Product Description

The decline of cheap oil is inspiring increasing numbers of North Americans to achieve some measure of backyard food self-sufficiency. In hard times, the family can be greatly helped by growing a highly productive food garden, requiring little cash outlay or watering.

Currently popular intensive vegetable gardening methods are largely inappropriate to this new circumstance. Crowded raised beds require high inputs of water, fertility and organic matter, and demand large amounts of human time and effort. But, except for labor, these inputs depend on the price of oil. Prior to the 1970s, North American home food growing used more land with less labor, with wider plant spacing, with less or no irrigation, and all done with sharp hand tools. But these sustainable systems have been largely forgotten. Gardening When It Counts helps readers rediscover traditional low-input gardening methods to produce healthy food.

Designed for readers with no experience and applicable to most areas in the English-speaking world except the tropics and hot deserts, this book shows that any family with access to 3-5,000 sq. ft. of garden land can halve their food costs using a growing system requiring just the odd bucketful of household waste water, perhaps two hundred dollars worth of hand tools, and about the same amount spent on supplies - working an average of two hours a day during the growing season.

Steve Solomon is a well-known west coast gardener and author of five previous books, including Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades which has appeared in five editions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #745 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 360 pages

About the Author
Steve Solomon is a well-known west coast gardening guru, and author of five previous books. The founder of Territorial Seed Company, he has taught Master Gardener and Urban Farm classes at the University of Oregon in Eugene. His book, Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades has appeared in five editions.

Customer Reviews

Just what I needed!
Only a few pages into this book I realized I needed to read it before continuing with my gardening plans.
I am thrilled to have the good solid advice. For me, I treasured the relearning of the things my father taught me so many years ago. Digging the garden, fertilizing the soil, using coffee grounds and how to weed were only vague memories which had been over-written by today's easy methods and equipment. Steve Solomon's words brought all the old learning back to my mind and provided so much more. I can't thank him enough and I highly recommend this book. The advice, techniques and subjects covered are of special importance for anyone interested in insuring their food source is available and safe.

Stress-free gardening
This book is excellent. It is my new gardening bible. I've been through all the intensive gardening books, and they all stressed me out with the intensity of the work that was required to get them started and keep them up. The whole philosophy here really makes sense to me. I felt like I could go ahead, get things started, without having to have so much in place. After all, this is about growing with the minimum amount of inputs.

Great stuff
This is the perfect book for people like me with no gardening grandpa at their side.
Nobody ever told me that a garden hoe must be sharpened before first use....
And how to start a garden if you have a patch of grass land - I never knew how to do it right or where to start.
This book is great for basic beginners in veggie gardening. Advanced gardeners may be shocked a little about the very few and basic tools: hoe, shovel, wheelbarrow, rake, knife and file.
But the book was written for "hard times" and than it's good to know you can do your veggie garden with just these basic tools, without all the fancy and expensive stuff around.

Very remarkable is the chapter about seeds and plants from the garden centers, it opened my eyes that most of the failures of the last years weren't really mine but from the bad stuff I bought without knowing it was that bad (it looked good when I bought it....)

So I want to say "THANK YOU, Mr. Solomon" for sharing your experience with us.
Your advices gave me back the joy of gardening and the very first time in 20 years I'm running a satisfying veggie garden without any problems.
Thank you. ;-)