Seed Library & Gardening: Books/eBooks

You don't need a sprawling backyard or spacious raised beds to grow delicious fruits, vegetables, and herbs of your own. In The Edible Balcony, longtime urban gardener Alex Mitchell shows how to transform whatever space you have, from a balcony or rooftop to a fire escape or window box, into a profusion of fresh, seasonal produce.

In the face of financial challenges and daunting odds, Allen built the country's preeminent urban farm--a food and educational center that now produces enough vegetables and fish year-round to feed thousands of people. Employing young people from the neighboring housing project and community, Growing Power has sought to prove that local food systems can help troubled youths, dismantle racism, create jobs, bring urban and rural communities closer together, and improve public health.

Fifteen people--plus a class of first graders--tell how local food, farms, and gardens changed their lives and their community . . . and how they can change yours, too. Learn how people like you, with busy lives like yours, can and do enjoy the many benefits of local food without having to become full-time organic farmers. Gain the information you need to organize or get involved in your own "growing community" anywhere across the country and around the world.

Create the garden of your dreams, no matter how limited your growing space is. Pat Lanza's proven lasagna gardening method produces amazing results in pots and small plots. Even in beds just 4 inches wide, you can grow bountiful, beautiful gardens with no digging, no weeding-- no kidding!

It is a comprehensive, hands-on, practical manual to help you learn the techniques and business strategies you need to make a good living growing high-yield, high-value crops right in your own backyard (or someone else's). This is your complete guide to minimizing risk and maximizing profit by using intensive production in small leased or borrowed spaces.

A how-to manual for the budding gardener and experienced green thumb alike, full of creative and easy-to-follow designs that guide you to having your yard and eating it, too. With the help of more than 200 beautiful color photos and drawings, the reader is taken on a step-by-step process to transform a sea of grass into a flourishing edible landscape that pleases the eye as well as the taste buds.

Vegetable Gardening shows readers how to go from backyard to table in plots of any size--whether you live on a large piece of property or have a spot in a community garden, you can reap the healthy, delicious rewards of growing and eating your own fresh vegetables. Includes step-by-step instructions for planting more than forty types of vegetables

The most comprehensive book on greenhouse gardening available today. Today, greenhouses and sunrooms are real living spaces where gardeners spend as much time with a book and a cup of coffee as they do with a watering can and a pair of pruning shears. Through lively writing that balances wit with commonsense advice, Smith draws on his more than 20 years' experience to cover everything you need to know to establish a charming and productive greenhouse.

This hardworking guide covers every step of the process: fundraising, community organizing, site sourcing, garden design and planning, finding and managing volunteers, and managing the garden through all four seasons. A section dedicated to the basics of growing was designed to be used by community garden leaders as an educational tool for teaching new members how to successfully garden.

Creative ways to use the garden to inspire learning, for kids ages 4-8. Every garden offers children a rich, sensory playground, full of interesting things to discover and learn about. There's a whole lot of science happening right before their eyes. The garden can also be a place to develop math and literacy skills, as the outdoors offers up plenty of invitations to weave learning into everyday gardening. The garden classroom is a place where plants grow, and where children grow too.

Schoolyard-Enhanced Learning shows how the school grounds--regardless of whether your school is in an urban, suburban, or rural setting--can become an enriching extension of the classroom. Herb Broda blends theory and practice, providing readers with practical suggestions and teacher-tested activities for using the most powerful audio-visual tool available--the outdoors.

Transform outdoor spaces into learning environments where children can enjoy a full range of activities as they spend quality time in nature. This book is filled with guidance to help you plan, design, and create an outdoor learning program that is a rich, thoughtfully equipped, natural extension of your indoor curriculum.

In Building Soils Naturally, organic gardeners will find a hands-on plan of how to create productive, living soil by using a practical holistic approach - crafted right in your garden.

Highlights new organic pest controls, new fertilizer products, improved gardening techniques, the latest organic soil practices, and new trends in garden design. Rodale's Ultimate Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening has everything anyone needs to create gorgeous, non-toxic gardens in any part of the country.

With photos of common and recently introduced pests and plant diseases, you can quickly identify whether you've discovered garden friend or foe and what action, if any, you should take. Wide range of methods for growing and maintaining an organic garden. The plant-by-plant guide features symptoms and solutions for 200 popular plants. The insect-and-disease encyclopedia includes a photo identification guide and detailed descriptions of damage readers may see.

According to Flowerdew, the key to successful organic gardening is working with nature, rather than against it, to get your plants to thrive. This practice is called companion planting, and it is explained in this volume with a style that is both no-nonsense and reader-friendly. Topics range from plants that compete for nutrients to plants that enrich their soil for future crops. Gardeners of all levels will learn from Companion Planting and their gardens will benefit from happy and healthy plants.

Fresh herbs offer a healthy and delicious way to spice up any meal, but growing and cooking with these delectable plants are endeavors fraught with uncertainty. What herbs will grow year-round on my kitchen windowsill? What foods complement rosemary? Which part of a lemongrass plant has the best flavor? Can I really eat the geraniums growing in my flower bed? This indispensable guide takes the guesswork out of using herbs in the garden and in the kitchen by providing detailed information for cultivating a wide variety of herbs, along with easy-to-follow recipes that will surely impress even the most discerning palate.

Focuses on the time-tested Mediterranean diet--recommended for great taste, good health, and long life--and on learning simple, delicious cooking methods that foster a happy and healthy relationship with good food.The growing section provides all the information necessary for those interested in organic gardening. The cooking section assumes little prior cooking knowledge or experience.

It is a comprehensive manual for small-scale farmers raising organic crops sustainably on a few acres. 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.

When the inspiration hits to start an organic garden, many novices could benefit from a guidebook that speaks directly to their enthusiasm, their goals, and, of course, their need for solid information that speaks a newbie's language--from the most trusted source for organic gardening methods.

It features information on how to maximize seed quality and yield for crop plants like asparagus, carrots, corn, rhubarb, spinach, squash, and tomatoes. Plant profiles include critical information on pollination, isolation distances, cultivation, harvest, storage, and pests and diseases.

The Brown Goose, the White Case Knife, Ora's Speckled Bean;these are just a few of the heirloom fruits and vegetables you'll encounter in Bill Best's remarkable history of seed saving and the people who preserve both unique flavors and the Appalachian culture associated with them.

Learn how to collect, save, and cultivate the seeds from more than 300 vegetables, herbs, fruits, flowers, trees, and shrubs. This guide provides simple instructions that clearly explain the whole process, from basic plant biology to proper seed storage and successful propagation.

An illustrated introduction to saving seeds--how to harvest seeds from your own garden, set up a seed library to share with your community, and grow plants from your own seed stash. With a directory of plants and easy-to-follow instructions, this is the perfect book for first-time gardeners.

Filled with advice for the home gardener and the more seasoned horticulturist alike, this book provides straightforward instruction on collecting seed that is true-to-type and ready for sowing in next year's garden.