Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times (Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series)

• Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables
• Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners
• Crisis Preparedness Handbook: A Complete Guide to Home Storage and Physical Survival
• Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long
• The Self-sufficient Life and How to Live It

The decline of cheap oil is inspiring increasing numbers of North Americans to achieve some measure of backyard food self-sufficiency. 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.

This author basically dismisses every other gardening method or technique as unrealistic. Sorry if this is a dissappointment. After reading this book, it amazes me that anyone has ever grown anything in a garden. The main point that I take away from this book is that if times get hard, don't count on being able to feed yourself or your family from a garden, it just won't work.

I found the book to be very helpful on how to get through the essentials. Most importantly, IT'S USEFUL. The author has great insight and offers his own experiences as a helpful guide through start up, maintenance and developement of a practical garden.

Very, very important and informative book. Perfect for anyone wanting to be as self-sufficient as possible. This is no sissy gardening book. I bought it for my husband, and he loves it.

This book is easy to read and comprhensive. It also provides lists on which veggies are easy to grow and hearty and which require more care and are delicate. It even tells a person how to start a garden in the spring. Great for first timers who didn't know to get the garden prepared the Autumn before.

Comprehensive, to the points, easily read but full of gardening goodness.I would HIGHLY recommend anyone considering a garden reading this book first to ensure you don't waste: money, time, or energy.My family put off building our garden just so we can finish the book and ensure we build it right the first time.