A practical back-to-basics guide to achieving food security and financial independence. What if you could really raise or grow all the food your family needs? In this fully illustrated book, you'll learn to create an autonomous, diversified, and sustainable garden and to cultivate and maintain it following the main principles of permaculture. If you want to move towards greater food autonomy and you have sufficient space, you can also grow grains, keep chickens, and have a few beehives. Design and grow a prolific organic vegetable garden Learn how to save seeds from one year to the next Discover techniques for collecting water Read about beekeeping tools and how to use them Learn about chicken breeds and how to keep your birds healthy and happy Gaining food autonomy means depending less on grocery stores and food supply chains. But it is also offers the pleasure of eating healthy and delicious products straight from your land, while respecting the environment.

This fun-filled adventure handbook is bursting with ideas to help kids discover the great outdoors and get closer to nature. Created with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), the UK's leading gardening charity. This beautifully illustrated book is packed fun activities, handy tips and nature facts to encourage children to explore the wonderful world around them. Make a wilderness compass Grow your own herb garden Build a tepee Learn how to read a map Discover more about plants, trees and wildlife Each page is filled with inspiring ideas for discovering and exploring plants and wildlife, with exciting activities for all weathers.

There is nothing quite like growing your own strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, cranberries and currants to provide a reliable crop of the finest taste and quality. In this informative kitchen garden handbook, all the most popular soft fruits are illustrated, with useful information on their origins, growing habits, nutritional content and culinary uses. A techniques section explains how to train and support fruit bushes, pruning, sheltering plants from the weather and harvesting and storing crops. Whether you have a large kitchen garden, a small garden plot with some space in the borders, or room for a few containers, this book is a must for all fruit growers.

This is a directory of varieties and how to cultivate them successfully. It is an illustrated gardener's guide to the different varieties of bulb vegetables, their history and cooking uses. It features step-by-step instructions for preparing the soil, sowing from seed and from sets, and harvesting and storing. It includes practical advice on cultivating a wide range of bulbs, including onions, shallots, garlic, spring onions and scallions, leeks, chives and Florence fennel. It contains helpful hints on how to avoid pests and diseases, and what to do when problems occur. Bulb vegetables have leaves that are adapted to store food reserves below or just above the ground, creating fleshy leaf bulbs. This book describes and illustrates all the main types, and includes useful information about the different varieties that can be grown and their cooking uses. There is practical advice for preparing the soil for new crops, making compost and growing bulb vegetables both from seed and from sets, as well as guidance on growing and caring for vegetables and how to harvest and store them. There are also suggestions for dealing with any pests and diseases.This handy book is suitable for novices and experienced gardeners alike.

Squashes and pumpkins come in many shapes and sizes, and they are particularly tasty when home-grown and eaten soon after harvesting. In this book, the main types are described and illustrated, from marrows and pattypan squashes to butternut squashes and cucumbers. There is key advice on growing and caring for each type, how to harvest and store them, and how to keep plants in good condition by dealing with any pests and diseases. There is also advice on how to carve squashes and pumpkins to make lanterns and other decorations. The book provides reliable information for all gardeners who would like to experiment with new varieties.

What would it take to grow mushrooms in space? How can mushroom cultivation help us manage, or at least make use of, invasive species such as kudzu and water hyacinth and thereby reduce dependence on herbicides? Is it possible to develop a low-cost and easy-to-implement mushroom-growing kit that would provide high-quality edible protein and bioremediation in the wake of a natural disaster? How can we advance our understanding of morel cultivation so that growers stand a better chance of success?For more than twenty years, mycology expert Tradd Cotter has been pondering these questions and conducting trials in search of the answers. In Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation, Cotter not only offers readers an in-depth exploration of best organic mushroom cultivation practices; he shares the results of his groundbreaking research and offers myriad ways to apply your cultivation skills and further incorporate mushrooms into your life whether your goal is to help your community clean up industrial pollution or simply to settle down at the end of the day with a cold Reishi-infused homebrew ale.The book first guides readers through an in-depth exploration of indoor and outdoor cultivation. Covered skills range from integrating wood-chip beds spawned with king stropharia into your garden and building a trenched raft of hardwood logs plugged with shiitake spawn to producing oysters indoors on spent coffee grounds in a 4x4 space or on pasteurized sawdust in vertical plastic columns. For those who aspire to the self-sufficiency gained by generating and expanding spawn rather than purchasing it, Cotter offers in-depth coverage of lab techniques, including low-cost alternatives that make use of existing infrastructure and materials.Cotter also reports his groundbreaking research cultivating morels both indoors and out, training mycelium to respond to specific contaminants, and perpetuating spawn on cardboard without the use of electricity. Readers will discover information on making tinctures, powders, and mushroom-infused honey; making an antibacterial mushroom cutting board; and growing mushrooms on your old denim jeans.Geared toward readers who want to grow mushrooms without the use of pesticides, Cotter takes organic one step further by introducing an entirely new way of thinking one that looks at the potential to grow mushrooms on just about anything, just about anywhere, and by anyone."

The SEED To PANTRY Planner is the first-ever planner that helps readers calculate everything from seed to pantry in order to grow, cook, and preserve a year's worth of food. The SEED To PANTRY Planner is a game changer. No more guessing how many tomato plants are needed to grow to feed a family. DIY farmers simply insert the number of people in their family and get the number of plants that they need to plant. The SEED To PANTRY Planner is an actual yearly planner which helps to keep everything in one place, including month-at-a-glance pages for readers to record appointments along with birthdays and week-at-a-glance pages to record daily to-do lists. Within The SEED To PANTRY Planner, there are: Charts for food preservation through home canning Charts for food preservation through home dehydrating Generous worksheet space Recipe multiplier worksheets Worksheets for prioritizing goals Graphs for planning a garden Seed starting calendars Worksheets to keep track of herbs and roots used medicinally Monthly budget planner worksheets Weekly menu planning sheets that include planning for preserving

Mushroom guru Gary Lincoff escorts you through the cultural and culinary history of the mushroom, hunting and identifying wild mushrooms, mushroom safety, and on to preparing and serving the fungi. Stunning photographs and Lincoff's fascinating anecdotes from the field will make you an instant mycophile. Gathering edible wild food is a wonderful way to forge a connection to the Earth. Mushrooms are the ultimate local food source; they grow literally everywhere, from mountains and woodlands to urban and suburban parks to your own backyard. The Complete Mushroom Hunter, Revised will enrich your understanding of the natural world and build an appreciation for an ancient, critically relevant, and useful body of knowledge. With great expertise, Lincoff provides a complete overview of edible mushrooms: from the mushroom's earliest culinary awakening, through getting equipped for mushroom forays, to preparing and serving the fruits of the foray, wherever you live. Inside you'll find: A brief, colorful history of mushroom hunting worldwide How to get equipped for a mushroom foray A completely illustrated guide to the common wild edible mushrooms and their poisonous look-alikes, with information of psychedelic and psychotherapeutic mushrooms An illustrated guide to medicinal mushrooms Where to find your fare, and how to identify them How to prepare and serve your fungi Thirty delicious recipes Five appendices offer even more mushroom knowledge, with information on how to make mushroom artwork, mushroom cultivation, less common edible varieties, and winter hunting; plus find an essential guide to major poisonous mushrooms, symptoms of poisoning, and treatment. Whether you're just starting out with the hobby or an experienced mycophile looking to add to your collection, The Complete Mushroom Hunter, Revised is your ideal guide.

National treasure and presenter of ITV's hugely popular Love Your Garden, Alan Titchmarsh brings us his month by month almanac of garden knowledge, facts, advice and inspiration. Here is seasonal advice on what to grow and sow, projects to engage in, as well as wildlife to spot, gorgeous gardens to visit, birds and flowers to celebrate, weather notes, and nature to reflect on in poems, music, and books. A beautifully packaged giftbook with illustrations by Alan himself.

Gardening Under Lights details everything a gardener or hobbyist needs to know to garden indoors. Part One starts with the basics of photosynthesis, the science of light, and how to accurately measure how much light a plant needs. Part Two provides an overview of the most up-to-date tools and gear available. Parts Three and Four offer tips and techniques for growing popular ornamental plants (orchids, succulents, bonsai, and more) and edible plants (arugula, cannabis, oregano, tomatoes, and more) independent of the constraints of volatile outdoor conditions. Gardening Under Lights is a highly-detailed, accessible guide for seed starters, plant collectors, and anyone who wants to successfully garden indoors.

There are twenty million acres of lawns in North America. In their current form, these unproductive expanses of grass represent a significant financial and environmental cost. However, viewed through a different lens, they can also be seen as a tremendous source of opportunity. Access to land is a major barrier for many people who want to enter the agricultural sector, and urban and suburban yards have huge potential for would-be farmers wanting to become part of this growing movement. The Urban Farmer is a comprehensive, hands-on, practical manual to help you learn the techniques and business strategies you need to make a good living growing high-yield, high-value crops right in your own backyard (or someone else's). Major benefits include: Low capital investment and overhead costs Reduced need for expensive infrastructure Easy access to markets Growing food in the city means that fresh crops may travel only a few blocks from field to table, making this innovative approach the next logical step in the local food movement. Based on a scalable, easily reproduced business model, The Urban Farmer is your complete guide to minimizing risk and maximizing profit by using intensive production in small leased or borrowed spaces. Curtis Stone is the owner/operator of Green City Acres, a commercial urban farm growing vegetables for farmers markets, restaurants, and retail outlets. During his slower months, Curtis works as a public speaker, teacher, and consultant, sharing his story to inspire a new generation of farmers.

DK brings you an all-encompassing horticultural handbook to fulfil your every leaf and legume! Get your gardening gloves on, as best-selling author Huw Richards takes you on a green-fingered journey to be an undefeated veg-grower! A recent study suggests 38% of British adults use their gardens to grow herbs and vegetables. But with the ever-growing pressure of balancing family life with a career, a lot of today's green-fingered gardeners simply lack time for vegetable growing. Huw is on a mission to change that! Whatever your horticultural hopes may be, Huw Richards brings you a veg-growing guide that is sure to shape the next generation of green-fingered gardeners like never before, full of top tips on smart gardening, without compromising on time, effort or money. With passion in every page, you can enjoy: -Tons of tips and tricks to maximise efficiency of your vegetable gardens -Skillful and solid information to disparage the common myth that gardening requires too much time and effort -Easy to follow step-by-step instructions of fundamental gardening techniques -Visual representations of Huw's innovative ideas to easily apply to your own vegetable garden After the immeasurable success of his first two gardening books 'Veg in One Bed' and 'Grow Food for Free', Huw brings you a riveting third release, full of simple yet effective strategies to leave you with a patch to be proud of! By applying a strategic approach to your veggie patch, from choosing the right compost to using the correct cultivation tools, Huw assures that even the most hapless of gardeners can unearth the endless potential that all gardens possess, no matter the shape or size! Why not stand out from the crowd with this fully-illustrated veggie handbook, and start your intuitive gardening journey today to reap the benefits of a more bountiful harvest. An ideal gift for the green-fingered gardener or budding botanist in your life! With over 500,000 subscribers on YouTube, Huw Richards is keen to share his 17 years' experience on maximising productivity of vegetable patches, so get those gloves on, and join the journey today! Ready, set, let's grow!

Increasingly unpredictable weather patterns and pest infestations are challenging today's vegetable gardeners. But best-selling author Niki Jabbour has a solution: Growing Under Cover. In this in-depth guide, Jabbour shows how to use row covers, shade cloth, low tunnels, cold frames, hoop houses, and other protective structures to create controlled growing spaces for vegetables to thrive. Photographed in her own super-productive garden, Jabbour highlights the many benefits of using protective covers to plant earlier, eliminate pests, and harvest a healthier, heartier bounty year round. With enthusiasm, inventive techniques, and proven, firsthand knowledge, this book provides invaluable advice from a popular and widely respected gardening authority.

Vegetable gardening is happening every-where in cities and suburbs, in farms and schools, in community gardens and at the White House. And it s happening in houses and apartments, on balconies and porches, and anywhere else people can find the space.

Small-Space Vegetable Gardens explains the basics of growing a bounty of edibles in a minimal amount of space. Andrea Bellamy, author of the award-winning blog Heavy Petal, shares all the knowledge she s gained from years of gardening small: how to find and assess a space, and how to plan and build a garden. Bellamy also highlights the top sixty edible plants and offers complete information on how to sow, grow, and harvest them.

This hardworking and enthusiastic guide teaches gardeners how to take advantage of the space they have whether it s a balcony, a patio, a plot in a community garden, or even a small yard to create the food garden of their dreams."

Want to get home-grown spices in the middle of winter? Eat fresh vegetables in the spring? Sow in the summer to harvest in the fall? Lena Israelsson's book, Year-Round Edible Gardening, is a practical guide for those who want to extend their growing season. And double, perhaps triple, their harvest. Growing year-round is possible, and this book can teach you the best methods to do it the right way. Year-Round Edible Gardening includes inspiring and expert tips on which vegetables, herbs, and spices suit the different seasons. Certain plants can even be harvested in the middle of winter if handled correctly. Others, like microgreens, herbs, and hydroculture, can create the perfect indoor gardens. This book will teach readers to know the difference between cold and hot weather plants, which growing methods are best suited for different plants, and when to plant and harvest. They'll learn about sowing; coverage with plastic, glass, or fiber weaves; and fertilization-creating a fruitful and fertile soil is the linchpin of all cultivation and one of the book's most important parts.

In "Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardener's Hand-book", authors Ron and Jennifer Kujawski take the guesswork out of gardening with weekly to-do lists that break gardening down into easily manageable tasks. Suitable for all gardening zones, the book offers easy instructions for set- ting up a personalized schedule based on your last frost date. The Kujawskis are an inspiring father-daughter team who share their own triumphs, mistakes, and misadventures over many years spent together in the vegetable patch. Readers will enjoy the friendly direction and advice these veterans offer. Easy-to-read boxes, bulleted lists, charts, and detailed how-to illustrations make each week's activities clear and doable. Spots for record-keeping encourage readers to track their own successes and fine-tune their weekly schedules from year to year. Inch by inch, row by row, week by week, gardeners will move confidently through the gardening season. Whether it's planting the strawberries, pinching off the pumpkin blossoms, checking for tomato hornworm, or harvesting the carrots, they will know exactly when and how to do it for the most bountiful harvests and the most enjoyable vegetable-growing experiences ever.

The invaluable resource for home food gardeners
Ed Smith's W-O-R-D system has helped countless gardeners grow an abundance of vegetables and herbs. And those tomatoes and zucchini and basil and cucumbers have nourished countless families, neighbors, and friends with delicious, fresh produce. "The Vegetable Gardener's Bible" is essential reading for locavores in every corner of North America

EVERYTHING YOU LOVED about the first edition of "The Vegetable Gardener s Bible" is still here: friendly, accessible language; full-color photography; comprehensive vegetable specific information in the A-to-Z section; ahead-of-its-time commitment to organic methods; and much more.
Now, Ed Smith is back with a 10th Anniversary Edition for the next generation of vegetable gardeners. New to this edition is coverage of 15 additional vegetables, including an expanded section on salad greens and more European and Asian vegetables. Readers will also find growing information on more fruits and herbs, new cultivar photographs in many vegetable entries, and a much-requested section on extending the season into the winter months. No matter how cold the climate, growers can bring herbs indoors and keep hardy greens alive in cold frames or hoop houses.
The impulse to grow vegetables is even stronger in 2009 than it was in 2000, when Storey published "The Vegetable Gardener s Bible." The financial and environmental costs of fossil fuels raise urgent questions: How far should we be shipping food? What are the health costs of petroleum-based pesticides and herbicides? Do we have to rely on megafarms that use gasoline-powered machinery to grow and harvest crops? With every difficult question, more people think, Maybe I should grow a few vegetables of my own. This book will continue to answer all their vegetable gardening questions.

Praise for the First Edition:
"In every small town, there is a vegetable garden that people go out of the way to walk past. Smith is the guy who grew that garden." Verlyn Klinkenborg, "The New York Times Book Review
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"An abundance of photographs . . . visually bolster the techniques described, while frequent subheads, sidebars, and information-packed photo captions make the layout user-friendly . . . Smith s] book is thorough and infused with practical wisdom and a dry Vermont humor that should endear him to readers." "Publisher's Weekly
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"Smith . . . clearly explains everything novice and experienced gardeners need to know to grow vegetables and herbs. . . . " "Library Journal
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"this book will answer all your questions as well as put you on the path to an abundant harvest. As a bonus, anecdotes and stories make this informative book fun to read." - "New York Newsday""

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.

The two closely related species of Potato Cyst-Nematodes (PCN), Globodera rostochiensis (Woll) and Globodera pallida Stone have a worldwide distribution. Both are internationally recognized plant quarantine organisms of actual or potential major economic importance wherever potatoes are grown or traded. They occur in large soil masses and also adhere to potato tubers as microscopic cysts, which represent a complex of morphologically identical, but behaviourally different virulence groups, or pathotypes. This presents major problems for their detection, identification and management. This book is a synthesis of current practical knowledge and underpinning scientific research on PCN globally. It is arranged in five sections, comprising nineteen chapters by leading practitioners and research nematologists, in which the biology, detection, identification and control options (including plant resistance) for PCN are examined. In addition, its worldwide status is considered, including South America, where PCN co-evolved with its potato host. Essential information is provided for professionals and advanced students of plant nematology and crop protection.

The skills that we learn bind our lives together. Do you want to know how to grow your own food? Or how to keep bees? How to forage for edible seaweed along the shoreline, or wild greens down by the stream? Maybe you're curious about growing mushrooms or how to grow the perfect tomato. You're invited to make these skills your own. Designed to be read with a pot of tea by your elbow and a notebook beside you, Milkwood is all you need to start living a more home-grown life. From DIY projects to wild fermented recipes, the in-depth knowledge and hands-on instruction contained in these pages will have your whole family fascinated and inspired to get growing, keeping, cooking and making. Milkwood is the name of Kirsten Bradley and Nick Ritar's first farm as well as their school where anyone can learn skills for down-to-earth living. Kirsten, Nick and a team of educators offer courses on topics contained in this book as well as permaculture design, natural building and much more. Kirsten and Nick live on a small regenerative farm near Daylesford, Australia, where many things from the sprouted grain they feed their chickens to ingredients that make up dinner is homegrown.