This book, edited by three of the group's leading members, comprises 50 original essays by new farmers who write about their experiences in the field from a wide range of angles, both practical and inspirational. Funny, sad, serious, and light-hearted, these essays touch on everything from financing and machinery to family, community building, and social change.

    Robert Hart's book beautifully describes his decades of experience gardening in the Shropshire countryside. The principles of backyard permaculture he has developed can be applied successfully in every temperate zone of North America, helping to transform even a small cottage garden into a diverse and hospitable habitat for songbirds, butterflies, and other wildlife. Blending history, philosophy, anthropology, and seasoned gardening wisdom in a lucid sequence of essays, Forest Gardening examines the pleasure of hands off as well as hands-on gardening. This book offers fresh ways of understanding the relationships between people and growing plants. For gardeners who aspire to create ecological as well as beautiful gardens, Forest Gardening will be an inspiration and a pleasure.

    With the help of more than 200 beautiful color photos and drawings, permaculture designer and avid grower Michael Judd takes the reader on a step-by-step process to transform a sea of grass into a flourishing edible landscape that pleases the eye as well as the taste buds. With personality and humor, he translates the complexities of permaculture design into simple self-build projects, providing full details on the evolving design process, material identification, and costs.Chapters cover:Food Forests Raised-Bed Gardens Mushroom Cultivation Easy to Grow Fruits Herb Spirals Huglekultur Beds Earthen Ovens, and more . . . The book's colorful pages are filled with practical designs that Judd has created and built over years of workshops, homesteading, and running an edible landscaping business. The book's designs can be easily grafted to the micro-habits of the urban landscape, scaled up to the acreage of homesteads, or adapted to already flourishing landscapes. Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist is a tool to spark and inform the imagination of anyone with a desire to turn their landscape into a luscious and productive edible paradise.

    With artwork from Katie Scott of Animalium fame, Botanicum gives readers the experience of a fascinating exhibition from the pages of a beautiful book. From perennials to bulbs to tropical exotica, Botanicum is a wonderful feast of botanical knowledge complete with superb cross sections of how plants work.

    Through the combined use of the ideal growing compost for best nutrition, and Companion Planting methods for nutrition and pest/disease control; SFG is the gardening method of choice for millions of 'switched on' gardeners today.Along with Raised Bed and Container planting methods, SFG is another way that individuals can take back control of their food needs from the big corporations - and benefit from fresh organically produced vegetables - by growing their own easily and with minimum fuss!What You Will Find In This Book:1. An introduction to SFG - What it is all about.Growing vegetables in a square foot garden is all the rage just now - but what exactly is it all about? Here you will find out about the background to SFG and why it is so effective for growing fruit and vegetables of many kinds.2. How to construct your own Square Foot GardenSimple instructions for constructing a simple SFG frame - it does not get much easier than this!3. How to make your own 'special mix' of compost for infilling.;The 'secret sauce' behind the success of this intensive gardening technique, lays in the growing compound. Find out how to make top-notch organic compost to improve your soil and subsequent crop-yield.5. Guidelines for planting out your SFG.Simple and clear diagrams and pictures to get you started on your own SFG.6. Introducing Companion Planting - Good and Bad companions for your veggies.Companion Planting plays a crucial role in the success of a square foot or raised bed garden. Some great tips here to get your vegetables growing strong and proud.7. Beneficial herbs and Organic pest control.Herb gardening is extremely important in the control of destructive pests. Find out which herbs are more beneficial for your plants.8. Instructions on plant support and growing methods.Some instruction on how to go about supporting your plants so that you may get the best out of them and minimalize damage due to heavy crops.9. A list of popular vegetables and herbs to grow in your SFG, including planting, plant care and harvesting/storing your vegetables.A comprehensive list of good vegetables and herbs that will complement each other throughout the growing process, as well as how to harvest and store your crops for later use.

    With expert advice on choosing and maintaining the best plants for your needs, Joe Fisher and Dennis Fisher show you how to turn a small patch of backyard, or even a few window boxes, into a renewable brewing supply store. Discover the satisfaction that comes from brewing tasty beers using fresh homegrown ingredients.

    Authors Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird suggest that the most far-reaching revolution of the 20th century — one that could save or destroy the planet — may come from the bottom of your garden."Almost incredible ... bristles with plenty of hard facts and astounding scientific and practical lore." —S. K. Oberbeck, Newsweek“This fascinating book roams ... over that marvelous no man's land of mystical glimmerings into the nature of science and life itself." —Henry Mitchell, Washington Post Book World“If I can't ‘get inside a plant’ or ‘feel emanations’ from a plant and don't know anyone else who can. that doesn't detract one whit from the possibility that some people can and do. . . .According to The Secret Life of Plants, plants and men do inter-relate, with plants exhibiting empathetic and spiritual relationships and showing reactions interpreted as demonstrating physical-force connections with men. As my students say, ‘hey, wow!’"—Richard M. Klein, Professor of Botany, University of Vermont (in Smithsonian)

    Thereafter, through growing neglect, they slipped gradually to sleep. This is the amazing story of their rediscovery and restoration, or the Victorian vision and ingenuity which first created that subtropical paradise, and of the modern obsession and improvisation which recreated it.

    Small-scale, self-contained worm bins can be kept indoors, in a basement or even under the kitchen sink in an apartment — making vermicomposting a great option for city dwellers and anyone who doesn’t want or can’t have an outdoor compost pile. The fully revised 35th anniversary edition features the original’s same friendly tone, with up-to-date information on the entire process, from building or purchasing a bin (readily available at garden supply stores), maintaining the worms, and harvesting the finished compost.

    From agaves to ice plants and sedums to sempervivums, hardy succulents can bring color, texture, and versatility to perennial flower beds in any climate. This comprehensive guide offers clear growing instructions accompanied by vivid photography of these durable and beautiful plants. With tips on choosing the right varieties for every North American hardiness zone, you can enjoy all the quirky vibrancy of succulents wherever you live.

    Whether you’re new to gardening or interested in saving costs, Vegetable Gardening for Beginners offers easy-to-follow steps for starting and sustaining your very own vegetable garden.Learn the basics of starting your dream garden, including tips on choosing between in-ground or raised bed gardens and creating a full-season garden plan. Discover how to make your own soil mix, transplant seedlings, and maintain and harvest a thriving vegetable garden for seasons to come.Vegetable Gardening for Beginners includes:* Beet-by-beet gardening―Get the lowdown on planning, prepping, and planting―including building and filling garden beds, watering, mulching, and more.* Garden variety―Choose the right seeds with 30 in-depth profiles on popular vegetables and key decisions, like choosing companion plants.* Weed out problems―Troubleshoot plant problems, including bitter carrots, blight, and even pests like the squash vine borer.Go from greenhorn to green thumb with Vegetable Gardening for Beginners.

    Jenni Blackmore presents a highly entertaining, personal account of how permaculture can be practiced in adverse conditions, allowing anyone to learn to live more sustainably in a less-than-perfect world. With a rallying cry of "If we can do it, you can too," she distills the wisdom of twenty years of trial and error into a valuable teaching tool.The perfect antidote to dense, high-level technical manuals, Permaculture for the Rest of Us presents the fundamental principles of this sometimes confusing concept in a humorous, reader-friendly way. Each chapter focuses on a specific method or technique, interspersing straightforward explanations with the author's own experiences. Learn how to successfully retrofit even the smallest homestead using skills such as:No-till vs. till gardening, composting, and soil-building Natural pest control and integrating small livestock Basic greenhouse construction Harvesting, preservation, and moreIdeal for urban dreamers, suburbanites and country-dwellers alike, this inspirational and instructional "encouragement manual" is packed with vibrant photographs documenting the author's journey from adversity to abundance.Jenni Blackmore is a farmer, artist, writer and certified Permaculture Design Consultant who built her house on a rocky, windswept island off the coast of Nova Scotia almost twenty-five years ago and has been stumbling along the road to self-sufficient living ever since. A successful micro-farmer, she produces most of her family's meat, eggs, fruit, and vegetables, in spite of often-challenging conditions.

    And while mastery of the classical language may not be a prerequisite for pruning perennials, all gardeners stand to benefit from learning a bit of Latin and its conventions in the field. Without it, they might buy a Hellebores foetidus and be unprepared for its fetid smell, or a Potentilla reptans with the expectation that it will stand straight as a sentinel rather than creep along the ground.An essential addition to the gardener’s library, this colorful, fully illustrated book details the history of naming plants, provides an overview of Latin naming conventions, and offers guidelines for pronunciation. Readers will learn to identify Latin terms that indicate the provenance of a given plant and provide clues to its color, shape, fragrance, taste, behavior, functions, and more.  Full of expert instruction and practical guidance, Latin for Gardeners will allow novices and green thumbs alike to better appreciate the seemingly esoteric names behind the plants they work with, and to expertly converse with fellow enthusiasts. Soon they will realize that having a basic understanding of Latin before trips to the nursery or botanic garden is like possessing some knowledge of French before traveling to Paris; it enriches the whole experience.

    Buchmann, one of the world's leading authorities on bees and pollination, and Gary Paul Nabhan, award-winning writer and renowned crop ecologist, explore the vital but little-appreciated relationship between plants and the animals they depend on for reproduction -- bees, beetles, butterflies, hummingbirds, moths, bats, and countless other animals, some widely recognized and other almost unknown.Scenes from around the globe -- examining island flora and fauna on the Galapagos, counting bees in the Panamanian rain forest, witnessing an ancient honey-hunting ritual in Malaysia -- bring to life the hidden relationships between plants and animals, and demonstrate the ways in which human society affects and is affected by those relationships. Buchmann and Nabhan combine vignettes from the field with expository discussions of ecology, botany, and crop science to present a lively and fascinating account of the ecological and cultural context of plant-pollinator relationships.More than any other natural process, plant-pollinator relationships offer vivid examples of the connections between endangered species and threatened habitats. The authors explain how human-induced changes in pollinator populations -- caused by overuse of chemical pesticides, unbridled development, and conversion of natural areas into monocultural cropland-can have a ripple effect on disparate species, ultimately leading to a "cascade of linked extinctions."

    Revealing the enormous potential of herbs, this sourcebook includes information on planting, growing, and harvesting herbs, as well as the main uses of herbs. It also offers an exhaustive identification guide, recipes, ideas for gifts, and much more.