Blue Ridge Gardener

but were afraid to ask…

Saw this online today.  I found it to be much easier reading than I expected, and it answered some specific questions about cover crops that I had been looking for.

You can buy it for $19 dollars or get a PDF for free:

Managing Cover Crops Profitably

Available from Sustainable Agricultural Research and Education (SARE)

One of my favorite gardening books is- Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. (This Google Books page offers a very complete overview of the book).

I have never followed his methods 100%, but find them to be very helpful. For salad vegetables, root crops and quick harvest plants, I have found the spacing recommendations very helpful and the overall method to encourage a more intensive approach than conventional gardening.

I picked up a first edition book back when I was in college and found it good reading. It has gone through many revisions and the information is very useable.

They even have an Official Website now.

The home gardener has more resources available than he/she can shake a stick at. Most any public library has several shelves full of gardening resources.

Some difficulties with gardening books:

• Many become obsolete quickly due to changing methods and the experience of research
• Many are too general and do not take into account the ecosystem and climate of the gardener
• Some are so detailed that they are difficult to read and apply to the actual garden
• Expert gardeners are not necessarily writers so the publc never hears from them.

Some positives:

• They offer outlines and wide overviews that can be adapted to a specific locale
• Most of the concepts of agriculture/gardening will never go out of style and we need to be reminded
• Books are portable and learning can happen anywhere