Category — Book

Vegetables Fresh and Simple, in Any Climate Without Artificial Heat or Electricity the Way It’s Been Done for 2,000 Years

By Caleb Warnock
Cedar Fort, Inc.
April 9, 2013

Without fresh, all-natural winter gardening in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries people would have starved to death. The good news is that feeding your family fresh food from your own backyard garden all winter long is far easier and less time-consuming than you might imagine. And you won’t find better-tasting food at any price!

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A Food Grower’s Education in Life, Love, and the Movement That’s Changing the Nation

Written by Jeanne Nolan
Foreword by Alice Waters
Format: Hardcover, 304 pages
Forthcoming: July 2013

When Jeanne Nolan, a teenager in search of a less materialistic, more authentic existence, left Chicago in 1987 to join a communal farm, she had no idea that her decades-long journey would lead her to the heart of a movement that is currently changing our nation’s relationship to food. Now a leader in the sustainable food movement, Nolan shares her story in From the Ground Up, helping us understand the benefits of organic gardening—for the environment, our health, our wallets, our families, and our communities. The great news, as Nolan shows us, is that it has never been easier to grow the vegetables we eat, whether on our rooftops, in our backyards, in our school yards, or on our fire escapes.

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Cooking and Gardening with Twelve Families from the Edible Plant Kingdom, with over 300 Deliciously Simple Recipes

By Deborah Madison
Ten Speed Press
Forthcoming March 13, 2012

In her latest cookbook, Deborah Madison, America’s leading authority on vegetarian cooking and author of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, reveals the surprising relationships between vegetables, edible flowers, and herbs within the same botanical families, and how understanding these connections can help home cooks see everyday vegetables in new light.

For over three decades, Deborah Madison has been at the vanguard of the vegetarian cooking movement, authoring classic books on the subject and emboldening millions of readers to cook simple, elegant, plant-based food.

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An Inspirational Guide to Stylish Allotments and Community Gardens

By Lia Leendertz
Pavilion Books
8 April 2013
Lia is a freelance garden writer who shares an allotment with several friends near her home in Bristol. A regular contributor to The Guardian and The Telegraph, she is a long-time advocate of organic and community growing.

Excerpt from the Introduction:

This is a very simple book: all we have done is visited 31 allotments and edible gardens, taken some pictures, and asked the plot holders some questions. But each of these gardeners works a plot or site that we have deemed beautiful, interesting or unusual enough to be worthy of celebrating. A few private gardens have snuck in among the publicly owned and rented allotment gardens, where the owners are doing something particularly interesting and edible …

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“Well, if you’re growing food to save money, whatever you do, don’t add up the time it takes to produce your own food and apply an hourly rate to it. It will only depress you,” he warns.

By Hannah Stephenson
Cambridge News
Apr 9, 2013

Excerpt:

Award-winning garden designer Cleve West admits he’s neglected his allotment in recent years – and offers some useful advice to anyone considering taking up a plot

His commitment to show gardens for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show the past two years has meant that garden designer Cleve West’s beloved allotment has suffered as weeds have sprung up and slugs and snails have built their own thriving community among his prized vegetables.

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Excerpt from Preface to the Fourth Edition:

By Norman Gill
Superintendent, Kumaon Government Gardens
May, 1920

Although nearly a decade since I last edited “Gollan’s Indian Vegetable Garden”, the continued demand for this useful and practical work proves that it has lost none of its deceiving popularity.

It is to be regretted that with many in this country the meat supply takes precedence but we have only to look at the general health of those who study their own garden food supply to recognize the importance of good fresh vegetables. Many argue that vegetables can be purchased cheaper from the bazaar or market gardens than grown.

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“Each vividly colored spread is accompanied by one simple, descriptive sentence with garden-centric language.”

By Bonnie Christensen
Roaring Book Press
32 pages, 2012

“With a little help from a watering can, bright sunlight, and a lot of patience, two friends plant seeds in their community garden and watch how they grow. Slowly, the seeds turn into sprouts, which grow into stems, followed by leaves and buds! The garden will soon be teeming with life and ready for a harvest season celebration. But until then, the children water and wait and dream . . .”

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A flower fairy is 2-4 inches tall, and has a pair of delicate wings.

By Liza Gardner Walsh
Down East Books
Forthcoming May 16 2013
(City Farmer has 9 fairy houses in the Vancouver Compost Demonstration Garden. Young children love the idea of looking for fairies as they tour the garden.)

Excerpt:

Welcome to the garden – a place where a seed as small as a grain of sand transforms into a dazzling flower. Wherever such magic exists, you can bet fairies will be near. People say that when a seed sprouts, a fairy baby is born. In fact, there’s an entire fleet of fairies devoted solely to flowers. Mary Cicely Barker, the flower fairy godmother, reports the following about flower fairies:

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“Hungry crops, such as tomatoes, potatoes, sweet peppers, aubergines, zucchini and squashes, need fresh, fertile compost to grow really well.”

By Alex Mitchell
Rodale Books,
2012
Alex Mitchell is a writer and gardener who has grown her own fruits, vegetables, and herbs for ten years. She is a former gardening columnist for the Sunday Telegraph and the author of The Girl’s Guide to Growing Your Own, a book for women with busy lives who want to have fun growing produce no matter how small their space. She lives in London.

“You don’t need a sprawling backyard or spacious raised beds to grow delicious fruits, vegetables, and herbs of your own. In The Edible Balcony, longtime urban gardener Alex Mitchell shows how to transform whatever space you have, from a balcony or rooftop to a fire escape or window box, into a profusion of fresh, seasonal produce.

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On 1000 square feet of land, backyard farmers can grow enough wheat to bake 50 loaves of fresh bread.

By Sara Pitzer
Storey Publishing, 2009
Sara Pitzer is the author of Homegrown Whole Grains and more than a dozen cookbooks and travel guides. She has studied and written about grains in Amish country in central Pennsylvania, in the southeastern United States, and in California. More recently, she has studied small-scale rice growing in Thailand and quinoa production in Peru. She lives in North Carolina.

A backyard field of grains? Yes, absolutely! Wheat and corn are rapidly replacing grass in the yards of dedicated locavores across the country. For adventurous homeowners who want to get in on the movement, Homegrown Whole Grains is the place to begin.

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Filmed on the banks of the Ripoll River, between Cerdanyola and Ripollet (Barcelona)

By Pau Faus
Jan 10, 2010
In English and Spanish
Must see! Mike

English:
The daily life of one of the many retirees who cultivate their own allotment gardens in an urban margin land that doesn’t belong to them, between rivers, highways and railroad tracks on the outskirts of Barcelona. To explore and get to know these gardens is a way of approaching one of the many autonomous practices that, from its ‘disobedience’, also shape our contemporary cities. Practices that far from being simply incidental can give us many clues about what is going on behind the supposed urban order. This work focuses on the social dimension of these self-constructed gardens, seen here as a lesson of autonomy in a society that insists on assimilating ‘Retirement’ to uselessness and dependence.

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Written by The National Gardening Association

By Paul Simon, Charlie Nardozzi
For Dummies
January 2013
Paul Simon is a nationally recognized landscape architect, public artist, horticulturist, master gardener, and urban designer. Charlie Nardozzi is a nationally recognized garden writer, speaker, and radio and television personality.

Learn to:

Make the most of limited space with vertical growing tips, rooftop gardens, and more

Add beauty and color to your landscape with annuals, perennials, and bulbs

Grow the freshest, healthiest produce possible

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Lauren Mandel works as a Project Manager and Rooftop Agriculture Specialist at the Philadelphia-based green roof firm Roofmeadow

By Lauren Mandel
New Society Publishers
April 2013

Soaring prices and concerns about chemical-laden fruits and vegetables increasingly drive us to grow our own healthy food close to home. In cities however, vanishing ground space and contaminated soils spur farmers, activists, and restaurateurs to look to the skyline for a solution. The hunger for local food has reached new heights, and rooftops can provide the space that cities need to bring fresh, organic produce to tables across North America.

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A Guide to Natural Beekeeping in Top Bar Hives

By Christy Hemenway
New Society Publishers
January 2013

What’s the buzz about the growing popularity of backyard beekeeping? Providing habitat for bees, pollinating your garden and producing honey for your family are some of the compelling reasons for taking up this exciting hobby. But conventional beekeeping requires a significant investment and has a steep learning curve. The alternative? Consider beekeeping outside the box.

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“In 1966, a conversation between visiting professor of history Donald Nicholl and his office-trailer mate, philosophy professor Paul Lee, sparked the idea of creating a garden to offset students’ feelings of displacement and disruption.”

By Paul A. Lee
North Atlantic Books (Mar 12 2013)
Paperback: 248 pages

There Is a Garden in the Mind presents an engaging look at the work and life of pioneering organic gardener Alan Chadwick and his profound influence on the organic farming movement. In this wide-ranging and philosophical memoir, author Paul Lee recounts his first serendipitous meeting with Chadwick in Santa Cruz, California, in 1967, and their subsequent founding of the Chadwick Garden at UC Santa Cruz, the first organic and biointensive garden at a U.S. university.

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36 page preview of the new book

Excerpt:

The final section of the book is an ode to invention, innovation and inspiration. The Farming the City Selection showcases 35 exemplary urban farming projects from the global north, providing valuable insight into how citizens, entrepreneurs, organizations and public officers are using food as tool to re-interpret contemporary notions of urban living, working and collaboration.

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Self-reliance without scaring the neighbors

By Deanna Caswell (Author), Daisy Siskin
February 2012

Excerpt:

Homegrown produce is high in nutrition and flavour

My five-year-old and her faithful two-year-op shadow (her sister) stood at the edge of the mesclun bed, eyeballing it hesitantly.

I confess, I can be a bit, shall we say … maniacal when it comes to children in the vegetalle garden. Give ‘em an inch and they take a mile. Or more accurately, they will plow in the dirt like giant groundhogs and decimate an entire crop. I’ve had to lay down ground rules, so the older ones know to ask first.

“Can we have some?’ she inquired politely.

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“In one season, we sold over $14,000 worth of plants.”

By John Tullock
2010

Excerpt:

Could you use an extra $10,000 next year? Do you live in a house with some land around it? If the answer to both questions is “Yes!” you should consider joining the burgeoning “suburban microfarm” movement. Like so much else associated with food, soil and life, the movement has its roots, if you will pardon the pun, in California.

But as a Wall Street Journal article – highlighting a successful suburban farm in Colorado – makes clear, this new type of agriculture is not just for California any more.

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Eric Toensmeier has studied and practiced permaculture since 1990.

By Eric Toensmeier, Jonathan Bates
Chelsea Green
February, 2013

When Eric Toensmeier and Jonathan Bates moved into a duplex in a run-down part of Holyoke, Massachusetts, the tenth-of-an-acre lot was barren ground and bad soil, peppered with broken pieces of concrete, asphalt, and brick. The two friends got to work designing what would become not just another urban farm, but a “permaculture paradise” replete with perennial broccoli, paw paws, bananas, and moringa—all told, more than two hundred low-maintenance edible plants in an innovative food forest on a small city lot. The garden—intended to function like a natural ecosystem with the plants themselves providing most of the garden’s needs for fertility, pest control, and weed suppression—also features an edible water garden, a year-round unheated greenhouse, tropical crops, urban poultry, and even silkworms.

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35 urban farmers from Northern California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia – Book Forthcoming March 15

By Lori Eanes
Mountaineers Books
March 15, 2013
192 Pages, Features over 200 photos
Lori Eanes is a San Francisco-based food and people photographer. Her work has been published in Sierra Magazine, Sunset, Organic Style, The Wall Street Journal, Via, and San Francisco Magazine, as well as in a variety of cookbooks. She grows her own vegetables in the Mission District of San Francisco.

Backyard Roots is a unique project by California-based photographer Lori Eanes that evocatively and intimately explores the lives of 35 urban farmers in Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. In these stories and photos you’ll find people like Laura Allen, the Oakland-based cofounder of Greywater Action, a policy and education nonprofit that promotes the use of greywater systems. In Vancouver, aquaponic farmer Jodi Peters sustainably grows and harvests tilapia in sync with her organic vegetable garden. Or meet Jonathan Chen, a young cancer survivor who now manages the Danny Woo Community Gardens in south Seattle, where a group of Southeast Asian immigrants farm in a vibrant mix of cultures.

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