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Outdoors & Nature |
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Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times (Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series)
written by Steve Solomon
Studio : New Society Publishers
by New Society Publishers
Publisher : New Society Publishers
Released : 2006-04-01
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9780865715530
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 26 reviews)
List Price : $19.95
Our Price : $12.20
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Product Description |
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The decline of cheap oil is inspiring increasing numbers of North Americans to achieve some measure of backyard food self-sufficiency. In hard times, the family can be greatly helped by growing a highly productive food garden, requiring little cash outlay or watering. Currently popular intensive vegetable gardening methods are largely inappropriate to this new circumstance. Crowded raised beds require high inputs of water, fertility and organic matter, and demand large amounts of human time and effort. But, except for labor, these inputs depend on the price of oil. 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. Gardening When It Counts helps readers rediscover traditional low-input gardening methods to produce healthy food. Designed for readers with no experience and applicable to most areas in the English-speaking world except the tropics and hot deserts, 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 waste water, perhaps two hundred dollars worth of hand tools, and about the same amount spent on supplies - working an average of two hours a day during the growing season. Steve Solomon is a well-known west coast gardener and author of five previous books, including Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades which has appeared in five editions. |
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Just what I needed! |
Only a few pages into this book I realized I needed to read it before continuing with my gardening plans.
I am thrilled to have the good solid advice. For me, I treasured the relearning of the things my father taught me so many years ago. Digging the garden, fertilizing the soil, using coffee grounds and how to weed were only vague memories which had been over-written by today's easy methods and equipment. Steve Solomon's words brought all the old learning back to my mind and provided so much more. I can't thank him enough and I highly recommend this book. The advice, techniques and subjects covered are of special importance for anyone interested in insuring their food source is available and safe. |
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Stress-free gardening |
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This book is excellent. It is my new gardening bible. I've been through all the intensive gardening books, and they all stressed me out with the intensity of the work that was required to get them started and keep them up. The whole philosophy here really makes sense to me. I felt like I could go ahead, get things started, without having to have so much in place. After all, this is about growing with the minimum amount of inputs. |
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Great stuff |
This is the perfect book for people like me with no gardening grandpa at their side.
Nobody ever told me that a garden hoe must be sharpened before first use....
And how to start a garden if you have a patch of grass land - I never knew how to do it right or where to start.
This book is great for basic beginners in veggie gardening. Advanced gardeners may be shocked a little about the very few and basic tools: hoe, shovel, wheelbarrow, rake, knife and file.
But the book was written for "hard times" and than it's good to know you can do your veggie garden with just these basic tools, without all the fancy and expensive stuff around.
Very remarkable is the chapter about seeds and plants from the garden centers, it opened my eyes that most of the failures of the last years weren't really mine but from the bad stuff I bought without knowing it was that bad (it looked good when I bought it....)
So I want to say "THANK YOU, Mr. Solomon" for sharing your experience with us.
Your advices gave me back the joy of gardening and the very first time in 20 years I'm running a satisfying veggie garden without any problems.
Thank you. ;-)
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Gardening When It Counts |
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This is a good resource for a new gardener desiring to make the most of his/her time gardening. The book helps identify the type of garden you have and how to make the most of it or how to improve it to the garden you want. A quick read and good resource to keep handy |
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great information - if you can get past the condescending tone |
A previous reviewer was being nice in describing the author's writing style As 'grandfatherly'.
Personally, my grandfather never talked to me like I was an idiot, and did not pat himself on the back every other sentence. While the book is intended to help the novice gardener, the tone made it a difficult book to read. The author spends a great deal of time ridiculing other garden writers (John Jeavons in particular) that he refers to as Everyone Else. While describing these authors as foolish slaves to production quantity (apparently Everyone Else include every person who believes in raised bed, intensive gardening), Steve Solomom extolls the virtues of planting in rows and giving plants 'room to grow'. He provides his example of not one, but TWO 2400sq ft garden beds - one lies fallow each year with a green manure while the other is planted. Steve also seems to loathe clay soil, so much so that he doesn't even bother giving any advice on how to improve it. He basically says clay is the worst, nutrient-sucking soil (like a battery that eats nutrients) and that even when adding lots of organic matter, it will still hurt your crop production. So instead of recommending a realistic and effective means to address this soil type, the author recommends paying someone to haul in a truckload of topsoil to create the ideal garden bed. That's what he did (spending $1200 in the process), and of course he has beautiful results. Seeing as how I am reading the book to learn how to garden 'in hard times', and I do live on clay soil, I had to look past this ridiculous recommendation to get to the good information in the book.
The book does contain very good information that covers many aspects of how to treat a garden if you are to truly rely on its production. He provides an inexpensive recipe for a complete organic fertilizer (noting that today's chemical concoctions of potassium, nitrogen and phosphorus are creating vegetables that do not give maximum nutritive value - garbage in is garbage out). He also explains the importance of seed quality and provides information on how to obtain the ideal variety for your area.
While I did find a lot of good information, Steve Soloman's writing style made this book torturous to read. |
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