-
Recent Posts
Post Calendar
What’s Happening on the Farm
Babies! Lots and lots of baby goats!Recent Comments
- Steffy on The Foster Parent Diet
- Marty Englin on You Got to Let Go of Remote Control: The Wake-Up Call is in Your House!
- The Independence Days Challenge on Independence Days Challenge is Back!!!
- Looking forward to Independence Days… « Beth's Permaculture Diploma on Food Storage and Preservation Class
- Sharon on Food Storage and Preservation Class
Archives
Categories
-
Links
My Favorite Blogs
- Aaron Newton’s Blog – Poweringdown
- Beverly Chickens – Sue’s Poultry Blog
- Bob Waldrop
- Chile Chews
- Club Orlov – Dmitry Orlov’s Blog
- Crunchy Chicken’s Blog
- Entire of Itself – Pat Meadows’ Blog
- Green with a Gun – Kiashu’s Blog
- Greenpa’s Site – Little Blog in the Big Woods
- JediMomma’s Blog
- Kathy Harrison’s Just In Case Blog
- Matron of Husbandry at Trapper Creek
- Matt Mayer’s site – Fat Guy on a Little Bike
- Permaculture and Regenerative Design: Keith Johnson’s Site
- Robyn’s Adapting In Place Blog
- Rod Dreher Crunchy Con
- Spuds Builds Community and Plants Potatoes!
- The Peak Oil Hausfrau
Solutions and Hope in Hard Times
Understanding Peak Oil, The Economic Crisis and Climate
Where Else Will You Find My Writings?
Meta
I tend to prefer books with lots of reference charts.
-square foot gardening (succession planting)
-Four season harvest (cold-hardy varieties)
-Permaculture. I don’t yet have a favorite permaculture book, but it’s something I *really* want to implement. I love the idea of planting once and harvesting repeatedly!
I am not sure if this fits the catagory, by Helen and Scott Nearing’s book, “The Maple Sugar Book” is an excellent resouce for both making syrup and caring for the sugar bush. It helped us alot when we were novices and wondering what to do. It may be out of print–mine is a used copy I snapped up like a treasure at a used bookstore years ago.
Deb
For Pacific Northwesterners, Steve Solomon’s _Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades_ is THE go-to book of veggie growing, covering soil structure, organic fertilizers, and how to plant each veggie. A great companion to that is Mary Preus’ _The Northwest Herb Lover’s Handbook_. Seattle Tilth puts out an informative guide for what to plant when, and which varieties do best here, called _The Maritime Northwest Garden Guide_
We’re a small subsection, I realize, but our climate requires different handling compared to the rest of the US.
Louise Riotte’s ‘Carrots Love Tomatoes’
Seed Starters Handbook
The Vegetable & Herb Expert by Hessayon (great descriptions of diseases & pests)
Botany in a Day (for learning patterns and which plants are related- what is a brassica?)
All of Storeys guides if you have animals
Seed catalogs can be great sources of info Johnnys
Another seed catalogue that is very good for information is West Coast seeds (from Canada) You almost don’t need any other resource to grow successful vegies on the west coast.
I’ll add a second vote for Four Season Harvest. I also love Dick Raymond’s Joy of Gardening from Garden Way.
Ah, well there’s Dick Kitto’s irreplaceable, “Planning Your Organic Vegetable Garden”, which is perfect for anyone who wants to take the subject really seriously: four stage rotation, pre-germination, seed saving and all that great stuff. It can all be scaled-down too, which Dick helps with.
For a really funny book that is surprisingly full of information, read “One Man and his Dig” by Valentine Low. Really for Allotment gardeners in Britain, but an enjoyable read whoever you are.
Finally, for anyone who wants a scientific background to everything to do with plants, soils, climate and insects, “An Ear to the Ground” by Ken Thompson is invaluable. For such a small book (less than 200 pages and almost pocket sized) it’s just too much information to take in, in one go – it’s so enjoyable you have to read it again!
The Fedco Seed catalog?
Grow More Vegetables… by John Jeavons
Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway
Mycelium Running by Paul Stamets
Gaia’s Garden- Toby Hemenway
Food Not Lawns- HC Flores
Lasagna Gardening- Patricia Lanza
Seed to Seed- Suzanne Ashworth
Small Scale Grain Raising, 2nd edition- Gene Logsdon
I think include the premier regional books would be good – ours in the SF area is Golden Gate Gardening.
I second Coleman’s Four Season Harvest
Also agree about West Coast Seeds and all their resources. Started up by a nurse, so I am biased
How to Grow More Vegetables…..by John Jeavons – initially I found it super intimidating with it’s charts, but as you use it it becomes an incredible resource. So much info. Mine is filthy from taking it out to the garden with me.
Pruning and Training by the American Horticultural Society
Growing Garden Seeds (a manual for gardeners and small farmers) by Johnny’s Selected Seeds
Lois Hole’s Favourite Vegetables. Superb for the beginner. (Actually her entire Favourites series, she has passed away but is a western Canadian icon)
Anything by Ruth Stout…some of her books are out of print but can be found in used book stores or on ebay…her methods are controversial but they work!!!
More votes for some already mentioned, and some others:
Mel Bartholomew’s “Square Foot Gardening” (always recommend this one to beginners)
Eliot Coleman’s “New Organic Grower” and “Four Season Harvest”
Steve Solomon’s “Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades” (5th ed or later) and “Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times” (an excellent and interesting counterpoint to all the raised-bed-intensive books)
“High Yield Gardening” by Marjorie Hunt and Brenda Bortz – published 1986 and some of the material appears in other Rodale books, but it covers a wide range of possible options for each gardening subject.
Shep Ogden’s “Step by Step Organic Vegetable Gardening”
Carol Deppe’s “Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties”
And a couple of older books I have out of the library at the moment:
Jack Kramer’s “The Suburban Farmer’s Handbook”
Jeff Ball’s “The Self-Sufficient Suburban Garden”
Four season harvest is awesome.
The Joy of Gardening (already mentioned)
The Garden Primer (Don’t remember the author’s name, but she’s married to Eliott Coleman – that stuck with me from the bio on the back flap)
Organic Gardening A-Z for companion plants.
I have to give props to the intensely researched two volume set “Edible Forest Gardens” by Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier. Includes a pattern language (ala Christopher Alexander) for creating permaculture plots.
The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible (Edward C. Smith)
The Garden Primer (Barbara Damroch)
Great Garden Companions (Jean Cunningham)
Grow More Vegetables (John Jeavons)
Add my votes for Gardening When It Counts and Four Season Gardening as well as anything Ruth Stout.
I meant Four Season Harvest.
Garden Secrets, Harrowsmith Press. Bring out your inner scientist…a cure fore most veggie problems.
another Ruth Stout fan here,
I also like to read about the findhorn gardens
_One-straw Revolution_ or anything else by Masanobu Fukuoka.
From Amazon: “The One-Straw Revolution is one of the founding documents of the alternative food movement, and indispensable to anyone hoping to understand the future of food and agriculture.”—Michael Pollan
No recommendations, but would like to see information regarding gardening in the upper Midwest — Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Dakotas. It’s the winters that really get us here, and the recent tendency towards either cool, wet springs or going directly from winter to summer without pausing.
Am eagerly taking notes on other people’s recommendations!!
Eliot Coleman’s new book (The Winter Harvest) is also particularly useful (but you have to have Four Season Harvest, because he doesn’t repeat previous teaching.)
1. Creative Vegetable Gardening, by Joy Larkcom — inspiring with its beautiful, unusual, creative garden ideas and gorgeous photos.
2. The Organic Gardener’s Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control, Rodale Press — the title says it all, a wealth of information and help, with clear photos and drawings of insects and diseases in an easy-to-use reference format.
3. Breeding Your Own Vegetable Varieties, by Carol Deppe — makes basic plant-breeding accessible — and intriguing! — to the novice.
I second – or is it third – Square Foot Gardening.
The Complete Book of Practical Gardening by Peter McHoy – has everything – illustrations for pruning, soil,companion planting. Lots of flower info but as a general gardening reference book it is great – especially if you can’t afford a whole lot of books.
Perennial Vegetables, by Eric Toensmeier.
Palms Won’t Grow Here and Other Myths, by David Francko (great for lower Midwest and upper South gardeners who want to push their gardening boundaries).
The Pruning Book, by Lee Reich.
Uncommon Fruits Worthy of Attention, by Lee Reich.
Rodale’s Successful Organic Gardening: Houseplants and Container Plants; also same series, Fruits and Berries.
I’ve read and liked most of what all the rest of you mentioned too.
Anything by Helen and Scott Nearing and their protege, Eliot Coleman.
I’d second Edible Forest Gardens, though it’s clearly not for beginners.
As a beginner, my favorite guide was the textbook for our Virginia Master Gardener’s class — it gives all the basics on spacing, planting times, etc. for veggies, along with info on pruning and just about everything else you can think of. I suspect other states have similar Master Gardener handbooks that give state-specific info.
The downside, of course, is that these are for conventional gardening, so they talk about chemicals. But it’s easy to ignore that part.
Medicinal Herbs: Garden, Field & Marketplace by Lee Sturdivent and Tim Blakely
Growing At-Risk Medicinal Herbs by Richo Cech (also his Making Plant Medicine book)
Growing 101 Herbs That Heal by Tammi Hartung
A National Geographic coffee table kind of book — Nature’s Medicine: Plants That Heal by Joel Swerdlow
Growing and Selling Fresh-Cut Herbs by Sandy Shore
Gardening for All Seasons by The New Alchemy Staff (for New England though it has some neat info applicable to much of the US)
Hands On Agronomy by Neil Kinsey
The Soul of Soil by Grace Gershuny and Joseph Smillies
and for fun, soul fun …
Herbal Rituals by Judith Berger
For Australians, I think the best introductory books are Jackie French’s ‘The Wilderness Garden’ and ‘Backyard Self-Sufficency’. She doesn’t call it ‘permaculture’, but that’s certainly what she does.
I’ll add another call for “Gardening when it Counts” by Steve Soloman.
“Lasagna Gardening” by Patricia Lanza.
A bit off topic but the dripworks drip irrigation catalog.
so many great books mentioned already
as well:
designing and maintaining your edible landscape naturally by robert kourik
rainwater harvesting series by brad lancaster
I have been recommending Dick Raymond’s Joy of Gardening to new gardeners for about 25 years now. It’s fun to talk to them later and see their eyes bugging out of their faces with excitement. I’ve been gardening for longer than I want to say, and I keep going back to it myself. It’s my #1 comprehensive.
Also, try googling crops. State University Depts of Ag have some excellent information online. Where else can you find out about rutabagas as forage crops?
Anyone wanting to farm with draft animals would want books by Lynn Miller, as well as his Small Farmer’s Journal. It’s his life. He’s where everyone in the trade comes together.
There is a lot of good information in the Fedco seed coop catalog as well as a kings wealth of seeds. But it’s also a great read on a winter’s night if you can handle drooling and laughing at the same time. There’s nothing quite like it anywhere, so I can’t really explain it. Check out the web site. It’s for real.
When I was just beginning gardening a couple years ago I read The Farmer’s Wife Guide to Growing a Great Garden–And Eating From it Too! by Barbara Doyen. It had great information about each vegetable and what it needed, how to rotate crops and what not to plant in the same place the next year, and some about canning, freezing, and cooking from the garden. It was great for a beginner.
For beginning gardener’s I highly recommend Nancy Bubel’s “The New Seed Starter’s Handbook” It offers advice on seed starting, but also on many other topics of concern to new gardeners. Amazon reviewers give it five stars, and the rating is well deserved. This book has been around for many years and low-priced copies are available both new and used from many booksellers.
For more advanced gardeners, and for beginners who are willing to read it in small doses, I would add another vote for Steve Solomon’s “Gardening When It Counts.” This book is packed with a great deal of wisdom, but much of the wisdom has only been apparent to me after a few years of gardening and a few chances to re-read the book.
There is a chapter near the end of the book that evaluates which vegetables give you the most nutritional value for the time and effort you expend growing them. The surprising winner of this analysis–surprising to me as a novice gardener–was Kale. But after a few years of trying to grow many different vegetables I can now understand the wisdom of his logic. His book is all about what vegetables to grow and how to grow them–when you need to be able to live off what you grow. My chickens eat a lot of my kale now, but I’m sure I would eat a lot more of it if I needed it to survive on.
Solomon’s advice on which vegetable are easy to save seeds from and which are not is also invaluable.
After 35 comments, and 78 unique titles, no one has mentioned the story told by Barbara Kingsolver “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A year of Food Life”. Not quite a gardening book but it does open your eyes about what is possible to grow your own vegetables, raise your own poultry and buy the rest of your food directly from farmers markets and other local sources
Because it’s such an accessible introduction to botany Peterson’s Guide to Wildflowers deserves a place on the shelf.
I like John Seymour’s The Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It; Andrew Lee’s Backyard Market Gardening; Gene Logsdon’s Small Scale Grain Raising and The Organic Gardener’s Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control.
I would like to recommend books by William Woys Weaver of Chester County, PA.
My all time favorite gardening book is Gene Lodgson’s ‘The Contrary Farmer’s Invitation to Gardening’
The books I use the most are ‘Carrots Love Tomatoes’ and those little pamphlets put out by Storey’s publishing on specific crops.
Many of my favorites have already been listed: Square Foot Gardening, Four Season Harvest, books by Jeavons and Logsdon, and the Edible Forest Gardens books by Jacke and Toensmeier.
I also really love Toensmeier’s Perennial Vegetable book. Introduction to Permaculture is a good garden design resource, and the Permaculture Handbook fleshes out details, and these last two convinced me to add poultry to my garden system (in the spring, Lord willing).
One that is not on most commercial bookshelves but is a great composting resource is NRAES-114, Field Guide to On-Farm Composting. Not a light read, but it explains in useful detail the oft-neglected facts about composting, especially at a larger scale, that can improve the process and the quality of compost (we do want it to have as much plant nutrient as possible, yes?).
I think I paid about $12 for it, and Chapter 2 alone is worth the price. “Raw Materials and Recipe Making” has tables listing the characteristics of raw materials such as C:N ratio, degradability, and cautions. It gives instructions on developing recipes.
If you have a little backyard compost and just put in what you have, you may not be interested in this one. But those who have a number of different feedstocks and potential sources for others may be interested in optimizing recipes.
I have an acre, with oak and maple leaves, ashes and kitchen waste as my primary feedstocks, so this book has helped me figure out ways to improve the quality of my compost by looking for feedstocks from others (like chicken waste) that is usually free for the asking.
The book that got me started growing food (after receiving a surprise gift from a friend of heirloom garlic from his family), is Growing Great Garlic by Ron L. Engeland.
I virtually devoured the book, and it has served me well. Loads of practical information, conversational style.
Hands down, Eliot Coleman’s Four Season Harvest. I’m a big fan of Gaia’s Garden also, by Toby Hemenway.
Horticulture: Gardener’s Desk Reference (1996) Anne Hallpen; The Ten Week Garden (1973) Cary Scher; The Garden Primer (1988) Barbara Damrosch; Herb Gardening in Five Seasons (1964) Adelma Grenier Simmons; The Food-Lovers Garden (1970) Angelo M. Pellegrini; The Kitchen Garden (1995) Sylvia Thompson; Blue Corn & Square Tomatoes (1987) Rebecca Rupp; Cooking from the Garden (1988) Rosalind Creasy and The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping (?) Rosalind Creasy.
I’m planning to read three gardening books over winter break: Jeavons’ How to Grow More Vegetables, Hemenway’s Gaia’s Garden, and Lon Rombaugh’s The Grape Grower: A Guide to Organic Viticulture.
I’m getting back to gardening after an 11 year hiatus, caused by moving to a lot with lousy clay soil. I know I read an earlier edition of Jeavons’ book some twenty years ago; I recognize the double-digging illustrations! I also want to get back into grape growing; I had grown table and wine grapes at our former location and am getting the bug to do it again. The only problem is finding a good spot where the vines will get adequate sunlight.
I’ve got to add Steve Solomon’s Water-Wise Vegetables in addition to his other works. Growing vegetables with limited or no water is a skill that may be needed as water supplies dwindle and delivery systems are abandoned.
The books I use the most are John Jeavon’s Ecology Action books, including the Grow More Vegetables book, The Backyard Homestead, Mini-farm, and Garden Logbook, and One Circle.
I also use Rodale’s Organic Gardener’s Handbook by Ellis and Bradley, and Park’s Success with Herbs by Foster and Louden.
If I grew more of my veggies in containers, I would have my own copies of The Bountiful Container, Fresh Food from Small Spaces (by Ruppenthal), and one on growing veggies in those self-watering containers (can’t remember a title right now).
Thanks, everyone, for the great list! Now I need to visit my library to hunt for some of these suggested books.
Amy, NW of Atlanta
Storeys has a series of “Country Wisdom Bulletins”
Grow the Best Tomatoes, Pest-Proofing Your Garden, What Every Gardener Should Know about Earthworms, Pruning Trees, Shrubs, and Vines etc
http://www.storey.com/category_listing.php?cat=Country%20Gardening&sort=date&p=0
And don’t forget to support your local bookstore – unless you are happy with only one bookstore (A-zon) in the world!
Many of my favorites are listed above. Not exactly a favorite but a useful resource for someone without a gardening mentor is the Reader’s Digest Illustrated Gardening book. While not particularly strong on organic techniques, it has great pictures, charts, and instructions on everything from various bulb “cloning” (my word) techniques, to pruning your trees, splitting plants, growing plants from clippings, etc.