Gardening is a fun and rewarding activity. Nothing beats being able to grow your own food and having it go from garden to table by your own labor. However, now that the season is coming to an end, what do you do all winter long while the field is lying fallow and restoring all the nutrients it needs for the next growing season? Well, you can read about gardening so you can get even better at your hobby. Studying the craft can help you yield larger and more flavorful crops next year. Here are six great gardening books you should own.
- Mini Farming: Self Sufficiency on ¼ Acre: Mini Farming: Self Sufficiency on ¼ Acre by Brett L. Markham is a great little book that uses a holistic approach to gardening that can help provide up to 80% of your family’s food or provide a great little side income.
- All New Square Foot Gardening: All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew is in its second edition and is immensely popular. A great source for educating yourself on gardening in small spaces, this book gives information on vertical gardening and pest control as well.
- Trowel and Error: Over 700 Tips, Remedies and Shortcuts for the Gardener: This book by Sharon Lovejoy is filled with practical and natural advice that Lovejoy has accumulated over a lifetime of gardening and working with plants. Environmentally friendly and giving sound advice to all gardeners, Trowel and Error: Over 700 Tips, Remedies and Shortcuts for the Gardner is a must have for your library.
- How to Grow More Vegetables: How to Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons explains a bio intensive method of gardening that is very labor intensive but yields tremendous amount of food. The book also teaches how to make your own compost and discusses the benefits of double digging.
- Grow, Cook, Eat: A Food Lover’s Guide to Vegetable Gardening: With recipes and instructions on how to store your harvest as well as practical information on growing food, Grow, Cook, Eat: A Food Lover’s Guide to Vegetable Gardening by Willi Galloway is an important addition to your gardening library. Both novice and experienced gardeners will love this practical guide to the entire realm of growing, cooking and preserving food.
- The Backyard Homestead: If you have just a small area in which to plant your garden this is the book for you. The Backyard Homestead by Carleen Madigan describes how to produce all the food you need on just a ¼ acre of land. That’s your backyard, folks. As an added bonus, this book also has a section on harvesting and preserving your food. It even tells you how to make pickles!
Grab these books before the winter cold sets in and start pouring over all the information you need to build a better garden with a higher yield than ever. Or if you are thinking about doing a garden in the spring, start reading up now and learning all you can. These six great gardening books you should own can take your garden from good to great!
