Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times

Steve Solomon

From Amazon.com                                                

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.

Peak Oil Resources Review:

A quick view of the landscape that lies before the United States at this point in history, should make any soul capable of rational thought desire to learn to grown their own food.  This could be applied on a more global level as the incidence of environmental/meteorological disasters have reached a scale that is unheard of.  These events have affected the capacity of the "breadbaskets of the world" to provide food to all in need.  Therefore, there is no time more fitting than now to delve into a book such as this.

In previous books that have been reviewed on this site that have dealt with the general topic of cultivation and gardening, it has been made clear that in this area I am something of a tenderfoot.  Be that as it may, this is the perfect book for the green (no pun intended) as well as the experienced grower.

Solomon has a habit, of which I am quite fond, of not just dishing out the ideal for each aspect of growing your own food.  He recognizes that not everyone has the same resources, time, and knowledge as a foundation.  This allows him to make suggestions in all areas of the book based on what is available in terms of supplies and money, but also in terms of what your agricultural goals are.  He gives you choices, based in reality, that will serve you well when less-than-perfect circumstances greet you.  In my opinion, this quality alone makes this a book of great value.

This is a book the is eminently practical and easy to read.  Even if you have land scarcely larger than a postage stamp to work with or if you aren't yet ready to undertake a project such as this, this great book is the starting point for your education in ever-important area of life.  Start learning... as current events indicate, you never know when you will need this knowledge.          

Steve Solomon
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.