eBook downloads, eBook resources & eBook authors
This extensively revised and expanded edition broadens the reach and depth of the permaculture approach for urban and suburban gardeners. The text's message is that working with nature, not against it, results in more beautiful, abundant, and forgiving gardens.
"Gaia's Garden will be recorded in history as a milestone for gardeners and landscapers. . . An amazing achievement."--Paul Stamets The classic book about ecological gardening--whatever size your garden--with over 250,000 copies sold! "A great book!"--Men's Journal Gaia’s Garden has sparked the imagination of home gardeners the world over by introducing a simple message: working with nature, not against her, results in more beautiful, abundant, and forgiving gardens. Many people mistakenly think that "ecological gardening"—which involves growing a wide range of edible and other useful plants—can take place only on a large, multiacre scale. As Hemenway demonstrates, it’s fun and easy--even for the beginner--to create a “backyard ecosystem” by assembling communities of plants that can work cooperatively and perform a variety of functions, including: Building and maintaining soil fertility and structure Catching and conserving water in the landscape Providing a rewilded and biodiverse habitat for beneficial insects, birds, and animals Growing an edible “forest” that yields seasonal fruits, nuts, and other foods This revised and updated edition also features a chapter on urban permaculture, designed especially for people in cities and suburbs who have very limited growing space. Whatever size yard or garden you have to work with, you can apply basic permaculture principles to make it more diverse, more natural, more productive, and more beautiful. Best of all, once it’s established, an ecological garden will reduce or eliminate most of the backbreaking work that’s needed to maintain the typical lawn and garden.
Permaculture is more than just the latest buzzword; it offers positive solutions for many of the environmental and social challenges confronting us. And nowhere are those remedies more needed and desired than in our cities. The Permaculture City provides a new way of thinking about urban living, with practical examples for creating abundant food, energy security, close-knit communities, local and meaningful livelihoods, and sustainable policies in our cities and towns. The same nature-based approach that works so beautifully for growing food—connecting the pieces of the landscape together in harmonious ways—applies perfectly to many of our other needs. Toby Hemenway, one of the leading practitioners and teachers of permaculture design, illuminates a new way forward through examples of edge-pushing innovations, along with a deeply holistic conceptual framework for our cities, towns, and suburbs. The Permaculture City begins in the garden but takes what we have learned there and applies it to a much broader range of human experience; we’re not just gardening plants but people, neighborhoods, and even cultures. Hemenway lays out how permaculture design can help towndwellers solve the challenges of meeting our needs for food, water, shelter, energy, community, and livelihood in sustainable, resilient ways. Readers will find new information on designing the urban home garden and strategies for gardening in community, rethinking our water and energy systems, learning the difference between a “job” and a “livelihood,” and the importance of placemaking and an empowered community. This important book documents the rise of a new sophistication, depth, and diversity in the approaches and thinking of permaculture designers and practitioners. Understanding nature can do more than improve how we grow, make, or consume things; it can also teach us how to cooperate, make decisions, and arrive at good solutions.
Savor your best tomato harvest ever! Craig LeHoullier provides everything a tomato enthusiast needs to know about growing more than 200 varieties of tomatoes, from planting to cultivating and collecting seeds at the end of the season. He also offers a comprehensive guide to various pests and tomato diseases, explaining how best to avoid them. With beautiful photographs and intriguing tomato profiles throughout, Epic Tomatoes celebrates one of the most versatile and delicious crops in your garden.
First published in 1986, this classic is back in print by popular demand. It is the authoritative text on edible landscaping, featuring a step-by-step guide to designing a productive environment using vegetables, fruits, flowers, and herbs for a combination of ornamental and culinary purposes. It includes descriptions of plants for all temperate habitats, methods for improving soil, tree pruning styles, and gourmet recipes using low-maintenance plants. There are sections on attracting beneficial insects with companion plants and using planting to shelter your home from erosion, heat, wind, and cold.
“This well-illustrated case study . . . will help students of permaculture, of sustainability, of earth regeneration and of integrated eco-social design.” —Prof. Declan Kennedy, Chairman, Advisory Board, gaiauniversity.org To ensure food security and restore the health of the planet, we need to move beyond industrial agriculture and return to the practice of small-scale, local farming. The Bioshelter Market Garden: A Permaculture Farm describes the creation of a sustainable food system through a detailed case study of the successful year-round organic market garden and permaculture design at Pennsylvania’s Three Sisters Farm. At the heart of Three Sisters is its bioshelter—a solar greenhouse which integrates growing facilities, poultry housing, a potting room, storage, kitchen facilities, compost bins, a reference library and classroom area. The Bioshelter Market Garden examines how the bioshelter promotes greater biodiversity and is an energy efficient method of extending crop production through Pennsylvania’s cold winter months. Both visionary and practical, this fully illustrated book contains a wealth of information on the application of permaculture principles. Some of the topics covered include: Design and management of an intensive market garden farm Energy systems and bio-thermal resources Ecological soil management and pest control Wetlands usage Solar greenhouse design and management Whatever your gardening experience and ambitions, this comprehensive manual is sure to inform and inspire. “Darrell Frey’s inspirational book gives you all you need to know to create an energy-saving, food-producing bioshelter . . . [It] covers everything you need to understand, build, or simply admire these important tools for sustainability.” —Toby Hemenway, author of Gaia’s Garden
Inspired by her own training in permaculture, Linda Woodrow has devised a totally integrated organic system of gardening that combines science with common sense. In The Permaculture Home Garden she draws us into a warmly welcoming household where everyone shares the planting, helps to tend the hens, and relaxes after a satisfying day's work. Step-by-step instructions and helpful diagrams make it easy to plan and plant a garden to suit your taste and space - a garden that not only looks wonderful but also yields bountiful fruit, herbs and vegetables.
Renowned American vegetable gardener Ed Smith, works according to four principles. He explains these principles: wide rows, organic methods, raised beds and deep soil, to show how to grow high yield crops and produce better quality food.
