Covers organic methods of soil maintenance, pest control, crop rotation, and more.

Develop your green thumb as you learn to grow your own food. In this introductory guide to growing vegetables, Barbara Pleasant addresses common problems that first-time gardeners encounter. Using simple language and illustrated garden layouts, Pleasant shows you how to start, maintain, and eventually expand an organic vegetable garden in even the tiniest backyard. With handy tips on enriching soil, planting schedules, watering, fighting pests, and more, you’ll quickly discover how easy it is to enjoy your own homegrown vegetables.

Now that you’ve mastered gardening basics, you want to enjoy your bounty year-round, right? Homegrown Pantry picks up where beginning gardening books leave off, with in-depth profiles of the 55 most popular crops — including beans, beets, squash, tomatoes, and much more — to keep your pantry stocked throughout the year. Each vegetable profile highlights how many plants to grow for a year’s worth of eating, and which storage methods work best for specific varieties. Author Barbara Pleasant culls tips from decades of her own gardening experience and from growers across North America to offer planting, care, and harvesting refreshers for every region and each vegetable. Foreword INDIES Silver Award Winner GWA Media Awards Silver Award Winner

The ultimate bible for organic vegetable gardening in the Pacific Northwest, featuring extensive updates and new material on soil health, natural pest control, and more Now in its seventh edition, this complete guide to organic vegetable, herb, and flower gardening addresses issues of soil, seeds, compost, and watering. Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades has evolved from a self-published pamphlet into the master guide to organic gardening over the past thirty-five years. Steve Solomon, who founded the Territorial Seed Company, was one of the early proponents of organic gardening, and the first to codify and refine the best practices of small-plot vegetable gardening in the Pacific Northwest. The approaches to understanding and preparing soils, composting, chemical-free fertilizers, efficient uses of water, and garden planning are universal to any climate or region. Solomon gets specific in his extensive advice on growing specific crops—from tomatoes and beans to kale and turnips—in the gentle maritime Northwest climate. This new and updated edition includes: • A new formula for complete organic fertilizer and how to tweak it for different soil conditions • How-to sections for herbs and ornamental plants • New organization for better usability • Updated sources for appropriate seed suppliers • Information about natural pest controls

One of the best books for beginning and experienced vegetable gardeners, this clear, straightforward, easy-to-read gardening bestseller (over 500,000 copies sold) uses organic, biodynamic methods to produce large amounts of vegetables in very small spaces. To accommodate today's lifestyles, a garden needs to fit easily into a very small plot, take as little time as possible to maintain, require a minimum amount of water, and still produce prolifically. That's exactly what a postage stamp garden does. Postage stamp gardens are as little as 4 by 4 feet, and, after the initial soil preparation, they require very little extra work to produce a tremendous amount of vegetables--for instance, a 5-by-5-foot bed will produce a minimum of 200 pounds of vegetables. When first published 40 years ago, the postage stamp techniques, including closely planted beds rather than rows, vines and trailing plants grown vertically to free up space, and intercropping, were groundbreaking. Revised for an all new generation of gardeners, this edition includes brand new information on the variety of heirloom vegetables available today and how to grow them the postage stamp way. Now, in an ever busier world, the postage stamp intensive gardening method continues to be invaluable for gardeners who wish to weed, water, and work a whole lot less yet produce so much more.

For anyone who has ever wanted to tend a little piece of ground but wasn’t sure where to begin, GrowVeg offers simple recipes for gardening projects that are both attainable and beautiful. Benedict Vanheems, editor of the popular website GrowVeg.com, guides aspiring green thumbs to success from the start, no matter what size gardening space you have. Get recommendations for veggie varieties for your first edible garden, plant a miniature orchard, and grow an edible archway, or keep your efforts contained by cultivating a rustic crate of herbs on a sunny balcony, a crop of carrots in a basket, or nutritious and delicious sprouts in a jar on the kitchen counter. The beginner-friendly instructions and step-by-step photography detail more than 30 approachable, small-scale gardening projects that will inspire and empower you to get growing!