Best organic gardening books according to redditors
We found 191 Reddit comments discussing the best organic gardening books. We ranked the 45 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 191 Reddit comments discussing the best organic gardening books. We ranked the 45 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
If you move the decimal over. This is about 1,000 in books...
(If I had to pick a few for 100 bucks: encyclopedia of country living, survival medicine, wilderness medicine, ball preservation, art of fermentation, a few mushroom and foraging books.)
Medical:
Where there is no doctor
Where there is no dentist
Emergency War Surgery
The survival medicine handbook
Auerbach’s Wilderness Medicine
Special Operations Medical Handbook
Food Production
Mini Farming
encyclopedia of country living
square foot gardening
Seed Saving
Storey’s Raising Rabbits
Meat Rabbits
Aquaponics Gardening: Step By Step
Storey’s Chicken Book
Storey Dairy Goat
Storey Meat Goat
Storey Ducks
Storey’s Bees
Beekeepers Bible
bio-integrated farm
soil and water engineering
Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation
Food Preservation and Cooking
Steve Rinella’s Large Game Processing
Steve Rinella’s Small Game
Ball Home Preservation
Charcuterie
Root Cellaring
Art of Natural Cheesemaking
Mastering Artesian Cheese Making
American Farmstead Cheesemaking
Joe Beef: Surviving Apocalypse
Wild Fermentation
Art of Fermentation
Nose to Tail
Artisan Sourdough
Designing Great Beers
The Joy of Home Distilling
Foraging
Southeast Foraging
Boletes
Mushrooms of Carolinas
Mushrooms of Southeastern United States
Mushrooms of the Gulf Coast
Tech
farm and workshop Welding
ultimate guide: plumbing
ultimate guide: wiring
ultimate guide: home repair
off grid solar
Woodworking
Timberframe Construction
Basic Lathework
How to Run A Lathe
Backyard Foundry
Sand Casting
Practical Casting
The Complete Metalsmith
Gears and Cutting Gears
Hardening Tempering and Heat Treatment
Machinery’s Handbook
How to Diagnose and Fix Everything Electronic
Electronics For Inventors
Basic Science
Chemistry
Organic Chem
Understanding Basic Chemistry Through Problem Solving
Ham Radio
AARL Antenna Book
General Class Manual
Tech Class Manual
MISC
Ray Mears Essential Bushcraft
Contact!
Nuclear War Survival Skills
The Knowledge: How to rebuild civilization in the aftermath of a cataclysm
Rather than slog through the opinions here, I'd pick up Jeavons' "How to Grow More Vegetables (and Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops) Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine."
It has comprehensive tables of expected yields for a wide variety of common crops, and specifically highlights those that are space and calorie efficient. You will never spend a better $15.
Producing 50% of the food for 6 people off 1/3 acre is a tall order. I would recommend looking into edible food forests for the wooded area(research agroforesty and edible food forests), and edible perennial landscaping for the front yard to stack functions and bring those areas into production. You could also keep your chickens and coop in the wooded area, so as not to waste space in your "open area". If you are planing on raising eggs to sell, they typically are a loss-leader until you get to about 150 birds, which doesn't sound feasible for the amount of land you have. With that in mind, I'd keep your flock small; 6-10 birds, depending on how many eggs your family eats a week.
If you have the time and the energy, I would highly recommend John Jeavon's "Grow Biointensive" method. This method produces more food with less water and less space, however, to be able to plant as close together as he recommends, you have to follow ALL of his steps. That means double digging, which is pretty labor intensive at the very beginning of the season.
As for fish, seems like you could set up an aquaponics greenhouse, which can be expensive to start up but wonderful once going, or you can dig a pond.
EDIT: To add resources.
http://www.johnjeavons.info/video.html - video introduction to bioitensive. (on your scale I might skip out on the compost crops)
"How To Grow More Vegetables*" By John Jeavons is a wonderful resource.
Gaia's Garden: A guide to Home-scale Permaculture by Toby Hemmingway
For greenhouse production: Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long
If you are thinking about a market stand of some kind, The Organic Farmer's Business Handbook: A Complete Guide To Managing Finances, Crops, and Staff - and Making a Profit
What your describing is a constructed wetlands. Its more for bio-remediation of run off from a parking lot.
Compost toilets usually either employ the bucket method, where you capture the defecate in a bucket and empty it into a barrel where it can sit for a year before being safe to compost. Or the toilet detains the defecate in a chamber beneath and dries it out using ventilation. Once its sufficiently dry its safe to mix with compost.
Either way if you build it properly and teach people how to use it, it won't have an odor.
Humanure Handbook
>Do you know how unsafe a hot water heater that only goes up to 90 degrees F is? I am shocked you haven't caught legionnaire's already.
I wasn't overly familiar with it, so thanks for the heads up. I've been using chlorinated tap water and usually only 2-3 days worth at a time. I'll make sure I don't let water sit in there and become stagnant and to rinse it out with a 5% bleach solution once a week to be safe.
>Do you know how many nasty diseases you can catch from improperly disposed human waste?
Yes, actually, I did a lot of research and reading on proper composting methods before diving into it. Your average person's waste will contain large amounts of bacteria and some common parasites (pin worms, etc.) and possibly some virus's(virii?) as well. Here's a chart that shows survival times of some pathogens.
I'd suggest reading the Humanure Handbook if you're interested in the topic.
Dave Jacke's book:
http://www.amazon.com/Edible-Forest-Gardens-2-set/dp/1890132608
Gaia's Garden:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1603580298/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1?pf_rd_p=1944687542&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1890132608&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0DKFRRSMRZE5HP5F3XDB
>After I managed to correct that situation, I also waited to see how the products cultivated. Thats right, Im growing the shit, just like everyone else is here too, but everyone acts like saying they are studying the pore under microscope is gonna save you if they raid your house...yah yah yah, whatever.
Or maybe it's because selling drug cultivation supplies would be a surefire way to get the community shut down on a website that doesn't allow my users in /r/snackexchange to trade a bottle of beer or a cigarette. Microscopy isn't some stupid "SWIM" cover by armchair lawyers, it's the only legal reason you should have those syringes. Your choice to break the law, however wrong it might be, and then brag about it hurts more than one individual vendor. The rest of us are just interested in microbiology and I don't know where I could source an isolated strain in the wild without risking contamination, making this an invaluable resource. And as someone who's purchased from MM666, the samples arrived within like two days and were better than the samples I'd purchased from actual websites before.
edit: Also, here you go. They're really neat organisms. Understanding them is important for reasons beyond the novelty of looking at something small.
Hey friend! That's kind of a big question with a lot of detail. All the information is out there, but it can be tricky to find. I think we can all empathize with you there.
Generally speaking, all the concepts are the same, it's only the equipment that changes. Essentially, all you're doing is the following, without any of the details:
 
 
I usually advocate for getting a pressure cooker and beginning with grains/jars; but you said you were on a tight budget, so I'll give you some beginner-tier options to get the above accomplished. The caveat here is that they're by no means the best or least-risky methods, but you asked for a cheap way forward that is still effective, so that's what I'll give you. It would be impossible for me to list out every detail, so just ask me questions and I'll fill in the rest one thing at a time:
 
You could pasteurize prepared wood chip/sawdust mix (substrate) in a coffee can or plastic tub (with a lid) and buy pre-made spawn online. Spawn is ≈$10-25USD and comes as bags of grains or sawdust. You can find tubs all over the place for cheap. Then you just combine the two, wait for the substrate to colonize, and fruit from there (Steps 5-9).
You could also buy a grocery store Hericium mushroom, chop it up into slices, spread that out over moist cardboard, and let that colonize. This is a little more risky with Hericium (v. Pleurotus, which is much more aggressive). After it finishes, you would add that cardboard spawn to some pasteurized wood chip/sawdust mix in layers, then wait for it to finish colonizing before fruiting it (Steps 3-9).
Those are both cheap ways to start out, but don't skimp on the spawn.
Depending on the tote you use, you might need to make a ShotGun Fruiting Chamber (SGFC), which is just a tote with holes in it on all 6 sides, with some perlite or grow stone at the bottom. It's as expensive as it is to buy a tote. You'll need to find a drill and bit to make the holes. I can run you through that, too.
 
All of this is just a basic idea to point you in a direction given your low budget. It's slightly more risky, but cheap and easy. That's the tradeoff.
If you're in college, you might have access to a biology lab and be able to use their equipment. Glass Petri dishes, bio-safety cabinet, autoclave, possible supply of agar, etc. Let me know if you do and I'll walk you though some more advanced techniques that also meet your budget. All you'd have to do is buy a few bags at ≈$1USD each and either some liquid culture (≈$10), or even a store-bought mushroom will do.
 
That's a super rough, dirty version. People will probably yell at me, but that's ok. I can't type out a novel here, so just ask questions about what you don't understand and we'll go from there. If you need a source that takes you front to back, go to your college library and Inter-Library-Loan "Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms" or "Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation: Simple to Advanced and Experimental Techniques for Indoor and Outdoor Cultivation".
They wouldn't claim to be scientists, more like ecological engineers, but there are tons of writeups. They write a lot of books; there are a lot of "test sites" around the world.
Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home Scale Permaculture --> most accessible guide for the layperson
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1603580298/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1603580298&linkCode=as2&tag=postapocaly06-20&linkId=PARY4RJKHWLQYGER
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0908228015/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0908228015&linkCode=as2&tag=postapocaly06-20&linkId=NSVF65UXGPBESS3D --> Permaculture: A Designer's Manual, by Bill Mollison --> the textbook for the so-called "permaculture design course"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture
Some famous demonstration sites:
Zaytuna Farm, Australia - http://permaculturenews.org/2012/06/01/zaytuna-farm-video-tour-apr-may-2012-ten-years-of-revolutionary-design/
Bealtaine Cottage, British Isles - http://bealtainecottage.com/before-permaculture/
Agroforestry UK - https://www.agroforestry.co.uk/
It's quite a rabbit hole! Good luck exploring!!
Glad to help. Now is a great time to get back into gardening and build up the soil where you live. You might want to consider throwing in some perennial edibles. And this book is a good read if you want a collapse-resistant garden. Good luck and have fun!
We could import a heck of a lot less than we do. Eliot Coleman farms in an environment almost identical to NS, zone 5.
http://www.amazon.ca/Four-Season-Harvest-Organic-Vegetables-Edition/dp/1890132276
Did you know that tomatoes were grown in Northern BC during the depression? That cherries can be grown in zone 3? Figs in zone 5? Olives are being grown in BC and the first crops will be within 5 years? Ginseng is being grown for China in the Okanogan? People in Vancouver are growing lemons (Meyer) outdoors year round? Pawpaws in Ontario? Amazing, isn't it.
The Humanure Handbook covers everything you need to know. You have to have airflow and drainage or the worms will die so the bucket idea is not great. Honestly, if you don't have the room, don't do it. It's likely illegal in the city anyhow.
You could plant trees there especially where you see other plants growing like around dry creekbeds which often hold moisture underground longer than one might expect. You could also try propagating plants that are there or that look like they ought to be there - the more habitat, shade, and surfaces for dew to form on, the better. The more terraced, divoted, and vegetated the land the more water and organic matter will accumulate on it rather than simply blowing away. You could start some shrubby plants around areas as windbreaks. You could also start shrubby plants as barriers against the pollution and gusts from the offroad vehicles and try to plant things intended for eating at a higher elevation than the road. Also think about starting some deep-rooted plants whether trees or herbs or whatever that will be suited to your area since they are usually plants that are good at seeking out water and nutrients from far down and bringing them up to the surface. If you want to get a good start it would help to water regularly and use deep layers of mulch. Stuff like beans, curcurbits, peppers, sunflowers, garlic, and corn can generally do well in dry, hot environments but will need some attention and watering.
Start with Gaia’s Garden (https://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-Guide-Home-Scale-Permaculture/dp/1603580298/)
Permaculture on the scale for those of us that aren’t farmers.
Buy a regional guide. Here are a few if you are in the US. It's important to know the terminology that goes along with mushroom hunting.
Also Use the links in the sidebar here, they will tell you the active mushrooms in your area. Once you do this do individual research on each one.
Regional guides
Alaska
Common Interior Alaska Cryptogams
Western US
All The Rain Promises and More
Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest
Mushrooms Demystified This is an old book, while still useful it definitely needs updating.
The New Savory Wild Mushroom Also dated but made for the PNW
Midwestern US
Mushrooms of the Midwest
Edible Wild Mushrooms of Illinois and Surrounding States
Mushrooms of the Upper Midwest
Southern US
Texas Mushrooms: A Field Guide
Mushrooms of the Southeastern United States
Eastern US
Mushrooms of West Virginia and the Central Appalachians
Mushrooms of Northeast North America (This was out of print for awhile but it's they're supposed to be reprinting so the price will be normal again)
Mushrooms of Northeastern North America
Macrofungi Associated with Oaks of Eastern North America(Macrofungi Associated with Oaks of Eastern North America)
Mushrooms of Cape Cod and the National Seashore
More specific guides
Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World
North American Boletes
Tricholomas of North America
Milk Mushrooms of North America
Waxcap Mushrooms of North America
Ascomycete of North America
Ascomycete in colour
Fungi of Switzerland: Vol. 1 Ascomycetes
PDFs
For Pholiotas
For Chlorophyllum
Websites that aren't in the sidebar
For Amanita
For coprinoids
For Ascos
MycoQuebec: they have a kickass app but it's In French
Messiah college this has a lot of weird species for polypores and other things
Cultivation
The Mushroom Cultivator: A Practical Guide to Growing Mushrooms at Home (If your home is a 50,000 sq ft warehouse)
Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation: Simple to Advanced and Experimental Techniques for Indoor and Outdoor Cultivation
Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms
Mycology
The fifth kingdom beginner book, I would recommend this. It goes over fungal taxonomy Oomycota, Zygomycota and Eumycota. It also has ecology and fungi as food.
The kingdom fungi coffee table book it has general taxonomy of the kingdom but also very nice pictures.
Introduction to fungi Depends on your definition of beginner, this is bio and orgo heavy. Remember the fungi you see pop out of the ground (ascos and basidios) are only a tiny fraction of the kingdom.
If you're raising it for small scale, you'll want to choose heritage breeds or locally adapted breeds. In the same way that the mealy, tasteless tomatoes you buy at the supermarket are bred for uniformity and transportability rather than flavor or adaptability to your local climate, "common" wheat and grain varieties are bred to withstand herbicides and pesticides, and to be productive in large monocultures. Small Scale Grain Raising is good. I haven't read The Organic Grain Grower but it looks good. If you're interested in corn, several homesteaders I know grow painted mountain corn and have only had great reviews.
Toby Hemenway would disagree with you.
the aggressive nature of bamboo is greatly overstated. This is partly due to the fact that things like sidewalks actually make it more aggressive - it will eagerly shoot under 24" of concrete to come out the other side. It is also partly due to bamboo's need for trimming - in the wild, all sorts of critters eat the shoots when they're small so only a few ever reach the crown. However, there are all sorts of bamboo barriers that do a righteous job of containing bamboo even if you're too lazy to go out and eat the shoots every now and then.
Is bamboo a voracious grower? Yes. Are its rhizomes tough to eradicate once a clump is established? Yes. But compared to some perfectly mainstream-acceptable plants like ivy and blackberries, it's a pussycat. People freak out about bamboo because it's what the cool kids do. Likely there was someone who moved into a house with a bamboo grove in the back, decide to take it out, and discover that it doesn't go quietly.
I once had eight sawed-off 55gal drums full of golden bamboo. They were beautiful. They were also on pallets, in a parking lot, 150 feet from the nearest bare earth.
That didn't stop total strangers from walking up while I was watering and saying "better be careful, that stuff will get away from you!"
I was introduced by Gaia's Garden , it was a wonderful read and an even better starting point
You don't need acreage to get started. Many urban lots have plenty of room for doing everything you want. On my urban lot (8000sqft) I currently have 6 chickens, 3 beehives, a 100sqft greenhouse, 200 sqft of raised beds, 10 fruit trees, plus many more edible shrubs, ground covers and other plants. I plan on adding more fruit trees, ducks, and rabbits soon. I have rainwater harvesting set up to supply all my outdoor watering needs and will be installing solar on my house this spring to supply most of my energy needs. I am in no way completely self sufficient, but I can supply my self with two or three meals a day during the summer and at least one a day during the winter. But more importantly, I've learned how to grow food, save seeds, graft trees, raise some animals, etc. And when I move in to a larger piece of land in a few years, I already know what works and what doesn't, what I like doing and what I don't, and how to avoid many of the common mistakes that new homesteaders make. So, start now. If you don't have a yard, grow in containers. Read and learn. I can't recommended Gaia's Garden and Squarefoot Gardening enough.
I am relatively new to this subject and these books have been useful for me:
The Urban Homestead A good introductory book that touches on a lot of relevant topics.
Gaia's Garden This is not specifically a homesteading book but it is a very useful book for growing food and learning about small scale permacultural design.
Four Season Harvest Another useful book for growing, especially for those of us in cold climates.
Country Wisdom & Know How A fun reference for many homestead topics.
Winter squash. I grew a 10x10 plot of squash, it might just get you through winter. Grow a variety of different types, squash for immediate use and squash for storage. Look up Carol Deppe, she wrote: http://www.amazon.com/The-Resilient-Gardener-Production-Self-Reliance/dp/160358031X
One more photo: http://imgur.com/aSTCU
Four-Season Harvest by Elliot Coleman was invaluable. He targets commercial growers, but it's a handy guide for any of us trying to grow year-round in the north.
Greenhouse film
Floating row cover
Note, no affiliate id and I'm not associated with the above, it's just where we bought our supplies (and I can't say enough great things about Jonny's, we've been very happy with them)
We put the hoops up and then covered with the agribon when it first started to hit the low 30's. Once our lows started reaching the teens at night, I put the greenhouse film over the row cover.
On sunny days, you absolutely need to go out and pull the plastic cover back. I was lazy and lost my lettuce due to heat stress during a week where it was in the 20's during the day. Yes, it does get that hot.
You're right, you need cool weather crops. Spinach, broccoli, carrots, cabbage, kale, beets, lettuce.... those all do fantastic. I'd imagine peas would too but it just seemed like too much of a hassle trying to trellis peas under hoops.
As far as challenges we faced. We started the broccoli in August but the variety really needed a cold snap and then warm spell to produce. So, it grew slow all winter and then we ended up getting our first harvest in March. And, again, you need to be on top of venting the hoops when it's sunny. Watering can be a bit of a pain as well. I only had a hose so I had to drain the hose after I watered each time. Of course, there's not nearly as much evaporation in the winter so watering is less frequent.
On the plus side... there really is nothing like a carrot that's only been grown in the cold. They're as sweet as candy. There's also nothing like trudging through a foot of snow and coming back in with half a pound of fresh spinach for a pizza.
if its your first house can i suggest a couple books?
http://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-Second-Home-Scale-Permaculture/dp/1603580298/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278971308&sr=1-1
or
Intro to Permaculture by Mill Mollison
http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Permaculture-Bill-Mollison/dp/0908228082
p.s. pssssst... get rid of the lawn and put in something useful and beautiful.
I don't have any personal experience, but I know of a couple of books on the subject:
Small-Scale Grain Raising, Second Edition: An Organic Guide to Growing, Processing, and Using Nutritious Whole Grains, for Home Gardeners and Local Farmers
Homegrown Whole Grains: Grow, Harvest, and Cook Wheat, Barley, Oats, Rice, Corn and More
>without livestock, there will be no natural fertilizers.
WTF? Almost any organic waste is a fertilizer. Rotting food scraps are a fertilizer. Compost is a fertilizer. Most animal shit can be used as a fertilizer, even human shit. I refer to the Humanure Handbook. Kind of weird to fixate on cows as the only species that can take a shit. It speaks to the culture you were brought up in.
Sepp Holzer is also from Austria and has done some great things and written a few books.
Toby Hemenway's book, Gaia's Garden, is fantastic.
If you only care about growing vegetables in a garden bed, there are a lot of books on how to get started and any one of them would work for you. Go to a used book store and see what they have, I'm sure you'll find something you like.
Well, as someone who worked a blue collar job while studying philosophy in my leisure time, I'd have to say I've come to the same conclusion. Plan on moving out west and joining an ecovillage/worker cooperative. You might want to look into permaculture for your gardening, better yields through organic farming.
(Not trying to one-up you, just saying that thanks to the wide-spread nature of information, you don't have to be an academic elite to come to such conclusions)
Plant whatever you're going to eat. I recommend oats and wheat if you get the space. I love having a sickle in the house. Great conversation starter, and gets rid of pesky salesman as well.
Here's a book recommendation for you:http://www.amazon.com/Self-sufficient-Life-How-Live/dp/0789493322/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255627396&sr=8-2
John Seymour shows you exactly how to parcel out your space. It's the bible of homesteading.
> Gaia's Garden
First search result is some woo-woo New-Agey crap site. I think this is what you meant? Looks like a very good book. May have to pick it up.
If he really wants to step it up, this book by Eliot Coleman. He lives in Maine and gardens year round!
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Season-Harvest-Organic-Vegetables-Edition/dp/1890132276/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1410619791&sr=8-2&keywords=year+round+gardening
3)I know absolutely nothing about this subject, you're on your own :)
At the time, I didn't own a mill so a friend of mine offered to grind it for me. I ended up with about 15lbs of flour in total. I recall being happy about the yield but I honestly couldn't tell you if it was good or not. I'd have to go back to my old notes to calculate the total area I planted to come up with a sq ft yield. As far as how much flour would result from the wheat in this photo - I'm not sure. Not much.
For future plantings, I want to talk to someone from my local extension to see if there is a recommended wheat variety for my area. I bought some random hard red winter wheat berries from amazon and planted it. For all I know, it was terribly suited to my climate.
Since then, my wife bought me a mill that I've been happy with: https://www.reddit.com/r/Breadit/comments/7mr7sw/adventures_in_milling_first_whole_grain_loaf/
If you're interested in reading more, I highly recommend Logdson's book: Small-Scale Grain Raising: An Organic Guide to Growing, Processing, and Using Nutritious Whole Grains for Home Gardeners and Local Farmers, 2nd Edition - https://www.amazon.com/Small-Scale-Grain-Raising-Processing-Nutritious/dp/1603580778
Over at r/seedstock we have nearly 500 listings of places to buy seeds and the like. Do your own research though, while people have commented on those they've purchased from in the past, there are many submissions that have no such comments. Between c-ray and I, many are permaculture-oriented, but a few are your typical mail order nursery fare.
You probably want to think about fruit trees. In the central Illinois region, you've probably alot of choice in that regard. Pecans and walnuts will do fine, almonds are probably too iffy. Apples of all types, more than a few pears, apricots and cherries and peaches. All sorts of berries should do well, blackberry, blueberry and the like. Grapevines too, for that matter. All of these things will reduce your need to till, since they continue to fruit year after year without replanting.
You could also check out this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Perennial-Vegetables-Artichokes-Gardeners-Delicious/dp/1931498407
My mother-in-law bought it for me for Christmas, and I like it quite a bit. Good for ideas. I don't know that half of what's in there is anything I'd ever want to eat, but the other half is still 80 or 90 edible plants most of which I was quite unfamiliar with.
Also, do you have any chickens? 3 acres is enough to consider having a sizable flock, and their poop's as important as any of the eggs.
*humanure
I recommend this book if you're interested.
After various self-experiments on my land and reading up on intensive grow methods (e.g. Jeavons), my back-of-the envelope estimate is 5000 square feet/person. You can get it lower but it's increasingly risky, lacking redundancy for crop failure. That's if people are willing to do some of the work themselves and not wait for monoagriculture to bail them out, because gardening for subsistence is labor intensive. Also assumes a largely vegan diet, without supplementation from hunting/fishing. For a population of 80,000, that works out to about 9200 acres.
Second to MIGradener, especially if you're in zone 6 or thereabouts.
I also really like Epic Gardening. He does a daily podcast and has a great website with short posts that are specific and easy to digest.
The book "How to Grow More Vegetables" is an awesome resource that outlines an entire system for maximizing small growing spaces. It can feel like a lot if you think about implementing the whole system, but if you read it with the idea of just understanding some basic gardening principles, it is a great book to have.
Human shit can make great fertilizer if treated properly. We should be using it in this way a lot more.
https://www.amazon.com/Humanure-Handbook-Guide-Composting-Manure/dp/0964425831/
If you haven't already, introduce yourself to permaculture. A good start is Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway and this video right here by Geoff Lawton.
https://www.amazon.com/Small-Scale-Grain-Raising-Processing-Nutritious/dp/1603580778
Toby Hemenway. This book has some discussion of the non-native issue. This video might be the one you're looking for. See also this discussion thread.
This is tradd cotter's book. He is a legend. It will tell you EVERYTHING you need to know about growing mushrooms. All the teks and the ones he uses to get insane yields. He is an inspiration literally lol. https://www.amazon.com/Organic-Mushroom-Farming-Mycoremediation-Experimental/dp/1603584552
There's an excellent book called The Self Sufficient Life and How to Live it that has a great deal of advice on this topic. It covers 5 acre farms down to small apartment gardens and how to grow what you like to eat. There's a wealth of info in that book on SO many things, I can't recommend it enough!
One Straw Revolution
Teaming with Microbes
Teaming with Nutrients
Master Cho's Lessons
Gaia's Garden
This is a good base into the natural side of things, if that interests you at all.
Gaia's Garden, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle are two great ones. Gaia's Garden regards permaculture and making your garden more in touch with what occurs in nature. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, while it is not a "Gardening" book, is a great read and was what inspired me to start a garden as soon as I moved out of my apartment to the country.
>we've got to fight to survive
Absolutely. Giving up is certainly worse. When I first learned of the economic and energy aspects of collapse I thought things would fall apart much sooner than they did. It's almost excruciatingly slow once you see how untenable the trajectory is. The good news is you can take action personally to be less dependant on the failing system and to help others wake up.
If you're looking for some positive ways to prepare, consider Prosper by Martenson and Taggart, this intro to permaculture, this intro to Appropriate Technology, and/or this collapse-aware career book.
Good luck with your upcoming semester. You've come so far, and you'll be glad you finished what you started.
Successful organic gardening and farming is a question of figuring out how to turn what seem like liabilities into assets. It seems like you have too much sun. Try putting up some shade cloth to block out sun during the most intense parts of the day. Mulch your plants. A lot. Mulch will save you.
Read some books. Eliot Coleman's books are fabulous, and contain a lot of good general information even though the author lives in Maine. I particularly recommend Four Season Harvest. Gaia's Garden is great, and is well suited to someone who owns very little land. Teaming with Microbes is an easy-to-read introduction to bringing your soil to life. And Roots Demystified has some great information about how to best design watering systems for specific plants you're growing. These books all have good pest-fighting information.
You can PM me if you have any questions. Get started!
I don't have a definitive answer to you, but I will point you to a resource that is incredibly useful on these questions: The new Organic Gardener. However, we're not talking raised bed, because at a certain size, you need to be able to weed with a hoe or wheel hoe, use a mechanized planter, etc. This is a more traditional style market gardening, except Coleman takes a 100% organic approach, and discusses crop rotation, timing, spacing, green manure, etc.
This book does not talk about pollination or seed saving. I haven't found a good source of info on this, but I'm sure there are some good books.
We have four large raised beds, plus raspberries and fiddleheads. Two are quite sunny, so we rotate sunny crops between them, with two trellises on the north side for climbers like peas and cukes. The other two are shadier and we plant greens exclusively in one, and a mix of greens, carrots and beets in the other. With a raised bed system, you don't really have the real-estate (at least we don't) to do green manure or fallowing, so we maintain soil fertility with lots of compost (kitchen waste, home-made leaf compost, and some bought sheep manure).
Permaculture: A Designer's Manual is considered the bible for permaculture because of how comprehensive it is and how much information is packed into that book. It won't explain all of the effective strategies for different climates that we've developed over the last 30 years but I would definitely start there for the foundation. Then move on to books on topics that are specific to a particular topic within permaculture design.
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My Recommendations:
Again, great questions. Here's a video I did on hugelkultur a bit ago. I don't recommend going to my website at the moment though because it's been recently hacked and I'm working on cleaning it up. The youtube video will be fine though. Check out that video, if you have more questions, feel free to ask.
You can do the flat raised bed idea, and I did the same last year, but I believe you will get more benefit from doing the piqued hills.
Grey water collection and rainwater harvesting are excellent ideas. I don't know if you could make use of it, but here is a super cool idea for a ram pump which requires no external input other than elevation change. Other than that, I don't know much about water tanks.
One really cool thing I've seen used is where people dig a trench under their garden and bury weeping tile in that trench which snakes around their garden. Then they connect that weeping tile to their downspout from there gutters and when it rains, they get a massive deep soak in their garden.
Swales are a fantastic thing to think about as they will help keep water on your land. Swales mixed with heavy mulching are a huge force in keeping your land irrigated. Check out greening the desert for more on that.
As for the PDC, you don't even have to pay for it. I googled free online PDC and found this.
http://www.permaculturedesigntraining.com/
If you want to learn more about it, there are amazing books which can help.
Gaia's Garden and Sepp Holzer's Permaculture
That's awesome that your SO is taking that course. She'll probably learn some really cool sustainable farming things.
Also, check out http://www.permies.com. There's tons of info there, and super amazing people who are very helpful.
Purple Nurple
I have tons of passions. My biggest passions are equal rights, justice, and farming. Equality and justice are really important to me and farming is something I really enjoy doing.
This book reminds me of my passion of farming
sadly, permaculture has been the victim of greenwashing. Check out Gaia's Garden: http://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-Second-Home-Scale-Permaculture/dp/1603580298
The core concept of permaculture is to integrate systems into each other so intimately that the waste streams of a single process become input for others and eventually recycle into the first. Rainwater harvesting, grey-water plumbing, black-water irrigation and purification, and food production can all be tied together to make the most of the water that you collect, and by mulching the compostable materials on the property you can create healthy happy soil that is exponentially safer than pumping in pesticides and fertilizers to make it viable.
Often, its not that technology has been overlooked, Its that technology harms the land that it is used on. Such as row planting and mechanized plowing. By planting only ONE crop, the farm's soil instantly loses most mirco-nutrient content due to lack of plant diversity. The large machines come in and destroy the fungal and bacterial water networks that take many years to develop. With these gone, and the crop layer having been harvested, there is no water or biomass to hold down the top soil and we get dust storms, while the farmer has to spend tons of money to aerate and fertilize the sand which he hopes to grow food on again.
Sorry to be so long winded, but Permaculture takes every method by its input/output and matches it to a system that can handle those flows. IF you can create a system that is healthy for the planet, uses less (or no) oil, and creates healthy food for millions, then permaculture can save agriculture, but imho, its gotten too big to tame, and we need to look at other avenues to provide food security.
Yeah I plan to do fully organic, I am working from the methods from this book which is about making small intensively planted beds, and also learning how to make your own compost and setting up a relatively self sustaining system.
I've been reading a lot about soil science/the soil food web, and how to try to 'feed the soil and the soil microbes' instead of the plant.
I've also been reading some of the basics of permaculture design too. I'm really into the ecological perspective and the ideal of designing habitat and interplanting things to attract more beneficial insects, etc. (also design that makes microclimates like you say).
I'm in a pretty arid climate in southern Colorado. Zone 6a I think. But I generally can keep it watered enough to meet the needs of most vegetables. My region is famous for it's chile peppers, which I'm also doing too.
Really it's an experiment to see how much food I can produce in a small space at the moment. I'm trying to do a lot of calorie rich crops like squash/beans/sweet potatoes/ and other assorted veggies. This is my first time trying to do it at a more thorough level this year. I've done some work with a friend helping him grow aquaponic veggies before, but this is my first time with my own soil garden and learning all the different aspects of it.
But yeah, I ask because I do want to eventually start growing a wide variety of different things. I'm on some of the real basic garden vegetables for now, but I think I'll be keeping this going and expanding it in the future as much as possible, especially because I like doing it so much.
i can personally attest to the benefits of building your garden this way. i think i pulled 2 weeds all season and my tomatoes, peppers, sunflowers and lettuce did great! i have already started next year's garden and can't wait to try a few new things! some added bonuses (other than not having to till) are that with this technique you don't have to disrupt the ecosystem under the soil and the cardboard actually draws the worms up into your garden, adding even more fertilizer. i will never build garden any other way! an excellent book that talks about this and other ways to create and work with a natural ecosystem is gaia's garden. it teaches you how to have a beautiful, useful yard/space with minimal work.
I recommend a book called Four Season Harvest by Elliot Coleman. Great introduction on how you can produce year round.
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Season-Harvest-Organic-Vegetables-Edition/dp/1890132276
https://www.amazon.com/Resilient-Gardener-Production-Self-Reliance-Uncertain/dp/160358031X
Or anything by the author, Carol Deppe. She also has a website, seed company, and a pretty loyal following.
Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation
https://www.amazon.com/Organic-Mushroom-Farming-Mycoremediation-Experimental/dp/1603584552
If your going to be supplying your cafe you need to make it a reliable stream of quality food. Ask yourself do I have the experience, skill, and labor to match the standard of produce that you are currently sourcing from other places?
I know of a guy in MA that had a restaurant and then tried to supply it from his own farm. He employed a few professionals and they did a great job for starting out, but they still couldn't supply the same quality produce the restaurant was used to. The cooks were disgruntled but the boss made them use it anyways. He decided to discontinue the farming operation this year because it wasn't working.
Some vegetables can be grown in unheated greenhouses. http://www.amazon.com/Four-Season-Harvest-Organic-Vegetables-Garden/dp/tags-on-product/1890132276
My first year I made many mistakes but learned from them and I'm going to be much more successful in growing and business this year.
Whether or not your 'flush' was needed depends on what was in your fertilizer as you were using bottled chemicals and not organic inputs... Organic gardening relies on organic inputs decomposing in soil via microbial activity, broken down and fed to plants through a mycorrhizal fungal network. You don't need to use any sort of bottled nutrients if you are gardening organically. I'm no expert gardener, but I've worked in a few gardens and harvested a few plants, and I seem to see the healthiest, hardiest plants grown in plain soil with no bottled nutrients. Check out the book "Teaming with Microbes" by Jeff Lowenfels and explore the soil food web http://www.soilfoodweb.com/ if you want to learn about organic gardening. If you want to learn more Jeff has written a three part series, the next book is Teaming with Nutrients and lastly Teaming with Fungi.
Don't know about adobe construction, but Gaia's Garden is a great introduction to practical permaculture. The photo on the cover is from a farm in Arizona.
Reading "Gaias Garden" right now. Lifechanging stuff.
Permaculture can help save our world!
Sweet! If you've never read it before, I recommend this book. Very detailed, easy instructions for various projects. There's so many cool things you can do with fungi.
A good start would be picking up and reading Eliot Coleman's book The New Organic Grower. It is very readable, and you can use it to come up with your own plan for growing year-round.
Both if you can. Chickens as they are omnivores and will eat almost everything. For plants you can pick and choose what will do best for you. In the case you are presenting I would suggest getting plants that people in dryer or hotter climates grow. Start growing them now along with other plants for diversity.
Some books I suggest
No. To the best of my understanding this would just be more trouble than it's worth.
Please read the Mutualis dynamics part of this wiki page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhiza
I assume that with enough study this could be possible. We may need to learn more about the physiology of this dynamic. Because the exchange made is carbs for the fungi and minerals for the plant theoretically you might be able to make this possible by setting up a concentration across a membrane.
However this might not work based on the way the mycelia naturally colonizes the root cells. As in, if the membrane doesn't resemble root cells accurately the mycelia might not be able to colonize the surface.
Another potential problem is that this process might not be passive diffusion. A live root cell might need to actively, costing energy, pass the carb to the fungi.
Of course the answers to all of the above could probably depend on species.
All of these are things that need exploring. By all means, dive in. If you can figure it out there's money to be made for sure.
I recommend this book as an intro: https://www.amazon.ca/Teaming-Fungi-Organic-Growers-Mycorrhizae/dp/1604697296?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duc12-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1604697296
I just took a look at your post history and it looks like you are in Newfoundland, CA?
I think your best bet is leafy greens. The leaf arrives before flowers, fruits and seeds, so is a safer option than most. Many greens will grow while there is enough sun and then stop, but will not die in a greenhouse and so can still be harvested in December and January.
Here's a Mother Earth News article on winter hoophouse crops. If you are actually providing some supplemental heat you are way ahead of the game. If you've got twenty bucks to spare or have a good library, get a hold of Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman—a huge resource for winter growing.
This new book is better geared towards growing at home IMO. http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Mushroom-Farming-Mycoremediation-Experimental/dp/1603584552/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417634995&sr=1-1&keywords=organic+mushroom+farming+and+mycoremediation
Everyone here has already covered all I was going to say. In some of your comments you said you wanted to learn more about permaculture might I recommend Gaia's Garden. It is very general but it gave me a really great foundation for permaculture and the lists and ideas are fantastic.
The two absolute best books on the subject. I'd also recommend Gaia's Garden for some useful plant lists. Also, West Coast Food Forestry is a nice comprehensive list of little known plants.
You might consider what kind of gardener you want to be more philosophically, too.
Do you want to grow a food ecosystem? Permaculture is your thing - Gaia's Garden would be a good book for you
https://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-Guide-Home-Scale-Permaculture/dp/1603580298/
Do you need compact lazy-persons garden? Square Foot Gardening
"Square Foot Gardening" (Beginners Guide) as a start.
Like the idea of a themed garden like u/SedatedApe61 recommended? Groundbreaking Food Gardens has loads of ideas along those lines
https://www.amazon.com/Groundbreaking-Food-Gardens-Change-Garden/dp/161212061X/
There are as many ways to garden as gardeners. Finding the plants that suit both your location and your style of gardening goes a long way.
The Rusted Vegetable Garden, both the blog and the YouTube channel is good for vegetables.
Bookwise, the Vegetable Gardener's Bible comes up a lot. Gaia's Garden is a really great resource for a full home landscape/permaculture too.
If you really want to take a deep dive into growing grains to feed livestock on a small scale I would recommend giving Small-Scale Grain Raising by Gene Logsdon a read. It is honestly more entertaining than any book about growing barley should be.
https://www.amazon.com/Small-Scale-Grain-Raising-Processing-Nutritious/dp/1603580778/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482955677&sr=8-1&keywords=small+scale+grain+raising
Depending on how much space you've got, this one is pretty nice: The Backyard Homestead. There's a little bit of everything :)
If you're into permaculture and that kind of thing, I'd recommend Gaia's Garden and Edible Forest Gardens, Vol 2. Be warned, Edible Forest Gardens is a bit like reading an engineering text!
I don't know what you're into, but check out Gaia's garden for ideas on what to plant. You don't have to garden the entire yard, but make what you plant count.
Most people want to enjoy their outdoor space with a seating and dining area too. What a great blank slate you have!
For primitive survival, the Tom Brown books are nice.
For gardening, there's a great book that just came out, The Resilient Gardener.
In a crisis situation, you don't want to read a book -- you want to have already read the books and learned the skills.
First check with your landlord with what you can do. Then get a bunch of gardening books from the library. Right now is when you get things in for a fall harvest. In late July through August is when you would want to get in winter crops. Yes, you can grow things in Toronto in winter you just need protection. I would see what your local nursery has in the way of vegi and herb starts and get some good potting soil and put them in containers. Spend some extra cash and see if you can get a large healthy Tomato that is filled with flowers and put it in at least a 5 gallon pot.
Gaia's Garden is a book written with North America in mind. It has lists of plants by function, layer, and hardiness USDA climate zone.
Plants for the Future is a free online database of 7000 plants. You can search this database by hardiness USDA climate zone, size, soil type, and use (medicinal, edible, soil conditioners, fiber, etc.)
Edible Food Forest is a two volume set of books. The second volume also has lists of plants.
This is a topic that I've just barely started to get into, but right now I'm reading Gaia's Garden and its really interesting so far.
I have read all of these front to back multiple times. I read the grow bible 5 times before I even started purchasing equipment and propagating seeds. Do it right, take the time to do the research. You will find there are many cost effective ways to grow amazing Cannabis.
True Living Organics: The Ultimate Guide to Growing All-Natural Marijuana Indoors
The Cannabis Grow Bible: The Definitive Guide to Growing Marijuana for Recreational and Medical Use
Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web, Revised Edition (Science for Gardeners)
Teaming with Nutrients: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to Optimizing Plant Nutrition (Science for Gardeners)
Fundamentals of Horticulture 4th Edition
The Secret Life of Plants: a Fascinating Account of the Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Relations Between Plants and Man
edit: If you cant tell I am an organic cultivator. ;D
Mother Earth News has a reader question that mentioned 3 years for dog mushers in Alaska to compost it completely, due to the cold climate, but an Ag extension test got it down to 4-8 weeks. They couldn't say for certain whether it would kill roundworm because they couldn't find any infected stool to work with, but theoretically if the pile gets to 140F it will be clean. The six months I read in this book Holy Shit, I believe, but it has been awhile!
All of the posts so far are great. I would also suggest to anyone with less space, look into miniature or smaller breeds of certain livestock, possibly. There are quite a few books on working to get more out of small plots when it comes to gardening and farming. Rotational grazing and other wise pasture management can help you get the most out of your space without turning it into a manure-coated moonscape! There are many more, but here are a few of my favorites to homesteaders starting out. Others have already mentioned some I really like as well.
Desert or Paradise - Sepp Holzer
*Sepp usually works with larger tracts of land, but his methods and ideas often still apply to smaller scale.
The Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It - John Seymour This one talks about a variety of DIY homesteading things. It also gives some basic layout and space allocation ideas for different sizes of homesteads. They're a suggestion, not an absolute template. Customize to your needs as with everything.
The Resilient Gardener - Carole Deppe Carole discusses growing the majority of food for her and her flock of dual-purpose (meat and egg) ducks. She's also a scientist and shows ways to work more efficiently. She has a couple other great books and sells seeds when she has extra. Her method of growing certain types of garbanzo beans to pop into a nutty treat is something I'd like to try. http://www.caroldeppe.com/
Also check out this site. They grow quite a bit on a well-tended suburban-size lot. It's about 1/5 an acre.
http://urbanhomestead.org/
I'm not sure of the proper answer but I bet you could find it here, I've heard good things about this book from a researcher that I trust: https://www.amazon.com/Humanure-Handbook-Guide-Composting-Manure/dp/0964425831
Yup, listen to this guy OP.
To add some things;
Jerusalem artichoke, drought resistant pest resistant and most people won't know what they are. We do sweet grapes in the backyard and wine grapes and hops in the front. Neighborhood kids leave them alone but I don't know if you want to invest in plants that take years on leased land.
Do lots of herbs and trade for other stuff at the farmers market. I'd also do lots of onions, squash and other cellar items for winter storage or get a large supply of jars and some canning minions. If codes allow it use tires as raised beds and pallets for compost bin partitions. Bee boxes help everyone, could be moved later and I have yet to see ours disappear and we live in the ghetto.
I recommend reading this book for anyone growing anything anywhere...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1890132527/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1394675515&sr=8-2&pi=SY200_QL40
Perennial Vegetables: From Artichoke to Zuiki Taro, a Gardener's Guide to Over 100 Delicious, Easy-to-grow Edibles
this is the book you want to read.
I really like The Self-sufficient Life and How to Live It when it comes to dreaming about homesteading. It touches on everything, from carpentry to threshing wheat to birthing animals. It is WAY more than I will ever actually do, but I love flipping through it and imagining. You can find good used copies for pretty cheap.
I highly recommend Gaia's Garden a guide to home scale scale permaculture. It's not specifically homesteading, it's permaculture, but it is a way to supercharge the efficiency of your food production with the leist inputs.
https://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-Guide-Home-Scale-Permaculture/dp/1603580298
You should check out Gaia's Garden or a similar permaculture book. As others have said, there's ways to protect your plants without relying on herbicides or weed pulling! :)
Namely, what I've read is that you should plant cover crops that will fight your weeds for you.
Good luck and grats on the baby!
Have a go at Gaia's garden, home scale permaculture design.
It's the textbook in this permaculture class.
You're definitely wise to approach things as a skeptic. I was talking with a fellow permie once about all kinds of permie things, and I thought they seemed quite rational. Then, they started talking about energy healing. That was a "smile and nod" moment. I swear, we're mostly sane.
Teaming with Microbes and Teaming with Nutrients might be helpful books to check out. They don't directly address mineral accumulation, but it explains the processes through with accumulation occurs, if that makes sense. They're very thorough books that will make you wish you had paid more attention in Bio 101, but they're written in an engaging way.
This study is on bioaccumulation, though they're testing for heavy metals and not nutritional value. Maybe their methods are explained.
As far as comfrey goes, I know it dredges up minerals from the subsoil with its remarkably long roots. As the leaves die, they decompose on the ground and the minerals become available in the topsoil, which then makes those minerals available to other plants who don't have such deep roots.
Legumes, however, have bacteria colonies surrounding their roots that make nitrogen from the air available to the plant. When the plant dies, it decomposes and then the air-harvested nitrogen becomes available in the soil. Usually, we innoculate legume plantings with the bacteria. It occurs naturally in soil, but may not necessarily be present in every square foot of soil. So, better to be safe than sorry.
>They plan on moving to Hawaii to have year-round growing.
They really ought to read Four Season Harvest before making such a drastic move...
US Army Survival Guide
Small Scale Grain Raising
A Barefoot Doctor's Manual
The Home Water Supply
The Walking Dead
Funny you ask this. Just today I got out my copies of Forest Gardening: Cultivating an Edible Landscape and How to Make a Forest Garden.
I bought these a few years ago, read through them and kept the thought in the back of my head. Just today I began a much needed book organization and these came out on top of the 'read again' pile.
The concept is solid and if you will be on land long term this is a great way to go. I would keep a traditional vegetable garden in tandem though.
Sorry to not have any real experience.
There are tons of farmer/homesteader/gardener memoirs. I think my mom alone probably has a zillion. Unfortunately I haven't read that many myself, but a few titles that I remember from her shelves include:
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Enslaved by Ducks
The Egg and I
Hit by a Farm
Here's one that (amazingly enough) she doesn't have, but which is on my to-read list: http://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Lot-One-Tenth-Making-Edible/dp/1603583998/
On a more practical front, this guy may change your life ;)
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Season-Harvest-Organic-Vegetables-Edition/dp/1890132276/
http://www.amazon.com/The-Winter-Harvest-Handbook-Greenhouses/dp/1603580816/
ETA: Thought of a few more from mom's collection:
The Dirty Life
Rurally Screwed
The Bucolic Plague
Holy shit!
>Using human poop for compost is the "right way?"
No, I'm not saying that using poop for compost is the right way, simply that there is a right way to do it that mitigates the very real issues you've addressed.
I could write a similarly fear-mongering tirade about the dangers of any number of technologies, but that wouldn't invalidate the fact that they can also be utilized safely.
I recommend giving this a read. You can probably find it at a library.
I would check out Jeavons thoughts on this. I think he was a pioneer in small scale nutritionally complete farming. I am not sure what the newest edition offers, but the edition I have breaks down nutrients per unit of space per crop.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Grow-More-Vegetables-Eighth/dp/160774189X
Joel Salatin just released an excellent online course, which could totally answer all those questions.
Also, check out the books New Organic Grower and Market Gardener.
But best of all, just contact local farms you admire and see if they have an internship/WWOOF program.
Ultimately, different strokes for different folks. There is no one way to do this. Just observe nature, work with nature and try to optimize energy inputs and outputs.
It's not really a guide, but You Bet Your Garden is pretty great if you like podcasts.
I've heard a lot about a book called Gaia's Garden, but I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet. Despite the hippy dippy name, it's supposed to be quite firmly science-based.
You kind of have to take it one plant at a time, google "growing cherry tomatoes" or something like that.
Salad greens are super easy, chard is really reliable for me. You can probably open sow that now or soon, it (and most salad greens) actually prefer cooler weather.
Herbs can be easy or hard to start from seed, depends on the herb. I can't get lavender or rosemary to sprout for shit, but cilantro and basil pop up in a jiffy.
Bell peppers are pretty hard to grow down here in zone 7a, godspeed in 5b.
I can't agree more with u/SherrifOfNothingtown's questions. I would only add a couple more:
- For most farmers, farming requires community. Will you be able to rent a tractor at both sites? Will you be able to trade some of your product for something else? True self-sufficiency is difficult, especially up north. I tend to think more about the community I'd be relying on.
- I don't want to rush your relationship with your girlfriend, but are kids are in the picture? That could change the whole calculation. My wife and I were looking at larger plots of land, but the best schools are closer to cities.
One final thought: I'm personally toying with John Jeavons' Grow Biointensive Method and will start a plot in the 2020 growing season. The whole design of that farming technique is to grow food for a family on very, very small plots. Could be worth checking out. "How to Grow More Vegetables"
You might find these two books interesting:
http://www.amazon.com/Homegrown-Whole-Grains-Harvest-Barley/dp/160342153X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377128301&sr=8-1&keywords=home+grown+grain
http://www.amazon.com/Small-Scale-Grain-Raising-Processing-Nutritious/dp/1603580778/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y
Main thing to watch out for is picking varieties that make it alright to process them yourself - grains that don't have to be de-hulled to be useable are much easier to process without specialized equipment.
Get a proper mill of some kind if you're interested in wholegrain flour. There's reasonably priced options out there that do it alright, and the taste of stuff made with freshly milled wholegrain flour is awesome.
Take a look at ancient grains & older varieties of the usual grains. (a few examples & more info here: http://www.islandgrains.com/how-do-i-thresh-grain-on-a-small-scale/)
Personally I have a tiny plot of flax, that I'm hoping to get some tasty seeds out of. If I were to grow my own grains I'd focus on the ones that are interesting taste-wise. I'd probably go for Hull-less emmer, and rye.
Hey there!
I live in Ontario, so I'm a little North of you. I'm a hobbyist beekeeper with five hives. I help my mentor out (who has ten hives) too. We make some honey, but we do it more for the hobby.
> Is it possible to let the bees survive the winter on their own supply?
Absolutely. This is how my bees do it. I don't feed sugar or anything like that to them. They live off entirely their own supply. I take a little bit from them throughout the summer, but stop after Labour Day. In fact I've read that feeding sugar is detrimental to the hive's health.
> Which hive box is the best option to use for a beginner?
I suppose this depends on what is available in your area. I recommend the style of hive other keepers use in your area. I've only had experienced with pine wood boxes ranging in thickness from 7/8 to 1 & 1/8. My mentor is trying those foam hive boxes this winter. I can't report on how they perform just yet.
> Is early March or early April a good time to get started on placing my queen inside the hive?
You usually don't buy a queen to get started. You purchase a nuc or a package of bees. I started by buying a couple nucs. My mentor gave me a couple splits too. See what is available in your area. The local keepers won't sell you a nuc if they're not ready / it's too early.
> Really any points or tips would be greatly appreciated as I'm excited to get started.
I strongly recommend reading a few books on the topic. I've read a few over the summer/fall/winter prior to me getting my first hives and they really pumped me up for the hobby. I recommend to start:
Natural Beekeeping by Conrad Ross
The Practical Beekeeper by Michael Bush
These books go against the traditional line of thought of considering feeding sugar and pre-emptively striking with antibiotics and other medicines to be normal practice. I am still a new keeper, but so far with the three years I've had my hives I haven't had a problem going natural. Also means you don't have to play with nasty things you don't want to play with as a hobbyist.
The Michael Bush book's content can be found on the Michael Bush website for free. I prefer reading paper, and bought the book, but you can still learn plenty from his site: Bush Farms.
Good luck!
Many plants hyper-accumulate specific nutrients. For example, comfrey accumulates calcium, magnesium, iron, and silica. Specific plants accumulate (fix) nitrogen (legumes). Others scavange phosphorous (dandelion or fennel). Whatever your nutrient deficiency, you can find a plant that accumulates that particular nutrient.
Table 6-2 (dynamic nutrient accumulators) from this book may be useful to you.
Good for you! I suggest picking up this book: http://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-Home-Scale-Permaculture-Edition/dp/1603580298/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377806599&sr=8-1&keywords=gaia%27s+garden It's a great place to start and may very well change the way you think.
You know, the people that will blindly believe the rhetoric they hear from political propaganda outlets are the same that willingly commit genocide.
I prefer literature such as this. My ideal life is a hard earned, satisfying life enjoyed with my family.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Humanure-Handbook-Composting-Edition/dp/0964425831/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347232409&sr=8-1&keywords=the+humanure+handbook
I'm going to read Teaming With Nutrients next; Korean Natural Farming is awesome if you're willing to put in the time, and you have the space for fermenting stuff.
And there's a give-away - a choice of one of Eric's workshops,either a forest garden tasting workshop or a bioshelter workshop. Or a copy of Perennial Vegetables if you can't make it to a workshop.