Explore the latest methods for cultivation without chemicals, discover the benefits of composting, and learn how to maintain an organic garden year-round. Packed with stunning photography throughout, you'll be see why the organic gardening movement can create beautiful results equal to, and more often superior than, gardening with pesticides.The Rodale Illustrated Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening is the complete, comprehensive guide to a natural and chemical-free garden. Whether you're an experienced gardener looking to go organic, or a beginner wanting to create a healthy, natural garden, this guide has all the advice you need to turn your garden into thing of natural beauty, safe for kids, pets, and wildlife. The Rodale Illustrated Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening is your invitation to organic gardening for spectacular, all-natural results.

    Sometimes you reap what other people sowed. Sometimes you haven't got a clue what you are sowing, and sometimes you just get lucky, or unlucky. All these things are true of life, as of gardening.In this thoughtful and beautifully observed book, journalist and gardening enthusiast Margaret Simons takes readers on a journey through the seasons, through her life, and through the tiny patch of inner-urban earth that is home to her garden.Over the course of a year, within the garden and without, there are births to celebrate and deaths to mourn; there are periods of great happiness and light, and times of quiet reflection. There is, in other words, all the chaos, joy, sorrow, and splendour of being alive.

    Now expanding exponentially on his bestselling Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre, Brett Markham gives you tips, tricks, and planning advice on how to make the most of your mini farm. New topics include: Soil and Fertility Tools and TechniquesPlanting Guides and SeedersEasy Trellising Weed Control TechniquesGreater Food Self-SufficiencyMaking Your Own Country WinesMaking Your Own Vinegars Making Cheese at HomeCooking for Self-Sufficiency Keep your costs down and production high with this complete guide to maximizing your mini farm—whether it’s a rooftop urban garden, a suburban backyard, or a more substantial plot of land. Materials, tools, and techniques are detailed with tables, diagrams, and 200 color illustrations and author photographs.

    But how do you get plants to grow in a spot where trees and shrubs hide the sun? In this stunning volume, garden expert Larry Hodgson shows how to create a lush and lovely garden filled with plants that will flourish in the shade.The first part covers the basics of shade gardening, including planning, planting, and problem-solving. Here readers will find out how to use shade-tolerant grasses and groundcovers for the root-filled areas under trees; discover solutions for dry shade and heavy needle and leaf drop; and learn what to do if a tree should fall and a shade garden is suddenly thrust back in the sun. The second part is devoted to an encyclopedia of shade-loving plants.Complete with expert designs for five different kinds of shaded gardens, Making the Most of Shade is a splendid new gardening title by the popular author of Perennials for Every Purpose, which Susan McClure, author of Easy-Care Perennial Gardens, called "a treasure . . . the next best thing to having a friendly expert whispering in your ear as you plan, plant, and perfect your perennial garden."

    Subtitled “Seasonal Recipes from an Organic Farm,” Earth to Table sumptuously illuminates how good food is grown and how it comes to us—following over the course of one year, the journey from farm to restaurant of delicious organic produce. Featuring thoughts and recipes from some of the world’s most renowned and innovative “slow food” chefs—including Dan Barber (Blue Hill), Thomas Keller (The French Laundry), Matthew Dillon (Sitka and Spruce), and Heston Blumenthal (The Fat Duck)—here is a glorious celebration of the best things on earth, from Earth to Table.

    In the countryside, we want to preserve nature and the landscape. In impoverished parts of the world, the necessity for sustainable and economical shelter is stronger than ever. Lifestyles and daily routines are also changing. We live in an interconnected world in which digital communication, information, and entertainment are pervasive. Yet basic human needs remain constant: a roof over our heads and somewhere to cook, eat, and sleep. Increasingly, we look for ways to occupy our habitats more ecologically, flexibly, and efficiently.Digital design tools, sustainable materials, and new prefabrication technologies have led to an explosion in innovative ideas for designing domestic spaces, particularly those in tight surroundings. All the homes in Nano House are drawn from a broad array of climatic and environmental contexts, building methods, and spatial innovations.This lively book is the perfect resource and inspiration for designers, architects, builders—for anyone looking to maximize living space with minimal environmental impact.

    The author writes entertainingly of mosses on rocks and walls, in containers, and as a lush ground cover, and he presents a gallery of his favorite moss species.

     Do you want to see the glamorous side of Italy but think it’s out of your budget? Does preparing for international travel leave you feeling anxious? Do you worry about falling into a tourist trap? Italian travel guide and blogger Corinna Cooke has years of experience creating glamorous private vacations throughout every corner of the country. And now she’s here to share her insider tips so you can make the most of your Italian adventure. Glam Italia! How to Travel Italy is your all-in-one guide for crafting your personalized dream vacation. You’ll create an itinerary that’s custom-fit to your interests: from world-renowned art to mouthwatering cuisine, from breathtaking landscapes to trendsetting fashion. With this guide you’ll learn how to find hidden gems and get insider’s advice for touring Italy’s most famous attractions. Whether you plan to travel in style or on a shoestring budget, you’ll discover hidden gems and little-known advice for touring Italy’s most famous attractions. With Cooke’s hassle-free guide, you’ll finally learn to sit back and savor your authentic Italian experience like a local. In Glam Italia! How To Travel Italy, you'll discover: - Step-by-step methods for planning your entire trip, regardless of time or budget - Lists of the best cuisines, and wines by region to satisfy any appetite - Optimum lengths of time to visit each attraction so you can get the best bang for your buck - Simple tips for booking flights that will save hundreds of dollars from your bottom line - Precautions you can take to stay safe and healthy while traveling and much, much more! Glam Italia! How To Travel Italy is your glamorous go-to travel guide for experiencing this charming Mediterranean destination. If you like practical tips, insider advice from a local expert, and stress-free planning, then you’ll love Corinna Cooke’s handbook for your dream vacation. Buy Glam Italia! How To Travel Italy, and pack your bags for a very fabulous, once-in-a-lifetime adventure!

    "Small Space Garden Ideas" is full of creative ideas for making use of every growing space available.From windowsills and hanging baskets to rooftop containers and vertical gardens, "Small Space Garden Ideas" shows you how to create a dream garden, through step-by-step projects from start to finish.

    This is a timely and important book.”—Ted Morgan, author of Wilderness at Dawn“A lively visit with the dauntless men and women who operate America’s family farms and help provide our miraculous annual bounty. Richard Horan writes with energy and passion.”—Hannah Nordhaus, author of The Beekeeper’s Lament“Horan’s new book evocatively describes the peril and promise of family farms in America. I loved joining him on this journey, and so will you.”—T.A. Barron, author of The Great Tree of AvalonIn Seeds, novelist and nature writer Richard Horan sought out the trees that inspired the work of great American writers like Faulkner, Kerouac, Welty, Wharton, and Harper Lee. In Harvest, Horan embarks upon a serendipitous journey across America to work the harvests of more than a dozen essential or unusual food crops—and, in the process, forms powerful connections with the farmers, the soil, and the seasons.

    L. Langstroth, "the father of modern beekeeping," revolutionized the practice of beekeeping. Originally published in 1853, his work constitutes the first descriptive treatise of modern bee management — its innovations allowed people to engage in actual beekeeping, rather than simply handling bee domiciles and extracting the honey. This book explains and illustrates techniques still employed 150 years later — including the author's patented invention, a movable frame hive that quickly spread into common use around the world.In his reader-friendly, nontechnical style, Langstroth addresses every aspect of beekeeping: bee physiology; diseases and enemies of bees; the life-cycles of the queen, drone, and worker; bee-hives; and the handling of bees. An infectious sense of wonder and enthusiasm suffuses Langstroth's accounts of natural and artificial swarming, the production of honey and wax, and the best methods of feeding bees and maintaining an apiary. The manual abounds in practical and intriguing insights attained through the years of observation and experience, including "the kindness of bees to one another," "their infatuation for liquid sweets," and "the warning given by bees before stinging."This version of Langstroth's ever-popular manual is the fourth and final edition; it incorporates the author's own revisions and remains an unsurpassed resource for beekeepers.

    A desirefor sustainable, clean, wholesome food and superior soil quality has ledmore and more suburban and city dwellers to keep laying hens in theirbackyards and gardens.Learn how you can: Be close to your food source with a continuous supply of fresh, heart-healthy eggs to feed yourself and others. Take the best care of your chickens and find out where to buy them. Learn how to be a chicken whisperer. Improve your garden soil for super yields, superior flavor, andoptimal nutrition. Recycle food, grass clippings and yard waste, make compostand help reduce trash going to landfills, saving millions ofmunicipal taxpayer dollars. Help save millions of municipal tax payer dollars by divertingfood and yard waste from landfills; instead create compost -with the help of your flock. Raise baby chicks with items you already have. Avoid getting roosters and why you don't want them. Learn how to be a Poultry Primary Health Care Practitioner. Make and use effective and inexpensive treatments for your flockas described in the Poultry's Pharmacy.Learn how others: Have built urban chicken tractors, hen huts, condos and chickenchateaus to blend in with neighborhood landscape and architecture. Join in urban eco-agro-tourism with annual coop & gardenhome tours for fund raising. Start or join local poultry clubs. Keep small flocks to help preserve endangered breeds of chickens. Draft and pass local laws allowing laying hens withintheir town's limits.By the co-author of Chicken Tractor, Backyard Market Gardening and DayRange Poultry. City Chicks is a remarkable trend-setting book for poultrylovers and urban agriculturists.The imaginative and entertaining style of writing is combined withhands-on, real-life experience to bring you one of the most complete andauthorative books on micro-flock management.

    It also contains the easy to follow instructions on how to analyze and compute the structural design of critical building parts such as: reinforced concrete slabs, beams, columns and footings. There are also simple designs and floor plans for a variety of building types to be found in this book.BUILDING DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION should be of interest to architects, engineers, contractors, developers and allied professionals who are engaged in building design, planning and construction. Students and graduates reviewing for the board examinations for architects and engineers would find in this book valuable practical knowledge to supplement the theories learned in their classrooms.Project owners studying this book would appreciate and get a clear understanding of how their envisioned pet project, which sprang only from a mere idea - is transformed slowly step-by-step - into concrete form.Explanations and instructions in BUILDING DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION are conveyed in direct and simple language for easy understanding even by the layman. Plans and drawings are clearly presented, to be easily interpreted by construction workers.

    Paths of Desire is the enchanting, amusing, and moving account of making a garden -- and confronting the essence of suburban gardening, with its idiosyncratic ecosystem. This meant struggling with depraved skunks and raccoons, marauding teenagers, plastic jungle gyms, toppling garbage cans, uncontrollable eyesores, potholed drives, and all the grinding, honking, and buzzing of the neighborhood. Browning's delightfully frank prose conveys the very sense of being deep in a garden, with all its organic smells and textures, and the myriad joys of deciding what to plant and watching as the vision is realized. It contains a rich store of advice and illustrative anecdotes for enthusiasts and novices alike, as Browning amusingly documents the missteps she took in the planning of her garden and the satisfactions of finally getting it right. In Paths of Desire she teaches us how to embrace our plots of land -- no matter their size, beauty, or proximity to the city -- and make them our own. But she also reminds us that the life of a garden can never be separated from the people who wander in and out of it: characters like the charming but useless children; the philosophical tree doctor and the band of Helpful Men; the neighbors -- legalistic on one side, aesthetically challenged on the other -- and, best and worst of all, the True Love. By the end of the book, Browning has transformed her garden -- and her life -- and has created a place of enchantment, which is most of all what a garden should be.

    If you’ve ever made jam or jelly at home, you know most recipes require more sugar than fruit—oftentimes 4 to 7 cups!—causing many people to look for other ways to preserve more naturally and with less sugar. Pomona’s Pectin is the answer to this canning conundrum. Unlike other popular pectins, which are activated by sugar, Pomona’s is a sugar- and preservative-free citrus pectin that does not require sugar to jell. As a result, jams and jellies can be made with less, little, or no sugar at all and also require much less cooking time than traditional recipes, allowing you to create jams that are not only healthier and quicker to make, but filled with more fresh flavor. If you haven’t tried Pomona’s already (prepare to be smitten), you can easily find the pectin at your local natural foods store, hardware store, or online. With Preserving with Pomona's Pectin, you’ll learn how to use this revolutionary product and method to create marmalades, preserves, conserves, jams, jellies, and more. From sweet offerings like Maple, Vanilla, and Peach Jam to savory favorites like Red Pepper and Jalapeno Chutney, you’ll find endless combinations sure to delight all year round!