If you only want to grow ornamental varieties of tobacco with huge showy leaves and dramatic sprays of colorful flowers as landscape plants around the house, or as container specimens for casual conversation around the barbeque, you won't need this book. The tobacco plant is as easy to grow as tomatoes or green peppers. Once it gets started, it grows with very basic care and attention. If you are not a tobacco smoker, or do not use any tobacco products, this book is not for you. However, if you are a tobacco smoker, or use other tobacco products, if you want to know how to grow natural tobacco and harvest it in such a way that it produces fine high quality tobacco leaf, and if you want to know how to dry and cure it properly for smoking or other uses, then this book is for you! If you don't smoke or otherwise use tobacco products, the joys of heirloom tobacco gardening need not be a reason for you to start. It is for those of us already bound to this deadly plant of the nightshade family to take responsibility for its cultivation. The home tobacco gardener joins ranks with a long diverse history of growers from ancient tobacco shamans to contemporary rural tobacco farmers. The heirloom tobacco garden is a valued tradition just as useful and rewarding for tobacco users today as it has been for ages. My first crop of home grown tobacco was an experiment. I had started smoking a pipe, to break the cigarette habit, and found pipe tobaccos much more flavorful and satisfying, and even less expensive than generic cigarettes. At some point I thought, wouldn't it be great to grow my own natural tobacco and have plenty of good quality leaf to smoke and never have to pay for it again. I looked into it further, found out more about how to do it, and that it is perfectly legal in the USA to grow up to 1/10th an acre per household for personal use, tax free! So, with basic gardening knowledge, I grew a small tobacco garden in containers on my backyard terrace. While it grew, I researched into how to grow and process tobacco, and how to cure it for smoking. I learned many things from that first tobacco garden, as I fought the caterpillars for the first crop, and finally harvested a surprising amount of leaf. After curing, I allowed it to age for a couple of anxious months before the first smoke. The first smoke was a little harsh, but the aroma and flavor was so fresh and rich. I have literally never smoked anything like it before. Several of my smoking friends agreed - it was the best tobacco they had ever smoked! Tobacco mellows with age, and the flavor and aroma just gets richer and smoother and more satisfying. I grew other crops of different varieties of tobacco, and gradually over the years learned much more by further research and experience. Now, my smoking friends wait anxiously with me for a sample of the next crop from my tobacco garden. It is an indescribable experience to discover different varieties of unblended tobacco have their own distinctive taste and aroma. This is the heirloom tobacco garden. By growing my own natural tobacco, I not only dramatically improved the quality of tobacco I smoked, but eventually even changed how and why I smoke. Natural tobacco grown in the home garden is incomparable to commercial tobacco. It is richer in flavor and packs a much more powerful punch. A much smaller amount of natural tobacco is enjoyed much more over a longer period of time. Heirloom tobacco from the home garden is without a doubt the best quality natural tobacco anywhere in the world. Tobacco is not a particularly difficult plant to grow. Across the world and over the ages, tobacco was grown traditionally on farms and in family gardens. It was cultivated by Native American Indians for centuries before colonialists in North America grew so much of it that it became one of their first commodities exported to Europe. The historical record notes that tobacco from the colonies became preferred in Eur

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.

Jill Winger, creator of the award-winning blog The Prairie Homestead, introduces her debut The Prairie Homestead Cookbook, including 100+ delicious, wholesome recipes made with fresh ingredients to bring the flavors and spirit of homestead cooking to any kitchen table. With a foreword by bestselling author Joel Salatin The Pioneer Woman Cooks meets 100 Days of Real Food, on the Wyoming prairie. While Jill produces much of her own food on her Wyoming ranch, you don’t have to grow all—or even any—of your own food to cook and eat like a homesteader. Jill teaches people how to make delicious traditional American comfort food recipes with whole ingredients and shows that you don’t have to use obscure items to enjoy this lifestyle. And as a busy mother of three, Jill knows how to make recipes easy and delicious for all ages. "Jill takes you on an insightful and delicious journey of becoming a homesteader. This book is packed with so much easy to follow, practical, hands-on information about steps you can take towards integrating homesteading into your life. It is packed full of exciting and mouth-watering recipes and heartwarming stories of her unique adventure into homesteading. These recipes are ones I know I will be using regularly in my kitchen." - Eve Kilcher These 109 recipes include her family’s favorites, with maple-glazed pork chops, butternut Alfredo pasta, and browned butter skillet corn. Jill also shares 17 bonus recipes for homemade sauces, salt rubs, sour cream, and the like—staples that many people are surprised to learn you can make yourself. Beyond these recipes, The Prairie Homestead Cookbook shares the tools and tips Jill has learned from life on the homestead, like how to churn your own butter, feed a family on a budget, and experience all the fulfilling satisfaction of a DIY lifestyle.

Winner of the American Horticultural Society Award for Excellence In Garden Book Publishing Winner of the Silver Medal for Best Reference from the Garden Writer’s Association Filled with advice for the home gardener and the more seasoned horticulturist alike, The Seed Garden: The Art and Practice of Seed Saving provides straightforward instruction on collecting seed that is true-to-type and ready for sowing in next year’s garden. In this comprehensive book, Seed Savers Exchange, one of the foremost American authorities on the subject, and the Organic Seed Alliance bring together decades of knowledge to demystify the time-honored tradition of saving the seed of more than seventy-five coveted vegetable and herb crops—from heirloom tomatoes and long-favored varieties of beans, lettuces, and cabbages to centuries-old varieties of peppers and grains. With clear instructions, lush photographs, and easy-to-comprehend profiles on individual vegetable crops, this book not only teaches us how to go about conserving these important varieties for future generations and for planting out in next year’s garden, it also provides a deeper understanding of the importance of saving these genetically valuable varieties of vegetables that have evolved over the centuries through careful selection by farmers and home gardeners. Through simple lessons and master classes on crop selection, pollination, roguing, and the processes of harvesting and storing seeds, this book ensures that these time-honored traditions can continue. Many of these vegetable varieties are treasured for traits that are singular to their strain, whether that is a resistance to disease, an ability to grow well in a region for which that crop is not typically well suited, resistance to early bolting, or simply because it is a great-tasting variety. In an age of genetically modified crops and hybrid seed, a growing appreciation for saving seeds of these time-tested, open-pollinated cultivars has found a new audience from home vegetable gardeners and cooks to restaurant chefs and local farmers. Whether interested in simply saving seeds for home use or working to conserve rare varieties of beloved squashes and tomatoes, this book provides a deeper understanding of the art, the science, and the joy of saving seeds.

“A Way to Garden prods us toward that ineffable place where we feel we belong; it’s a guide to living both in and out of the garden.” —The New York Times Book Review For Margaret Roach, gardening is more than a hobby, it’s a calling. Her unique approach, which she calls “horticultural how-to and woo-woo,” is a blend of vital information you need to memorize and intuitive steps you must simply feel and surrender to. In A Way to Garden, Roach imparts decades of garden wisdom on seasonal gardening, ornamental plants, vegetable gardening, design, gardening for wildlife, organic practices, and much more. She also challenges gardeners to think beyond their garden borders and to consider the ways gardening can enrich the world. Brimming with beautiful photographs of Roach’s own garden, A Way to Garden is practical, inspiring, and a must-have for every passionate gardener.

In the South, a white community turns against a lawyer who decides to defend a black maid accused of stealing a silver tea service from her mistress. The story, which is set in Virginia in the final year of World War II, is narrated by the lawyer's 12-year-old daughter.