I could write one giant gardening book with everything you need to know about growing every type of fruit and vegetable. It would be 500 pages long, cost you $60, and weigh a ton. You would never read it. Too big, too heavy, too hard to find anything in it. Too much about plants you don’t even want to grow.
So, I am not doing that.
Instead, The Food Garden will be a series of short and subject-specific how-to vegetable gardening books – each one jam-packed with the exact info you personally are looking for. (Every food gardener is different – we all have different tastes and goals). You just pick which instalments fit with what you intend to do. Cheaper, more convenient, and more user-friendly!
Here’s how The Food Garden works:
Volume 1 is what I call the “Bible.” You definitely should read this one, no matter what kind of fruit or vegetable gardening you plan on doing.
There’s a lot of general stuff you need to know to grow plants successfully. (And by “successfully” I don’t mean simply keeping them alive. I mean having your plants thrive to the point that you actually get a worthwhile harvest from them. Because that is what the actual point of veggie gardening is).
The Food Garden Bible contains everything you need to know about plants and seeds and soil and fertilizer and harvesting, and just plain explain how plants work. So you know what to do.
You think you don’t have a green thumb? The Bible will paint your fingers green!
No matter what type of growing space you have – a window shelf with room for a few pots, or a giant garden bed, or anything in between – you should start with the Bible.
Then, look at what type of space you have available to you, and what is reasonable to grow in whatever climate you live in (and, of course, what you like to eat!) to decide which other books from the series work for you.
Maybe you’re just thinking of trying a few tomato plants and some herbs on your balcony. Great, so you’ll want Volume 2, Pots and Containers, and perhaps Volume 4, which goes into detail about how to grow tomato plants just loaded with tasty tomatoes.
But maybe you want more than that. If you have come to realize that you no longer trust our food supply chains and you are looking to be able provide most of your family’s food needs yourself you might want to learn how to maximize food production from your backyard (Vol. 3), or even go beyond just fresh vegetables and also grow proteins and carbs such as beans, quinoa, corn, potatoes and more (Vol. 4), or perhaps work on year-round food-growing rather than just gardening over summer (Vol. 6).
What The Food Garden is NOT:
The Food Garden is NOT a manual for farmers, or people with big country properties or lots of space for greenhouses and fleets of raised beds. The Food Garden is intended for regular urban people who live in towns or cities, and who want to grow usable quantities of fresh tasty food in whatever small spaces they have.
The Food Garden series of books is currently in development. The list of titles below is still mostly tentative, and they will roll out one by one through 2021 – maybe in the order shown, maybe not!
If there is a specific volume you’d like to see sooner rather than later, or if you have an idea for a future book topic, then please do Contact Me and let me know! That’s also where you can sign up to be a member of the Food Garden Club, and receive advance info on new releases and access to special deals, or join my book launch team.
Here is a list of (planned) Food Garden books:
Volume 1, The Bible: All of the background info you need to be able to grow fruits and vegetables at home. Not to just keep plants alive – but to get a worthwhile harvest for your effort.
Volume 2, Pots and Containers: How to grow fruits and vegetables on balconies, patios and rooftops.
Volume 3, The Backyard Garden: How to grow fruits and vegetables at home in your yard or in community garden bed.
Volume 4, Tomatoes: How to grow tomatoes (and peppers, eggplants and tomatillos) in containers or in your garden.
Volume 5, Survival Foods: How to grow carbs and protein (beans, quinoa, corn, potatoes and more).
Volume 6, Indoors: How to grow vegetables, herbs, microgreens and sprouts in your home.
Volume 7, Year-round Production: How to grow and harvest vegetables through winter.
Volume 8, Trouble-shooting: A reference guide to identify and fix problems with your food crops.
Volume 9, Spice it up! How to grow unusual and exotic food plants
Volume 10, Harvesting and Preserving: How to freeze, dry or can your vegetable harvest.
Volume 11, Preserve your Seed-lines: How to harvest and save your own seeds.
Volume 12, Eating Outside of the Box: A selection of my favourite fresh-from-the-garden recipes.
Volume 13, Unexpected Salads: A selection of my favourite recipes for fresh raw dishes.
The Food Garden 