Hide 

Are you a beginning gardener wondering when to plant or how often to weed? Or an experienced grower who wants to increase flavor and yields? Take the guesswork out of gardening with the Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardener’s Handbook. Authors Ron and Jennifer Kujawski provide detailed weekly to-do lists — precisely customized to your own growing season — that break gardening down into simple and manageable tasks. Whether it’s planting strawberries, pinching off pumpkin blossoms, checking for tomato hornworm, or harvesting carrots, you’ll know exactly what to do — and exactly when and how to do it — for bountiful harvests and a stress-free gardening experience.

Hide 

Are you itching to start your own garden or grow more in the one you have, but feel that gardening is too challenging or time-consuming for your busy schedule? Would you like to enjoy fresh, home-grown produce every month of the year?

Backyard Bounty is like having your own Master Gardener to consult every step of the way. This encyclopedic reference demystifies gardening, bringing it back to the down-to-earth, environmentally practical activity that anyone can enjoy. Learn about:

• Planning your garden and preparing the soil
• Organic fertilizers and simplified composting
• Sowing, growing healthy seedlings, transplanting, watering, easy weeding, and mulching
• Planting for winter harvests, intensive planting schedules
• Growing fruit, simple pruning methods
• Greenhouses, tunnels and containers
• Organic pest management, and more

Hide 

Whether as a way to manage challenging economic times or retain a garden's bounty, root cellars are making a big comeback.

This book takes a fresh look at the art, science and romance of building and stocking a root cellar. There are detailed, illustrated construction guides for making four different kinds of root cellars that are functional and attractive. These include never-before-seen models for apartment and condo dwellers and home owners without a basement.

The Complete Root Cellar Book provides technical information on using photovoltaics (solar cells) and other energy technologies to enhance a root cellar's performance and ecological sustainability. It also includes must-know information on how to choose, store and manage a supply of fruits, vegetables, nuts and preserves.

The book features 100 recipes that call for stored produce, many of which also make use of the root cellar's specific environment, such as sauerkraut and barrel-fermented dill pickles. These classic dishes, many with new twists, include:

• Classic leek and potato soup
• Golden puffed potato puddings
• Maple pecan crumble apple pie
• Classic carrot cake
• Spiced pear butter
• Three-onion relish

Hide 

Build your way to a more self-sufficient lifestyle with step-by-step projects for backup and supplementary utilities -- including independent water, heat and electricity -- growing and storing food, raising small livestock, beekeeping and more. Many of the projects require basic materials available at your everyday home center, but this book also provides valuable DIY resources for solar, hydro, greenhouse and gardening needs.

This book will help you build security with utility backup systems and become more sustainable, resulting in less dependence on city systems for basic needs. Whether you have a city plot or simply pots, this book includes all of the information needed to plan, build and succeed with greater self-sufficiency.

Hide 

CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $32.95 AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

A man's home is his castle. But demographic and economic changes have turned our castles into islands. How can we regain the elements of the traditional village – family, cooperation, community and a sense of belonging – within the context of 21st century life?

Creating Cohousing: Building Sustainable Communities is an in-depth exploration of a uniquely rewarding type of housing which is perfect for anyone who values their independence but longs for more connection with those around them. Written by the award-winning team that wrote the original "cohousing bible" and first brought cohousing to North America, this fully-illustrated manual combines nuts-and-bolts practical considerations and design ideas with extensive case studies of dozens of diverse communities in Europe and North America.

Cohousing communities create unique opportunities for designing more sustainable lifestyles. Whether urban, suburban or rural; senior or intergenerational; retrofit or new, the authors show how the physical structures of cohousing communities lend themselves to a more efficient use of resources, and make everything from gardening to childcare to socializing easier.

Creating Cohousing puts the "neighbor" back into "neighborhood;" and is an essential resource for anyone interested in more environmentally and socially sustainable living.

Hide 

In an era when incomprehensibly complex issues like Peak Oil and Climate Change dominate headlines, practical solutions at a local level can seem somehow inadequate.

In response, Lyle Estill's Small Is Possible introduces us to "hometown security," with this chronicle of a community-powered response to resource depletion in a fickle global economy. True stories, springing from the soils of Chatham County, N.C., offer a positive counter balance to the bleakness of our age.

This is the story of how one small southern U.S. town found actual solutions to actual problems. Unwilling to rely on government and wary of large corporations, these residents discovered it is possible for a community to feed itself, fuel itself, heal itself and govern itself.

This book is filled with newspaper columns, blog entries, letters and essays that have appeared on the margins of small town economies. Tough subjects are handled with humor and finesse. Compelling stories of successful small businesses from the grocery co-op to the biodiesel co-op describe a town and its people on a genuine quest for sustainability.

Everyone interested in sustainability, local economy, small business and whole foods will be inspired by the success stories in this book.

Hide 

This definitive manual marks the birth of a new vernacular for the 21st century. More than 400 color photographs and step-by-step instructions guide you through the building of anything from a garden shed to your own woodland house. This practical ‘how-to’ book will unquestionably be a benchmark for sustainable building using renewable local resources and evolving traditional skills to create durable, ecological and beautiful buildings.

Hide 

CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $29.95 AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

This groundbreaking new book expands the concept of food gardening to embrace the whole garden. The new food garden is centered around the intensive vegetable garden, but doesn’t stop there. It puts hedges, ponds, pathways, arbors, lawns, roofs, and walls to work as additional growing space for food plants. Fruit and nut trees, bush fruit, edible vines, perennial vegetables, herbs, annual crops, aquatic plants, weeds, and edible wild plants are used to increase the quantity and variety of foods available with little extra work.

The author doesn’t just look upon the garden as a place to grow food; however, it is a place to be lived in and used, so he also concentrates on making it beautiful, comfortable, and efficient. He describes practical ways in which the garden can help us to reduce our impact on the earth. Included is advice on making the garden pay for itself, or even to provide an income. The author’s ultimate aim is to change the way we approach the garden so that it feeds, heals, and nurtures us. The productive garden should be an integral part of the home, and growing food should be a part of everyday life.

Hide 

Kids ages 8 to 12 will love these 22 exciting activities and experiments focused on producing and playing with renewable energy. Projects range from the quick and simple — like the Pie Plate Wind-Maker — to the thrillingly large-scale, like Pedal Power, in which kids use a bicycle to power a 12-volt battery. Each activity teaches children about renewable energy and larger environmental issues. Education doesn’t get more fun than this! Catch the Wind, Harness the Sun offers more than enough to get any kid charged up about renewable energy.

About the author
Michael J. Caduto is an author, storyteller, ecologist, and musician. He is well-known as the creator and co-author of the international best-selling Keepers of the Earth series and Native American Gardening. He also wrote Earth Tales from Around the World, Pond and Brook, The Crimson Elf, In the Beginning, and A Child of God. His many awards include The Aesop Prize, NAPPA Gold and Silver Awards, and a Storytelling World Honor Award. His articles have appeared in Cricket, Ranger Rick’s NatureScope, Green Teacher, Instructor, Rodale’s Organic Gardening, Vermont Life, Sanctuary, and Nature Study. He lives in Norwich, Vt.