Master organic vegetable gardening in 4 different low-water conditions—including high and low desert, drought, and voluntary water conservation. Features over 100 photos, maps, and diagrams—perfect for vegetable gardeners in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and more! Dedicated home gardeners will discover how to grow delicious produce in dry times with this authoritative full-color handbook. Using modern techniques, as well as tips from native traditions ranging from the southwestern United States to the Middle East, this guide offers the best of ancient wisdom and the newest innovations in conservation. Inside you’ll find over 100 color photos, maps, and diagrams, plus expert information on: • Gardening in high and low desert, drought conditions, and for voluntary water conservation • How to assess your site and climate modification • Water-wise gardening methods: in-ground, container, and raised bed gardening • Soil science, proper watering methods, and pest control • How to choose drought-tolerant and desert-hardy vegetable seeds • Recommended varieties by region, plus a seasonal crop guide • Resource list, checklist, and glossary While this guide is geared towards those who live in high desert, low desert, mountains (short season), Pacific coast, and inland valley areas of the Western United States, gardeners anywhere in the world looking to save water can find useful guidance. As more communities suffer the effects of climate change, experienced desert gardener Maureen Gilmer’s sage advice on dry gardening becomes more and more relevant.

Can you grow your own food without irrigation? Do you know how to make the best use of the water you have? Are you able to build a survival garden that will survive a changing climate or drought?Water-Wise Gardening gives you the answers and will change the way you think about growing food. If you were raised on gardening books extolling the wonders of dense plantings in tiny beds, this book will open your eyes to an entirely new realm of knowledge. Our ancestors knew how to grow food without pressure-treated lumber, massive piles of mulch, fancy containers or garden sprinklers. Most gardeners have never considered trying to garden on just rainfall - yet it's often possible. Sometimes it even gives you better-tasting and more nutrient-dense food. In Water-Wise Gardening, you'll learn how to simply and effectively grow food using ancient time-tested techniques that consume less water and less fertilizer and sometimes less effort. This new second edition greatly expands upon the groundbreaking work Steve did in his first edition and is a valuable resource for gardening in good times and in bad, helping you steward your liquid assets while still getting the best-looking and best-tasting produce you can imagine. This book focuses on how to grow food with limited water across the United States and Canada plus has new insight on how to irrigate and water wisely.If you are concerned about maintaining your family's food supply or farming with a minimal use of water, you need this book. Water-Wise Gardening is a must-have for every self-sufficiency library.

At Clay Bottom Farm, author Ben Hartman and staff practice kaizen, or continuous improvement, cutting out more waste--of time, labor, space, money, and more--every year and aligning their organic production more tightly with customer demand. Applied alongside other lean principles originally developed by the Japanese auto industry, the end result has been increased profits and less work. In this field-guide companion to his award-winning first book, The Lean Farm, Hartman shows market vegetable growers in even more detail how Clay Bottom Farm implements lean thinking in every area of their work, including using kanbans, or replacement signals, to maximize land use; germination chambers to reduce defect waste; and right-sized machinery to save money and labor and increase efficiency. From finding land and assessing infrastructure needs to selling perfect produce at the farmers market, The Lean Farm Guide to Growing Vegetables digs deeper into specific, tested methods for waste-free farming that not only help farmers become more successful but make the work more enjoyable. These methods include: Using Japanese paper pot transplanters Building your own germinating chambers Leaning up your greenhouse Making and applying simple composts Using lean techniques for pest and weed control Creating Heijunka, or load-leveling calendars for efficient planning Farming is not static, and improvement requires constant change. The Lean Farm Guide to Growing Vegetables offers strategies for farmers to stay flexible and profitable even in the face of changing weather and markets. Much more than a simple exercise in cost-cutting, lean farming is about growing better, not cheaper, food--the food your customers want.

A large-format, beautifully illustrated, complete guide to gardening in a California and Mediterraean-like climates, defined as ones in which winters are wet and summers are bone dry.

Growing for 100 - the complete year-round guide for the small-scale market grower. Across North America, an agricultural renaissance is unfolding. A growing number of market gardeners are emerging to feed our appetite for organic, regional produce. But most of the available resources on food production are aimed at the backyard or hobby gardener who wants to supplement their family's diet with a few homegrown fruits and vegetables. Targeted at serious growers in every climate zone, Sustainable Market Farming is a comprehensive manual for small-scale farmers raising organic crops sustainably on a few acres. Informed by the author's extensive experience growing a wide variety of fresh, organic vegetables and fruit to feed the approximately one hundred members of Twin Oaks Community in central Virginia, this practical guide provides: Detailed profiles of a full range of crops, addressing sowing, cultivation, rotation, succession, common pests and diseases, and harvest and storage Information about new, efficient techniques, season extension, and disease resistant varieties Farm-specific business skills to help ensure a successful, profitable enterprise Whether you are a beginning market grower or an established enterprise seeking to improve your skills, Sustainable Market Farming is an invaluable resource and a timely book for the maturing local agriculture movement.

Are you facing drought or water shortages? Gardening with Less Water offers simple, inexpensive, low-tech techniques for watering your garden much more efficiently — using up to 90 percent less water for the same results. With illustrated step-by-step instructions, David Bainbridge shows you how to install buried clay pots and pipes, wicking systems, and other porous containers that deliver water directly to a plant’s roots with little to no evaporation. These systems are available at hardware stores and garden centers; are easy to set up and use; and work for garden beds, container gardens, and trees.