Category — Book

Forthcoming February 15, 2012

By Jennifer Cockrall-king
Prometheus Books
15 Feb 2012

About the Author:
Jennifer Cockrall-King (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada) is a freelance journalist and niche food writer whose work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, National Post, Canadian Geographic, Maclean’s, and other major publications. She is also a contributor to A Good Catch: Sustainable Seafood Recipes from Canada’s Top Chefs, and she is the former cofounder, publisher, and editor of The Edible Prairie Journal.

When you’re standing in the midst of a supermarket, it’s hard to imagine that you’re looking at a failing industrial food system. The abundance all around you looks impressive but is really a facade. In fact, there’s just a three-day supply of food available for any given city due to complex, just-in-time international supply chains. The system is not only vulnerable, given the reality of food scares, international crises, terrorist attacks, economic upheavals, and natural disasters, but it is also environmentally unsustainable for the long term.

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An Algonquin Happy Book – No. 157

By Gladys Nelson Muter
Illustrated by F.Y. Cory
Algonquin Publishing Co.
1924

This charming, vintage book tells the story of some hungry bunnies and their love of vegetables.

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Forthcoming December 27, 2011

By Novella Carpenter, Willow Rosenthal
Publisher: Penguin
December 27, 2011
592 pages

From Ghost Town Farm blog – Novella Carpenter:
My new book is coming out December 27 (hmm, right around the baby coming)! Willow Rosenthal and I have been slaving on this giant how-to book for the past three years or something. It’s called “The Essential Urban Farmer”. It’s got everything a budding or experienced urban farmer might want to know about growing veggies and fruit, securing land, and raising livestock in the city.

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We’re chopped for hash and fixed for mash to make potato crust

Pictures by Florence Kate Upton
Verses by Bertha Upton
Longman’s. Green & Co.
1897

The Vege-men’s Revenge, first published in 1897, features Poppy, a little girl, who is coaxed by Don Tomato and Herr Carrot to Vege-men’s Land, where she is buried on the promise that this will make her grow. Poppy sleeps through a nightmare of all the chopping, boiling, etc., that makes vegetables edible and eventually awakes to take this same sort of revenge on the stuff in her garden.

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40 urban agriculture projects, created by designers from the United States and around the world

By Mark Gorgolewski, June Komisar, and Joe Nasr
The Monacelli Press
Hardcover Available September 20, 2011

Appealing to both design professionals and individuals curious about current ideas and initiatives for growing food in close proximity to the point of consumption, CARROT CITY: Creating Places for Urban Agriculture by Mark Gorgolewski, June Komisar, and Joe Nasr presents 40 projects, created by designers from the United States and around the world, that explore innovative approaches to making space for urban food production.

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By Amy Pennington
Sasquatch Books (April 1, 2011)
192 pages

Grow squash on your patio, flowers in your window box, and pick blackberries from your parking strip. Apartment Gardening details how to start a garden in the heart of the city. From building your own planter box to sprouting seeds in jars on the counter, every small space is plantable. Beginning and experienced gardeners will discover how to save money on produce and impress friends with their newly-tenacious green thumbs.

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The author homesteads in Denver with her chickens, goats, bees, and organic front yard garden.

By Sundari Elizabeth Kraft
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Alpha; Original edition (June 7, 2011)
(If there’s an “Idiot’s Guide”, we’ve come a long way! Mike)

A note from Sundari Elizabeth Kraft from her web site:

Last August I was approached by the editors from Penguin Publishing, who oversee “The Complete Idiot’s Guide” books. Despite their goofy-sounding titles, I’ve always been a fan of the Idiot’s Guides. I like the way they’re structured, and I feel like I’m getting comprehensive information when I read them.

The editors asked me if I would write the book, and what followed was a period that was both challenging and immensely rewarding.

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By John Jackson
JJ Books
3rd Revised edition edition (May 23, 2011)
236 pages

A Little Piece of England, tells the tale of how the author’s family, living in a sliver of countryside in London’s commuter belt, came, over some ten years, to make itself, in its ‘spare time’, self-sufficient in its requirements of milk, meat, eggs, vegetables and some fruit.

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Author holding her book.

A memoir of a year feeding her family from her suburban garden

By Spring Warren
Seal Press
Published March 15, 2011
336 pages

Permaculture Media Blog says:
When Spring Warren told her husband and two teenage boys that she wanted to grow 75 percent of all the food they consumed for one year—and that she wanted to do it in their yard—they told her she was crazy. She did it anyway.

The Quarter-Acre Farm is Warren’s account of deciding—despite all resistance—to take control of her family’s food choices, get her hands dirty, and create a garden in her suburban yard.

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Peter Ladner, in his yard that he converted into a food garden, has written a book that details the changes people and policymakers in Canada are making to regain control of our food. Photograph by: Jenelle Schneider, PNG, Vancouver Sun.

Former Vancouver councillor offers ideas on how cities can gain control over what they eat

By Randy Shore
Vancouver Sun
July 28, 2011

Excerpt:

What would a city approaching food self-sufficiency look like?

Peter Ladner’s soon-to-be released book The Urban Food Revolution offers tantalizing glimpses of urban environments that successfully integrate commercial enterprise, low-impact living spaces and agricultural productivity. Balcony gardens, urban market gardens, rooftop beehives, vertical greenhouses and aquaponics, and acres of lawn converted to high-value herb and vegetable production are all being employed with success somewhere. Why not everywhere?

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New Book

By Andrés Duany
The Prince’s Foundation/DPZ
2011

The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment is proud to present: Garden Cities: Theory & Practice of Agrarian Urbanism by renowned US urbanist Andrés Duany, the fifth in its series of Senior Fellow Books.

Agrarian urbanism refers to settlements where the society is involved with food in all its aspects: organizing, growing, processing, distributing, cooking and eating it. A primary distinction of Agricultural Urbanism is that the physical pattern of the settlement supports an intentional agrarian society.

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SPIN-Farming Basics: Thinking of Farming? Think again. There is a new way to farm

By Wally Satzewich, Roxanne Christensen
January 31, 2011
SPIN Farming LLC, 112 pages
(On Amazon “Search Inside the Book”)

You have a calling to farm but you have no money, no land and no farming experience. No problem. Be a SPIN farmer! SPIN-Farming Basics contains the step-by step learning guides to the sub-acre farming production system that makes it possible to earn $50,000 gross from a half-acre. The guides provide everything you need to get operational and profitable quickly – a business concept, farm design, infrastructure and equipment, investments, detailed day-to-day workflow, crop selection, revenue targets and marketing guidance.

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Édité par le Bureau Agriculture Urbaine de l’IAGU.

Villes Agricoles
Le bulletin de l’agriculture urbaine en Afrique de l’Ouest francophone
Edité par l’IAGU-BAU BP 104, Tél. : 20 98 16 54 Email : iagu.aup@iagu.org Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso
Directeur de publication : Moussa SY

Excerpt:

Editorial
par Moussa SY, Coordonnateur IAGU-BAU

Les fonctions sociales économiques et environnementales de l’agriculture urbaine sont de plus en plus reconnues à travers le monde. Ce secteur d’activités sort ainsi progressivement de l’anonymat grâce aux études et recherches portant sur plusieurs aspects le concernant (accès au foncier et à l’eau, organisation des producteurs, accès au marché, qualité des produits, etc.). Mais l’agriculture urbaine souffre encore de son défaut d’articulation avec les politiques d’urbanisme et agricoles.

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Editors: R. Klanten, S. Ehmann, K. Bolhöfer
Release Date:
February 2011
Gestalten

This book presents inspiring work from around the world that is bringing nature back into our cities: from urban farming initiatives, guerilla gardening, and architectural visions, to furniture, products, and other everyday objects that use plants in a functional or aesthetic way. Some of the included projects are changing the landscapes of our cities as a whole, while others can make our own streets and homes greener—most importantly, all are trying to get people to think differently. For everyone who has an interest in a more responsible and environmentally friendly lifestyle, this entertaining and socially relevant book makes it clear that we can design our urban future in a way that’s green, innovative, vibrant, and constructive.

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New book on Urban School Gardens

By Veronica Gaylie
Peter Lang Publishing
June 15, 2011

Veronica Gaylie, Ph.D., is a writer, teacher and author of The Learning Garden: Ecology, Teaching and Transformation.

This book explores the urban school garden as a bridge between environmental action and thought. As a small-scale response to global issues around access to food and land, urban school gardens promote practical knowledge of farming as well as help renew cultural ideals of shared space and mutual support for the organic, built environment. Through a comprehensive history of school garden practice rooted in Eastern industrial cities, to case studies from four Pacific Rim regions, this book examines the practice and culture of the urban school garden as a central symbol for environmental learning.

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From Seed to Skillet: A Guide to Growing, Tending, Harvesting, and Cooking Up Fresh, Healthy Food to Share with People You Love.

“I certainly like gardening a lot more than fashion.”

By Tracey Chang
Second Act
May 23, 2011

Excerpt:

Every day at 5 a.m., Jimmy Williams wakes up with anticipation. He says he can’t wait to see what sprouted overnight in his Southern California nursery.

“Growing food might be the most spiritual thing you can do,” says the 56-year-old Williams. “I am fascinated by the germination of a seed.”

Though he grew up tending vegetables with his grandmother and 11 siblings in Southampton, N.Y., Williams did not make gardening a career until later in life. His first profession was in the fashion world, where he designed sportswear for Calvin Klein and Cacharel and also had his own label, Jimmy Williams Stitches. After moving to the West Coast in 1984, Williams designed for Cole of California, a well-known swimwear company.

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Minnie Rose Lovgreen’s “Recipe For Raising Chickens”

By Tristan Baurick
Kitsap Sun
June 4, 2009

Excerpt:

Bainbridge Island

Shortly before her death, longtime islander Minnie Rose Lovgreen confided to a friend at her bedside that she’d long wanted pass on her recipe for raising chickens.

Stored in her head were 60 years’ worth of observations and know-how about how to care for brooding hens, raise baby chicks, build coops, promote quality egg production and calm irate roosters.

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The green-fingered husband and wife, Ian and Barbara Pollard, work at the Abbey House Gardens in Wiltshire, England and tend to their plants completely starkers!

Ready the soil, plant seeds and take off your clothes

By Julie Washington,
The Plain Dealer
May 11, 2011,

Excerpt:

It was a perfect morning in Pat Brown’s back yard — temperature in the low 70s, no rain, sunny. She was itching to take off her clothes and start gardening.

You heard right.

“I do garden in the nude, and I enjoy it,” admitted Brown, 69, a master gardener living near Eugene, Ore.

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A Bioneer excerpt from Fields of Plenty: A Farmer’s Journey For Real Food And The People Who Grow It

By Michael Ableman
Chronicle Books 2005
256 pages

Excerpt from Bioneers’ blog

In the shadow of Cabrini-Green, two 1-acre plots of land are protected with 10-foot-high chain-link-and-concertina fences. A closer look reveals that one of the plots boasts forty varieties of heirloom tomatoes. Striped German, Green Zebra, Black Russian, and the rest of Ken Dunn’s tomato plants grow in the composted remains of apple- and cherry-pie filling, and the uneaten arugula salads and filet mignon from local high-end restaurants.

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Available September 20, 2011

By Mark Gorgolewski, June Komisar, Joe Nasr
Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: The Monacelli

Carrot City is a collection of ideas, both conceptual and realized, that use design to enable sustainable food production, helping to reintroduce urban agriculture to our cities. Focusing on the need and desire to grow food within the city to supply food from local sources, the contributions of architecture, landscape design, and urban design are explored.

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