Gardening
When It Counts
By Steve Solomon
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.
