Where do we look for the answers to questions like how much effort does it really take to grow your own food? Is beekeeping difficult? Is solar power really worth the bother? From a small terraced house in the middle of a big city, the author has made it his business to find out, and while trying it out himself.
A biodynamic sowing and planting calendar. It shows the optimum days for sowing, pruning and harvesting various plants and crops, as well as working with bees. It is presented in colour with clear symbols and explanations. It also includes a pullout wallchart which can be pinned up in a barn, shed or greenhouse as a handy quick reference.
Healthy soil is teeming with life not just earthworms and insects, but a staggering multitude of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms. This title lists the benefits of cultivating the soil food web. It explains the activities and organisms that make up the web, and shows to cultivate the life of the soil through usage of mulches and compost.
Nowadays, in conventional gardening and farming, weed 'control' means herbicides: chemicals have replaced good management for fertility and for pest, disease and weed control. We hate weeds. 'Weed' is the ultimate insult. But weeds can also be seen as soil repairers, an essential part of any farm or garden management.
Suitable for every organic farmer, whether professional or garden grower, this book answers basic questions such as: How do you begin? Is fertilizer allowed, and if so, what sort? and, What is natural pest management and how does it work? It also contains a list of resources related to websites, books, and organisations focused on organic farming.
With the increasing interest in 'super' berries and their health benefits it is good to know they can be grown organically, and that most are suited to small gardens and pots. They are full of: Vitamins A, C and E; Folic and amino acids; Anti-oxidants; Riboflavin; and, Dietary fibre and Flavonoids.
Presents hands-on, know-how and understanding of practical delivery of integrated, closed-loop gardening from waste delivering real sustainability. This title includes your safety check list and how to calculate your own positive garden carbon footprint.
A handbook of gardening techniques containing practical information on sowing and growing fruit, vegetables, herbs and other plants. It covers such essentials as selecting the right tools to propagation, crop rotation, growing on supports, training greenhouse crops, watering, and weed control.
A guide to various aspects of sustainable gardening, ensuring that your methods are as green and eco-friendly as possible. It offers easy-to-follow advice on how to reduce your impact on the planet. It explains how to become a sustainable gardener by choosing plants, materials and techniques that help to preserve nature's delicate balance.
A guide to organic gardening. Whether you want to grow strawberries and marrows untainted by chemicals or find natural methods of pest and weed control, it helps you to create a garden that is safer for your children, pets and wildlife and reap the benefits of gardening in harmony with nature.
Describes what organic gardening is, how it developed for the ideas of those who were thought of as cranks back in the 1950's to what the RHS describes as the 'major influence on 21st-century gardens and gardening'. This book includes tales of enthusiasts, from inner city dwellers, school children and allotment growers to well-known individuals.
A guide to natural gardening that shows you how to apply organic principles to various aspects of garden planning, design and maintenance. It features practical advice, step-by-step sequences to show you how to achieve the best results, and the directories of the main vegetables, fruit and herbs.
Shows readers the way to ensure a healthy harvest from their environmentally friendly garden. This book provides information on various natural fertilizers and pest control methods, composting, cultivation without chemicals, and how to battle plant diseases. It also contains information on equipment and resources.
Explains how to set up your vegetable patch, how to prepare the soil, choose and care for your crops and stagger your harvest across the seasons. This work features chapters that cover a different crop, from salads, beans and brassicas to onions, potatoes and root vegetables, as well as more unusual crops such as fennel, pak choi and seakale.
Tells readers how to go green. This book offers advice on how to stop using toxic chemicals, pesticides, and synthetic fertilisers and explains the practical alternatives that we can utilise. It explains bed preparation, planting, pest control, and how to make compost. It also covers pet management and natural living advice.
Plants have many qualities which can be harnessed for use in health and beauty products. This illustrated book looks at the qualities of seven everyday plants - yarrow, chamomile, nettle, valerian, oak, dandelion and horsetail - and shows how their nature and habits relate to the positive characteristics they can bring to biodynamics.
Consumers have become increasingly aware of the health benefits of organic food, and want to control the quality and freshness of the food that they eat. This book provides information on what you need to know about different vegetable, fruit and herb varieties, with details on sowing and planting, cultivation, problems and varieties.
Heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and cancer - the four leading causes of death in industrialised nations - are chronic diseases linked to diet. This book follows a year of sustainable home-grown food production, growing healthy organic food, and eating seasonal recipes from the author's garden.
A practical guide to natural gardens, from planning and planting to harvesting and maintenance. Over 1000 specially commissioned colour photographs and diagrams, with step-by-step sequences throughout. Covers all the basic garden techniques, including soil care, weeding, and watering and feeding, as well as pruning and propagation.
This is a guide to pest-repellent plants for the garden, and ways to avoid using expensive, deadly sprays. With clear descriptions of the plants, and recipes for garden-friendly sprays, oils and dusting powders, the book shows how to keep plants healthy without harming the garden or the gardener.
Natural weed control is the best way to curb weed growth in your garden. This invaluable dip-in guide offers a wide range of ways to keep even the most prolific invaders at bay. Find out all you need to know about the different weed varieties and how to curb their growth, from using anti-weed mulches to crop rotation.
By promoting and certifying organic farming methods and products, the Soil Association has been encouraging us to enjoy life for over 50 years. This title brings together a number of leading organic experts to show you how easy it is to incorporate aspects of self-sufficiency and organic living into your daily routine.
Master grower Eliot Coleman presents the simplest and most sustainable ways of growing top-quality organic vegetables. He updates practical information on marketing the harvest, on small-scale equipment, and on farming and gardening for the long-term health of the soil.
Provides the gardener with the information he needs to know about organic cultivation, from the basics of climate, geology and soils, through an explanation of plants and their orders to the planning and planting of a variety of vegetables and edible plants.
Full of easy-to-follow instructions and practical advice on subjects such as how to recognise different soil types, when and how to dig (or whether to dig at all), improving drainage and choosing the best organic fertilisers. This book will help you achieve healthy plants and a flourishing garden.
This detailed guide includes information on the waxing and waning moon, the constellations and the Chinese zodiac, and an abundance of gardening tips. The effects of the moon on plants, flowers, fruits, and vegetables are explained in simple but ample detail, with recommendations for the ideal times to sow, transplant, rotate crops, and harvest.
This detailed guide to the day-by-day 2011 lunar cycles includes information on the waxing and waning moon and an abundance of gardening tips. The effects of the moon on plants, flowers, fruits, and vegetables are explained in simple but ample detail, and recommendations for the ideal times to sow, transplant, rotate crops, and harvest are provided
A guide to gardening in a more natural, sustainable and pleasurable way. It includes advice, top tips, the best varieties of flowers, fruits and vegetables and more. It explains how to get rid of pests and diseases and encourages beneficial wildlife, how to manage weeds, how to grow for flavour and quality using the easiest means.
Soil is our greatest garden asset. This book contains information to help you get to know and work with it. It looks at soil structure and how soil 'works', explains how to identify different soil types and gives advice on how to care for and manage your soil.
Offers the principles for improving gardens. This book helps the readers to learn how to: choose labour-saving sites; work with the compostable riches produced at home; help composting critters do their work by balancing ingredients; reuse recycling bin items; keep diversity in the mix; and, customize composting to suit specific garden needs.
Ecological gardening is about making your garden a joy for all to share without hurting the planet. This book explains how to use the minimum of extras, avoid using artificial chemicals, and reuse or recycle wherever possible, and become more earth-aware, and learn how to garden more responsibly.
Composting is an excellent way to recycle kitchen and garden waste and to help your garden flourish. This title demonstrates just how easy it is to build your own compost bin and use the compost to help your garden grow. It explains the steps of the process, from different recipes for creating organic compost, to the effects it has on plants.
Illustrated with step-by-step artworks, this guide dispels myths about organic gardening and explains all aspects of organic garden management, including the planning of an organically-balanced environment, soil preparation, pests and diseases, weed control, crop care and cultivation, and also contains a year round checklist for seasonal planning
Provides a practical guide to the production of organic vegetables across a range of organic farming systems in temperate areas. This book covers all aspects of production, fertility building and weed, pest and disease management within a framework of rotation design, and discusses the specific needs of a range of commonly grown vegetable crops.
This book is a guide for the attentive gardener and explains the profound relationship between the gardener and Mother Nature. The author writes in a way that weaves together his physical and practical knowledge of gardens as a kind of tapestry that combines the non-physical and invisible aspects of the garden
A gardening guide that offers advice on how to create a beautiful, healthy ornamental landscape and food garden. Including helpful tips and recipes, it provides coverage ranging from soil building to pruning to four-season food growing and seed saving, interspersed with recipes, poetry and humour.
Helps homeowners, farmers, and landscapers reduce the need for water, fertilizers, and pesticides. Of interest to those who grow houseplants, maintains a large garden, or participates in community gardening, this guide explains why it's important to compost, the many methods of composting and the benefits of turning rubbish into soil nutrients.
Gardeners tend to assume that any product or practice labeled as organic is automatically safe for humans and beneficial to the environment. This book says that it is not universally true, and the exceptions can pose a significant threat to human health.
Helps to learn how to keep your plants strong and healthy, how to produce beautiful fruit, vegetables and flowers, and how to keep your patio and house plants healthy. This book guides you through various stages, from why you should compost, what you can compost, building a simple heap and containers, to how to use your compost.
What could be better than the enjoyment of tasting your own sweet, succulent, home-grown fruit? Suitable for gardeners seeking an easy-to-follow approach to fruit growing and maintenance, this book offers guidance on which fruits to choose, when and how to plant, propagate, harvest and store them, and a directory of popular varieties to grow.
A productive, attractive vegetable garden bursting with colour and flavour forms the heart and soul of any garden, no matter how small. This title allows you to discover the joy of growing your own mouth-watering organic crops, covering various aspects of preparation and cultivation through to harvesting.
Growing fruit and vegetables in your own backyard, and feeding your family with food freshly harvested can be extremely rewarding. This is a guide to growing authentic produce at home - from purchasing your first seedlings, understanding the growth cycle, sourcing biological fertilisers, controlling pests and sustaining healthy, organic plants.
A comprehensive guide to growing your own vegetables with organic methods. Featuring chapters that contain advice on where to grow vegetables outdoors, cultivation, choosing and buying seeds and plants, growing, with advice on crop rotation, and pests and diseases, this is an illustrated A-Z directory of vegetables.
A practical guide to natural gardens, showing how to apply organic principles to various aspects of garden planning, design and maintenance. It contains over 600 photographs, including illustrated step-by-step sequences to show how to achieve the best results in ornamental, wildlife and kitchen gardens.
Over the years, people have become more ecologically aware and also keener to minimize their carbon footprint. Covering various types of composting methods, including worm composting and woody heaps, this title gives gardeners information they need such as: to make their own compost, storing it and using it.
A 2010 calendar adapted for North American (Eastern Standard Time) dates and times. It shows the optimum days for sowing, pruning, and harvesting various plant-crops, as well as working with bees. It is presented in colour with symbols and explanations. It also includes a pullout wallchart which can be pinned up in a barn, shed or greenhouse.
Already in his early forties and not entirely content with his lot, the author traded life in New York's corporate grind for an upstate farm. In this book, he presents essays, addressing his mid-life development as a farmer, and some of the nuts and bolts and how-tos of organic vegetable growing and selling in an urban market.
A guide to growing and cooking perfect natural produce, with over 150 step-by-step recipes. It deals with growing and cooking food the natural way, with chemical-free gardening and delicious organic recipes. It is packed with practical advice to help you achieve outstanding results in all aspects of designing and maintaining an organic garden.
Highlights organic pest controls, fertilizer products, gardening techniques, the organic soil practices, and various trends in garden design. This work covers the garden and landscape along with related entries such as community gardening, edible landscaping, horticultural therapy, stonescaping, and more.