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Gardening Vegetables

Gardening When It Counts (PDF)

Growing Food in Hard Times

by (author) Steve Solomon

Publisher
New Society Publishers
Initial publish date
Jan 2006
Category
Vegetables
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781550923858
    Publish Date
    Jan 2006
    List Price
    $19.95

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Description

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.

 

Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series

About the author

Steve Solomon is the founder of the Territorial Seed Company. He has been growing most of his family's food for over 35 years, and is the author of several landmark gardening books including Gardening When it Counts and Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades. A lifelong evangelist for the value of self-sufficiency, his writing, lectures and classes are focused on helping people become financially independent through producing their own necessities. He currently homesteads in Tasmania.

Steve Solomon's profile page

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