

Barbara is helped in her tale telling by her husband and teenaged daughter. The trio of them provide amazingly useful information, background data, recipes and more. You learn how to go foraging for mushrooms, how to cook in season, how to plan ahead so that you have plenty of food in the winter without eating items flown in 2,000 miles.

Many people in modern times don’t even know what is “in season” and then complain that cucumbers cost a lot in March. Of course they do! For most of us, March is NOT cucumber growing season! Those cukes must have been flown in from some far away location, and you are paying the cost of all that shipping. Never mind that the cukes won’t taste as good as fresh cukes do.

Again, the solution laid out here is NOT to run off to a rural landscape and buy several acres of land and try to survive on it. Barbara is simply showing it is possible to do that. Many people work from home, and they can easily have gardens in whatever land or windows or stairs are available. Many towns and cities have community gardens, too, where you can grow items in perfect soil.

So, back to the story. Barbara does a great job of addressing issues right while she speaks about things. She talks about a family who has lost a son recently, and the uncomfortable feeling she has as they help her with chicken-slaying day. She talks about the issues and benefits of a vegan lifestyle. She talks about the trade-off between tobacco farmers surviving on a crop and the medical issues of smoking it.

I found it extremely inspiring that a family COULD survive by eating only local food in this day and age. I read this in March and there are no local farmer stands open near me, though! The supermarkets don’t seem to stock a lot of local food. I will have to start my own local quest in May when the season really starts up, and then make an effort to freeze and can in the summer when food is plentiful. That way when winter comes around again I am all set - just like my grandparents used to do! It will save me a lot of money, save me time at the supermarket, and help to support my community and the environment.

A great solution all around!

5 Stars this is a very useful book
This is a great book! I have read it three times already and plan to read it more. It teaches you how to live and eat within your local area. Thus it helps me save energy and help the environment. It has good recipes which I am eating my way though–now.

It gives me a much clearer picture of my environment and how to help it.

Buy/More Info

Root Cellaring Natural Cold Storage of Fruits and Vegetables

Root Cellaring Natural Cold Storage of Fruits and Vegetables

Anyone can learn to store fruits and vegetables safely and naturally with a cool, dark space (even a closet!) and the step-by-step advice in this book.

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars good overview
It had a lot of good tips. Some information was random, like how a guy turned a truck into a root cellar, but the rest was really useful. I liked how they explained what each different fruit or veggie needed for storage, so you can do a quick lookup of what you have on hand and what you need to do. they also addressed how to provide cold dry and cold wet storage, which was great, along with the whole “apple and potato” storage issue. This one is going on my shelf for future reference.

4 Stars Adding to my interest in self-sufficiency….
My most recent interests all revolve around this new desire that I have to become more self-sufficient. ‘Root Cellaring’ by Mike and Nancy Bubel, was the first of a new stack of books that I have delved into, and I must say that it offered wonderfully practical advice. Usually, I try to get the more up-to-date books on the subject, because of current events that lead to better advice, but this one seems to be ageless. Dig a hole, put shelves in the garage, find a corner of the basement - how to store veggies, what kinds to grow in order to ensure successful storage and a whole chapter of recipes at the end. Very good advice, and well written.

5 Stars Great book!
My husband and I are both enjoying this book, and getting a lot of useful information from it. We’re looking forward to building our new home so that we can build our own root cellar. This book will come in very handy.

5 Stars atork
Very Solid little book. If you desire to learn about natural cold storage this is the book for you. Good info. Good illustrations and good stories about many different peoples personal root cellars. The book covers everything from what varieties of fruits and vegetables store best to the many different styles of cellars people have built. The simple pictures in this book are worth a thousand words. If you are planning on building a root cellar you should own and read this book.

5 Stars The classic root cellar book
An older book, but I think it is the standard. As an urban gardener, this is a great idea book for root cellars. Many of the designs and most of the ideas are usable in very limited spaces.

Each year we have a large batch of root and cool weather storage vegetables from our CSA. Next year we’ll be putting in a cellar based on a pair of the designs in this book.

Buy/More Info

Seed to Seed Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners

Seed to Seed Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners

Seed to Seed is a complete seed-saving guide that describes specific techniques for saving the seeds of 160 different vegetables. This book contains detailed information about each vegetable, including its botanical classification, flower structure and means of pollination, required population size, isolation distance, techniques for caging or hand-pollination, and also the proper methods for harvesting, drying, cleaning, and storing the seeds. Seed to Seed is widely acknowledged as the best guide available for home gardeners to learn effective ways to produce and store seeds on a small scale. The author has grown seed crops of every vegetable featured in the book, and has thoroughly researched and tested all of the techniques she recommends for the home garden. This newly updated and greatly expanded Second Edition includes additional information about how to start each vegetable from seed, which has turned the book into a complete growing guide. Local knowledge about seed starting techniques for each vegetable has been shared by expert gardeners from seven regions of the United States-Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast/Gulf Coast, Midwest, Southwest, Central West Coast, and Northwest.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Great book! A must have for any SERIOUS gardner.
This book is a must have for anyone who wants to take gardening to the next level. Truly a must have!

5 Stars Great Book
Highly recommended book, great for anyone serious about growing food for themselves now and in the coming hard times.

5 Stars THE reference for seed sewing and saving!
This is the most authoritative and in-depth book on seed sewing, growing, and saving that I have ever read. It is not a picture book or a basic introductory book - rather this is the book you go to when you have a specific plant, and you’re not sure how to start the seeds, or how long the seeds will keep in storage, or how exactly to capture pollen and hand pollinate plants when your natural pollinators are absent.

It has an overview of seed propagation and breeding information, including things like how pollination works, and what the different kinds of pollinators are, different kinds of seed processing techniques, how to store the seeds, and then it goes into an in-depth, family by family, plant by plant, everything you ever needed to know guide. This was very useful when I wanted to grow corn, and everyone said you can’t grow corn if you only have a few plants. What I found was, you can grow corn, you just have to make sure you help the pollination along (and she shows you how in illustrations), and you probably won’t get good results from any seeds you save because corn plants need a wide variety of genes to be healthy. But growing seeds from a packet - only a little hand holding needed.

I have also found that this book has useful information on growing plants, and which varieties work well in which region. When I was looking up corn, it talked about which varieties to grow in New England, what problems are prevalent in New England, and how to deal with the various pests in the area. When I wanted to save my sunflower seeds for a tasty snack - she showed me the best time to pick the flowers, how to keep them away from the squirrels (and blue jays, and other critters), and how to dry them so the seeds were easier to separate. When I was curious as to why some of my black beans actually looked like the nearby empress beans, this book had the answer, and also what to expect if I actually wanted to try to plant them.

The only thing I would wish for more of is illustrations. She gives descriptions on how to pick and process each type of seed, but sometimes I wasn’t sure if I had the right plant, or if it was THIS part or THAT part. In some cases (such as the corn pollination), there were illustrations to help, but sometimes I wished for more.

If you are looking for a single reference book on seed sewing, seed saving, plant breeding, or seed varieties that are best for your area - this is the book for you. A very well done, very authoritative and detailed book.

5 Stars Essential Book
This is a great wealth of information for anyone interested in seed saving and heirloom fruits and vegetables. I have also been reading “The Plant Propagator’s Bible” to further my nurseryman skillz.

5 Stars Very Great Book
This book is a perfect reference for anyone interested in seed saving from vegetables. I purchased this book not knowing a single thing about seed saving and have learned heaps of useful knowledge from it. This is truly THE essential book for seed saving, but the majority of the content in this book is most likely to be used as reference for when the time for implementing the ideas approaches. And also, there are loads of pictures which really help for visual learners, a great example of the good pictures is the section on seed saving from tomatoes using the fermentation technique.

Well, this is a superb book and has quality, and quantity of things to seed save from. Highly recommended. 5/5

Buy/More Info

Next Page »