Maximize Your Harvest and Feed Your Soil by Developing a Customized Plan for Your Garden
"Just the book you have been looking for! - John Jeavons, author, How To Grow More Vegetables (and Fruits, Nut, Berries, Grains and Other Crops) Than You Ever Thought Possible On Less Land Than You Can Imagine
"A combination of biointensive gardening, permaculture planning and straightforward down-home wisdom, Grow a Sustainable Diet shows us that good nutrition is as close as our own backyard." - Darrell E. Frey, Three Sisters Farm, author, The Bioshelter Market Garden
IT'S NOT JUST how you grow - what you grow and where you grow it are at the root of truly sustainable food production. Grow a Sustainable Diet will help you develop a comprehensive, customized garden plan to produce the maximum number of calories, dietary staples and key nutrients from any available space. Learn how to calculate:
- Which food and cover crops are best for your specific requirements
- How many seeds and plants of each variety you should sow
- What and when to plant, harvest and replant for maximum yield.
While many gardening guides will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about individual crops, few tackle the more involved task of helping you maximize the percentage of your diet you grow yourself. Focusing on permaculture principles, biointensive gardening methods, minimum fossil-fuel input and growing crops that sustain both you and your soil, Grow a Sustainable Diet is a must-read for anyone working toward food self-sufficiency for themselves or their family.
"Imagine gardening as a process which improves the soil even as we grow our crops, helps balance and enrich the ecology, relies on free services of nature rather than purchased inputs - and is powered with energy from the nearest star. That is the way of gardening Cindy Conner offers in Grow a Sustainable Diet ". - Harvey Ussery, author, The Small-Scale Poultry Flock
Cindy Conner is a permaculture educator, founder of Homeplace Earth and the producer of two popular instructional DVDs on sustainable gardening. Her passion lies in helping everyone to work towards growing a complete diet in a small space while minimizing the input of fossil fuels.
To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, Mother Earth News is recommending select New Society Publishers books to its readers. This book is one of them.
Autorentext
Cindy Conner is a permaculture educator and founder of Homeplace Earth. She is the producer of two popular instructional DVDs entitled Develop a Sustainable Vegetable Garden Plan and Cover Crops and Compost Crops IN Your Garden . A former market gardener, Cindy was instrumental in establishing a sustainable agriculture program at her local community college which she taught for over a decade. Her passion is exploring growing a complete diet in a small space and getting food from garden to the table while minimizing the use of fossil fuels.
Inhalt
Foreword by John Jeavons
First, a little history
1. Sustainable Diet
What If the Trucks Stop Coming?
Making Changes
2. Garden Maps
Plan Outside the Box
Permaculture Plan
Tools for Map Making
3. Crop Choices
Growing Calories
Growing Protein
Growing Calcium
Oils and Sweeteners
Other Crops
More Planning Tools
Worksheet : Temperatures
Worksheet : Precipitation
4. How Much to Grow
Worksheet: How Much to Grow
Biosphere 2
Homegrown Fridays
Oils and Sweeteners
Keeping Records
5. Cover Crops and Compost- Planning for Sustainability
Beware of Bringing in Outside Inputs
Grow Your Own Compost
Sixty Percent Compost Crops
Worksheet: 60/40 Bed Crop Months
Cutting Rye at Pollen Shed
Harvesting the Grain
6. Companion Planting
Potatoes
Achieving Balance
Borders
7. Plan for Food When You Want It
Frost Dates
Worksheet : Plant/Harvest Times
Plant/Harvest Times
Length of Harvest
Determinate and Indeterminate
Plant and Harvest Schedule
Worksheet : Plant/Harvest Schdeule
Plan for Special Events
8. Rotations and Sample Garden Maps
Transition Garden
Quartet of Beds
Garden of Ideas
9. Seeds
Seed Inventory
Worksheet: Seed Inventory
How Many Seeds?
Worksheet : Seeds and Plants Needed
Germination Test
Save Your Own
10. Including Animals
Chickens
Dairy - Goats and Cows
Swine
Rabbits
11. Food Storage and Preservation
Make Use of the Space You Already Have
Crawl Space Root Cellar
Pantry
Cooling Cabinet
Fermentation
Canning
Solar Food Dryers
Grain Mills
12. Sheds, Fences, and Other Stuff
Garden Shed
Water Storage
Outdoor Washing Station
Coldframe
Chicken House
Trellises
Fencing
13. Rethink Everything!
Endnotes
Resources
Index
About the Author