Apr 10
2

This book has an excellent introductory chapter that gives a good feel of the entire book. I had to read the introduction several times because it resonated with me yet contradicted the way I have been gardening for years. Being told that intensive raised bed gardening is not the best method was difficult to accept at first.

The book does a good job of explaining why this is true but it took me a while to accept it. He also explains the advantages of being able to produce food with less reliance on municipal water supplies and oil or chemical based fertilizers. He even has his own formula for making your own organic fertilizer from materials you can purchase at feed stores. This complete organic fertilizer is based on agricultural waste products and crushed rocks.

There is a lot of information in this book. One of the most interesting things to me was how to grow enough food to feed a family using only hand tools. The author has done this and goes in to detail on how to do things like sharpen a hoe, prepare a new bed area, and how to make slightly raised beds. The tools of choice are shovel, hoe, bow rake, and a file to keep them sharp. I’ve expanded the size of our garden over the winter using the methods in this book and I must tell you – it is a LOT of work to break ground in new garden territory.

The author was the founder of Territorial Seed Company and has a lot of facts and recommendations about purchasing, saving, and starting seed. The author steers you away from purchasing transplants and buying your seeds from the garden center seed racks. This goes a long way towards explaining why I have had such mixed results using transplants and garden center seeds. The book explains the advantages of direct planting so I gave it a try along with some transplants. The direct plants seem to grow slower and take longer to start producing but they produced until frost and I ended up with much more production from the direct seeded plants compared to the transplants

The author separates plants into low-demand, medium demand, and high-demand crops and how to treat each type. There is a chapter devoted to how to water and not, making compost, insects and disease, and what to grow and how to grow it. All of this with eye of producing food without reliance on tractors, tillers, chemical fertilizers, and using very little water. The secrets to using very little water include plant spacing, weeding, and soil surface cultivation. I tried this on some of my garden last year after spending some time sharpening my hoe and the results were very positive.

I highly recommend buying the book and making it part of your gardening library.

Robert Brock is the facilitator and contributing author of HobbyOrchard.com. An organic gardening and pecan tree enthusiast, Robert spends most of his free time working at his hobby orchard in North Texas where he specializes in grafting native pecans with improved varieties.Robert also writes for Country Consultant, Living the GOOD LIFE in the country.