Discover forgotten low-input food gardening methods for surviving uncertain times ahead. Gardening When It Counts helps readers rediscover traditional methods to produce healthy food.
Read MoreDiscover forgotten low-input food gardening methods for surviving uncertain times ahead. Gardening When It Counts helps readers rediscover traditional methods to produce healthy food.
Read More“Shows us how to garden like our ancestors gardened . . . with just four basic hand tools, and with little or no electricity or irrigation.” —Carol Deppe, author of The Resilient Gardener
In hard times, the family can be greatly helped by growing a highly productive food garden, requiring little cash outlay or watering. This book shows that any family with access to 3-5,000 sq. ft. of garden land can halve their food costs using a growing system requiring just the odd bucketful of household wastewater, perhaps two hundred dollars’ worth of hand tools.
Gardening When It Counts helps readers rediscover traditional low-input gardening methods to produce healthy food. Currently popular intensive vegetable gardening methods are largely inappropriate to the new circumstances we find ourselves in. Crowded raised beds require high inputs of water, fertility and organic matter, and demand large amounts of human time and effort. Prior to the 1970s, North American home food growing used more land with less labor, with wider plant spacing, with less or no irrigation, and all done with sharp hand tools. But these sustainable systems have been largely forgotten.
Designed for readers with no experience and applicable to most areas in the English-speaking world except the tropics and hot deserts, Gardening When It Counts is inspiring increasing numbers of North Americans to achieve some measure of backyard food self-sufficiency.
“Delightfully informative and abundantly rich with humor and grandfatherly wisdom. A must-read for anyone wanting a feast off the land of their own making.” —Elaine Smitha, host of the “Evolving Ideas” cable talk show and author of If You Make the Rules, How Come You’re Not Boss?
Chapter 1: Introduction
The coming hard times
Getting land
Becoming a vegetableatarian
Chapter 2: Basics
What is a vegetable?
Helping plants grow
Increasing soil fertility
Summary
Chapter 3: Tools and tasks
The basic three and a file
How to start a new garden
Raised beds and raised rows
The bow rake
Restoring a raised bed for planting again
The hoe
Miscellaneous tools
Care of tools
Chapter 4: Garden centers
Transplants: Buyer beware
Growing your own seedlings the easy way
The garden center seedrack
Chapter 5: Seeds
The mail-order seed business
Who to buy from
Making seeds come up
Saving on seed purchases
Growing your own
Chapter 6:Watering ... and not
Four spacing systems
Not suffering drought
A gardener's textbook of sprinkler irrigation
Chapter 7: Compost
Why compost?
Making low-grade compost
Medium-quality compost: The once-a-year heap
Humanure
Green manure and cover crops
Chapter 8: Insects and diseases
Avoiding trouble
Insects and their remedies
Diseases and their remedies
Chapter 9:What to grow . and how to grow it
Some general tips
Crops that are easiest to grow
Crops that are harder to grow
Difficult vegetables
Chapter 10: Bibliography
Books
Online resources
Index
About the Author
“Shows us how to garden like our ancestors gardened . . . with just four basic hand tools, and with little or no electricity or irrigation.” —Carol Deppe, author of The Resilient Gardener
In hard times, the family can be greatly helped by growing a highly productive food garden, requiring little cash outlay or watering. This book shows that any family with access to 3-5,000 sq. ft. of garden land can halve their food costs using a growing system requiring just the odd bucketful of household wastewater, perhaps two hundred dollars’ worth of hand tools.
Gardening When It Counts helps readers rediscover traditional low-input gardening methods to produce healthy food. Currently popular intensive vegetable gardening methods are largely inappropriate to the new circumstances we find ourselves in. Crowded raised beds require high inputs of water, fertility and organic matter, and demand large amounts of human time and effort. Prior to the 1970s, North American home food growing used more land with less labor, with wider plant spacing, with less or no irrigation, and all done with sharp hand tools. But these sustainable systems have been largely forgotten.
Designed for readers with no experience and applicable to most areas in the English-speaking world except the tropics and hot deserts, Gardening When It Counts is inspiring increasing numbers of North Americans to achieve some measure of backyard food self-sufficiency.
“Delightfully informative and abundantly rich with humor and grandfatherly wisdom. A must-read for anyone wanting a feast off the land of their own making.” —Elaine Smitha, host of the “Evolving Ideas” cable talk show and author of If You Make the Rules, How Come You’re Not Boss?
Chapter 1: Introduction
The coming hard times
Getting land
Becoming a vegetableatarian
Chapter 2: Basics
What is a vegetable?
Helping plants grow
Increasing soil fertility
Summary
Chapter 3: Tools and tasks
The basic three and a file
How to start a new garden
Raised beds and raised rows
The bow rake
Restoring a raised bed for planting again
The hoe
Miscellaneous tools
Care of tools
Chapter 4: Garden centers
Transplants: Buyer beware
Growing your own seedlings the easy way
The garden center seedrack
Chapter 5: Seeds
The mail-order seed business
Who to buy from
Making seeds come up
Saving on seed purchases
Growing your own
Chapter 6:Watering ... and not
Four spacing systems
Not suffering drought
A gardener's textbook of sprinkler irrigation
Chapter 7: Compost
Why compost?
Making low-grade compost
Medium-quality compost: The once-a-year heap
Humanure
Green manure and cover crops
Chapter 8: Insects and diseases
Avoiding trouble
Insects and their remedies
Diseases and their remedies
Chapter 9:What to grow . and how to grow it
Some general tips
Crops that are easiest to grow
Crops that are harder to grow
Difficult vegetables
Chapter 10: Bibliography
Books
Online resources
Index
About the Author
