Book picks similar to
The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants by Samuel Thayer
non-fiction
food
foraging
nonfiction
Permaculture: A Designers' Manual
Bill Mollison - 1988
It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of a stable social order. Permaculture design is a system of assembling conceptual, material, and strategic components in a pattern which functions to benefit life in all its forms. The philosophy behind permaculture is one of working with, rather than against, nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless action; of looking at systems in all their functions rather than asking only one yield of them; and of allowing systems to demonstrate their own evolutions.
The Vegetable Gardener's Bible: Discover Ed's High-Yield W-O-R-D System for All North American Gardening Regions
Edward C. Smith - 2000
in vegetable gardening with Ed Smith's amazing gardening system. By integrating four principles -- Wide beds, Organic methods, Raised beds, and Deep beds -- Smith reinvents vegetable gardening, making it possible for everyone to have the best, most successful garden ever. By following this complete system you cultivate deep, powerful soil that nourishes plants and discourages pests and disease. The result is fewer weeds, healthier plants, and lots of great-tasting vegetables. Plus, you'll enjoy gardening as you never have before. The Vegetable Gardener's Bible -- the last W.O.R.D. in vegetable gardening.Praise for the book:"this book will answer all your questions as well as put you on the path to an abundant harvest. As a bonus, anecdotes and stories make this informative book fun to read." - New York Newsday
Mushrooms Demystified
David Arora - 1979
Mushroom authority David Arora provides a beginner's checklist of the 70 most distinctive and common mushrooms, plus detailed chapters on terminology, classification, habitats, mushroom cookery, mushroom toxins, and the meanings of scientific mushroom names. Beginning and experienced mushroom hunters everywhere will find MUSHROOMS DEMYSTIFIED a delightful, informative, and indispensible companion.
Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times
Steve Solomon - 2006
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.
Fresh Food from Small Spaces: The Square-Inch Gardener's Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting, and Sprouting
R.J. Ruppenthal - 2008
Fresh Food from Small Spaces fills the gap as a practical, comprehensive, and downright fun guide to growing food in small spaces. It provides readers with the knowledge and skills necessary to produce their own fresh vegetables, mushrooms, sprouts, and fermented foods as well as to raise bees and chickens--all without reliance on energy-intensive systems like indoor lighting and hydroponics.Readers will learn how to transform their balconies and windowsills into productive vegetable gardens, their countertops and storage lockers into commercial-quality sprout and mushroom farms, and their outside nooks and crannies into whatever they can imagine, including sustainable nurseries for honeybees and chickens. Free space for the city gardener might be no more than a cramped patio, balcony, rooftop, windowsill, hanging rafter, dark cabinet, garage, or storage area, but no space is too small or too dark to raise food.With this book as a guide, people living in apartments, condominiums, townhouses, and single-family homes will be able to grow up to 20 percent of their own fresh food using a combination of traditional gardening methods and space-saving techniques such as reflected lighting and container "terracing." Those with access to yards can produce even more.Author R. J. Ruppenthal worked on an organic vegetable farm in his youth, but his expertise in urban and indoor gardening has been hard-won through years of trial-and-error experience. In the small city homes where he has lived, often with no more than a balcony, windowsill, and countertop for gardening, Ruppenthal and his family have been able to eat at least some homegrown food 365 days per year. In an era of declining resources and environmental disruption, Ruppenthal shows that even urban dwellers can contribute to a rebirth of local, fresh foods.
The Wild Wisdom of Weeds: 13 Essential Plants for Human Survival
Katrina Blair - 2014
More than just a field guide to wild edibles, it is a global plan for human survival. When Katrina Blair was eleven she had a life-changing experience where wild plants spoke to her, beckoning her to become a champion of their cause. Since then she has spent months on end taking walkabouts in the wild, eating nothing but what she forages, and has become a wild-foods advocate, community activist, gardener, and chef, teaching and presenting internationally about foraging and the healthful lifestyle it promotes. Katrina Blair's philosophy in The Wild Wisdom of Weeds is sobering, realistic, and ultimately optimistic. If we can open our eyes to see the wisdom found in these weeds right under our noses, instead of trying to eradicate an "invasive," we will achieve true food security. The Wild Wisdom of Weeds is about healing ourselves both in body and in spirit, in an age where technology, commodity agriculture, and processed foods dictate the terms of our intelligence. But if we can become familiar with these thirteen edible survival weeds found all over the world, we will never go hungry, and we will become closer to our own wild human instincts--all the while enjoying the freshest, wildest, and most nutritious food there is. For free! The thirteen plants found growing in every region across the world are: dandelion, mallow, purslane, plantain, thistle, amaranth, dock, mustard, grass, chickweed, clover, lambsquarter, and knotweed. These special plants contribute to the regeneration of the earth while supporting the survival of our human species; they grow everywhere where human civilization exists, from the hottest deserts to the Arctic Circle, following the path of human disturbance. Indeed, the more humans disturb the earth and put our food supply at risk, the more these thirteen plants proliferate. It's a survival plan for the ages. Including over one hundred unique recipes, Katrina Blair's book teaches us how to prepare these wild plants from root to seed in soups, salads, slaws, crackers, pestos, seed breads, and seed butters; cereals, green powders, sauerkrauts, smoothies, and milks; first-aid concoctions such as tinctures, teas, salves, and soothers; self-care/beauty products including shampoo, mouthwash, toothpaste (and brush), face masks; and a lot more. Whether readers are based at home or traveling, this book aims to empower individuals to maintain a state of optimal health with minimal cost and effort.
Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life
Jenna Woginrich - 2008
Learn a few basic country skills, she reasoned, and she would be able to produce at least some of the food and resources she used every day.Goodbye, fast food and Wonder Bread; hello, homesteading. With enthusiasm and joy for the tasks at hand, Woginrich embarked on a journey that has been sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking and always soul satisfying.From the fulfilling work of planting a garden and installing honeybees, to the bliss of gathering fresh eggs for an omelet or playing an old-time ballad on the fiddle, Made from Scratch shares the honest satisfaction of doing for oneself, and brings the reader to a deep appreciation for the value of simple skills performed well.
Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast: Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and Alaska
Jim Pojar - 1994
Color photographs and line drawings help you identify and learn about the fascinating plants of the Pacific Northwest coast. Engaging notes on each species describe aboriginal and other local uses of plants for food, medicine and implements, along with the unique characteristics of each plant and name origins.
Putting Food By
Janet Greene - 1975
This new revised edition updates the information and adds several new sections on how to: preserve with less sugar and salt, make better-than-store-bought foods at home, freeze for the microwave, preserve and can for the small family, can and freeze convenience foods, choose the right equipment, and make Christmas presents.
The Herbal Medicine-Maker's Handbook: A Home Manual
James Green - 2000
Writing in a delightfully personal and down-home style, Green emphasizes the point that herbal medicine-making is fundamental to every culture on the planet and is accessible to everyone. So, first head into the garden and learn to harvest your own herbs, and then head into your kitchen and whip up a batch of raspberry cough syrup, or perhaps a soothing elixir to erase the daily stresses of modern life.
The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure
Joseph C. Jenkins - 1996
The Humanure Handbook, third edition, will amuse you, educate you, and possibly offend you, but it will certainly pertain to you--unless, of course, your bowels never move. This new edition of The Humanure Handbook is:The Tenth Anniversary EditionRichly illustrated with eye-candy artworkPerfect for reading while sitting on the "throne"Revised, improved, and updated256 pages of crap
Wild Edibles: A Practical Guide to Foraging, with Easy Identification of 60 Edible Plants and 67 Recipes
Sergei Boutenko - 2013
Back in civilization, Boutenko was dismayed by the inferior quality of store-bought food and industrial agriculture, and began to regularly collect wild plants near his home and on his travels. Now, in Wild Edibles, he shares knowledge gleaned from years of live-food wildcrafting and thriving in harmony with nature.This practical guide to plant foraging gives hikers, backpackers, raw foodists, gardeners, chefs, foodies, DIYers, survivalists, and off-the-grid enthusiasts the tools to identify, harvest, and prepare wild edible plants. The book outlines basic rules for safe wild-food foraging and discusses poisonous plants, plant identification protocol, gathering etiquette, and conservation.Boutenko explores in detail the many rewards of eating wild flora: environmental protection, sustainability, saving money, economic self-sufficiency, and healthy living. He draws on thoroughly researched nutrition science to make a compelling case for the health benefits of a diverse, local-food diet that includes wild greens.The majority of the 60 edible plants described in this field guide can be found worldwide, including common-growing trees. Over 300 color photos make plant identification easy and safe. A chapter containing 67 high-nutrient vegan recipes—including green smoothies, salads and salad dressings, spreads and crackers, main courses, juices, and sweets—provides inspiration to join Sergei on the trail to radiant health.“Wild Edibles: A Practical Guide to Foraging, with Easy Identification of 60 Edible Plants and 67 Recipes has taught me that my backyard is full of free food! Way to go, Sergei.” —John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market
The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World's Great Drinks
Amy Stewart - 2013
Sake began with a grain of rice. Scotch emerged from barley. Gin was born from a conifer shrub when a Dutch physician added oil of juniper to a clear spirit, believing that juniper berries would cure kidney disorders. "The Drunken Botanist" uncovers the enlightening botanical history and the fascinating science and chemistry of over 150 plants, flowers, trees, and fruits (and even one fungus).Some of the most extraordinary and obscure plants have been fermented and distilled, and they each represent a unique cultural contribution to our global drinking traditions and our history. Molasses was an essential ingredient in American independence: when the British forced the colonies to buy British (not French) molasses for their New World rum-making, the settlers outrage kindled the American Revolution. Rye, which turns up in countless spirits, is vulnerable to ergot, which contains a precursor to LSD, and some historians have speculated that the Salem witch trials occurred because girls poisoned by ergot had seizures that made townspeople think they d been bewitched. Then there's the tale of the thirty-year court battle that took place over the trademarking of Angostura bitters, which may or may not actually contain bark from the Angostura tree.With a delightful two-color vintage-style interior, over fifty drink recipes, growing tips for gardeners, and advice that carries Stewart's trademark wit, this is the perfect gift for gardeners and cocktail aficionados alike.
McGee & Stuckey's Bountiful Container: A Container Garden of Vegetables, Herbs, Fruits and Edible Flowers
Rose Marie Nichols McGee - 2002
And with only one exception-watering-container gardening is a whole lot easier. Beginning with the down-to-earth basics of soil, sun and water, fertilizer, seeds and propagation, The Bountiful Container is an extraordinarily complete, plant-by-plant guide.Written by two seasoned container gardeners and writers, The Bountiful Container covers Vegetables-not just tomatoes (17 varieties) and peppers (19 varieties), butharicots verts, fava beans, Thumbelina carrots, Chioggia beets, and sugarsnap peas. Herbs, from basil to thyme, and including bay leaves, fennel, and saffron crocus. Edible Flowers, such as begonias, calendula, pansies, violets, and roses. And perhaps most surprising, Fruits, including apples, peaches, Meyer lemons, blueberries, currants, and figs-yes, even in the colder parts of the country. (Another benefit of container gardening: You can bring the less hardy perennials in over the winter.) There are theme gardens (an Italian cook's garden, a Four Seasons garden), lists of sources, and dozens of sidebars on everything from how to be a human honeybee to seeds that are All America Selections.
Restoration Agriculture
Mark Shepard - 2013
Every single human society that has relied on annual crops for staple foods has collapsed. Restoration Agriculture explains how we can have all of the benefits of natural, perennial ecosystems and create agricultural systems that imitate nature in form and function while still providing for our food, building, fuel and many other needs - in your own backyard, farm or ranch. This book, based on real-world practices, presents an alternative to the agriculture system of eradication and offers exciting hope for our future.