Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times (Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series)

I bought this book because of the title "Growing Food in Hard Times" when I was obsessed with peak oil. The author discusses hard times very briefly and the main part of the book is low intensive organic gardening.

My gardens before I got this book were pathetic low yield failures, except for tomatoes. I used only transplants and did nothing to the soil. Once I got the book I learned about complete organic fertilizer, seed planting and planting times, DIY transplants, vegetable descriptions, and a whole lot of other bits of useful information. Half of the growing season is over and I am up to my ears in beets, sweet snap peas, carrots, kohlrabi and cucumbers all planted by seed. Each of these vegetables is much better tasting than anything I can get at the grocery store.

Without the information in this book I would have had another worthless garden, so I recommend this book to the beginner gardener. There are two things about this book that need addressed though. The book doesn't have any color pictures of the different vegetables that are described, so get a free seed catalog:

http://gurneys.com/catalog_request_qas.asp
http://www.burpee.com/ancillary/catalogrequest.do

Also the Author describes some vegetables as being difficult to grow, such as kohlrabi. This wasn't the case in my experience as the kohlrabi was rather easy to grow, so don't decide not to grow something just because the author says it is difficult.

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.

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.

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. ;-)

This is a good resource for a new gardener desiring to make the most of his/her time gardening. The book helps identify the type of garden you have and how to make the most of it or how to improve it to the garden you want. A quick read and good resource to keep handy