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Imagine savoring fresh-picked strawberries on a weekend morning, plucking plump figs from your mini-orchard to quarter and serve at a farm-to-table meal with friends, or harvesting and sauteing the edible stalks of garlic bulbs. If the size of your space is bringing you back to reality, here's the best part: You don't need a big backyard to grow your own food. In fact, you don't need a yard at all.

Andrea Bellamy, founder of the acclaimed blog Heavy Petal, gives you the dirt on growing gorgeous organic food with little square footage. Simple, straightforward advice for designing your space and growing your harvest will help you transform just a snippet of space into a stylish and edible oasis. Bellamy goes beyond the surface and shows you how to create and maintain healthy soil, decide what and when to plant, sow seeds and harvest, and most importantly, enjoy the process. So go ahead, picture that tiny nook, corner, strip, porch, alley, balcony or postage-stamp-sized yard overflowing with fingerling potatoes, fragrant herbs, sugar snap peas, French breakfast radishes and scarlet runner beans.

Armed with luscious photography, encouraging tips and sophisticated designs, you're sure to be inspired to join the grow-your-own revolution.

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To ensure food security and restore the health of the planet, we need to move beyond industrial agriculture and return to the practice of small-scale, local farming. Bioshelter Market Garden: A Permaculture Farm describes the creation of a sustainable food system through a detailed case study of the successful year-round organic market garden and permaculture design at Pennsylvania’s Three Sisters Farm.

At the heart of Three Sisters is its bioshelter — a solar greenhouse which integrates growing facilities, poultry housing, a potting room, storage, kitchen facilities, compost bins, a reference library and classroom area. Bioshelter Market Garden examines how the bioshelter promotes greater biodiversity and is an energy-efficient method of extending crop production through Pennsylvania's cold winter months.

Both visionary and practical, this fully illustrated book contains a wealth of information on the application of permaculture principles. Some of the topics covered include:

• Design and management of an intensive market garden farm
• Energy systems and bio-thermal resources
• Ecological soil management and pest control
• Wetlands usage
• Solar greenhouse design and management.

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Whether you want a storage structure, children's playhouse, art studio or workshop, you can learn how to design and build the ideal shed for any yard with this Popular Mechanics guide. You'll learn how to site, plan and choose durable and attractive materials. There's easy-to-understand information on carpentry and structural anatomy, from installing a foundation to nailing roof shingles to framing a window. This book also includes a final chapter with shed designs that will help you get started building your own structure. Become a citizen of Shed Nation and enjoy your property to its fullest.

There are innovative plans for building several sheds, each with a different practical use, as well as contributions from Popular Mechanics readers who share their own designs.

The sheds include:

• Small Is Beautiful: A 6’ x 8’ shed with solid framing, plywood sheathing and cedar siding. It’s big enough to hold a variety of tools, but won’t dominate the backyard.
• The Groundskeeper: This 9’ x 13’ shed with a spacious layout and a crisp, no-frills design is ideal for the beginning DIYer.
• The Big Red Shed: This handsome shed is a multipurposer’s dream; a 10’ x 12’ tool shed combined with an 8’ x 10’ open bay that’s great for firewood or tractors.
• Classic Colonial: A stylish, multipurpose garden shed with decorative trim and architectural accents. Includes a 12’ x 12’ general storage space, 4’ x 12’ potting area, and a small loft for seasonal storage.
• The Greenhouse: Complete instructions on purchasing a kit greenhouse in a variety of sizes (7’ x 9’, 8’ x 16’, or larger) allows for a big-league growing season.

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Here's a mammoth resource that belongs in the library of everyone who owns a garden. It's a colorful treasure trove of the best backyard projects ever, from decorative to functional, from walls to walkways. Providing solutions to every possible garden problem, this book furnishes comprehensive coverage of all planning stages: design, technical considerations, tools and materials.

Transform your yard into a beautiful oasis by making attractive and practical garden features using a wide range of materials. Whether you need more rustic seating or want to accent your perennial beds with a flagstone walkway, there's a perfect design here to fulfill your needs.

Need to enliven an ordinary setting? A garden floor can do the trick. Follow the instructions for making one of brick, ornamental gravel, stone or concrete. Want to define a space? Add a beautiful pathway. Find out how to put up a fence for extra flair, or choose one of 30 garden seating ideas, including a trestle swing. How-tos, photos, drawings, and patterns make construction easy.

Complete with hundreds of stunning color photographs, The Big Book of Backyard Projects will enable you to add function and style to your outdoor areas.

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These amazing techniques and projects offer a modern twist on a traditional art — and they’ll transform your image of the blacksmith forever. Blacksmithing provides an accessible introduction to forging, the process of hammering or pressing steel to a finished shape (most often by applying high heat to the metal). More and more people are discovering the creative pleasure of going into an iron studio, applying high heat to steel, and hammering or pressing interesting shapes.

There's an overview of materials (such as various forms of steel) as well as essential tools (including hammers, torches and anvils). Master such techniques as creating a right-angle bend, forming a point, and making spirals and curls. You'll also learn how to craft your own nails, fasteners and brackets. Then choose from 10 beginner-friendly projects, from a simple trivet to a handsome weathervane.

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Every woodworker will want to own this colorful, information-packed, mammoth resource for weekend crafting. It's filled with 150 classic projects, and features an introductory section that walks readers through the various planning stages. It's all covered: selecting the right wood, working with patterns, gluing and finishing. Novices can effortlessly make simple mirrors, shelves, clocks and jewelry boxes, while those with slightly more advanced skills can try the small cupboard, blanket chest or side table. For outdoors, there are whimsical weathervanes, whirligigs, plants stands and trellises. Some of the sweetest items are just for kids, such as animal pull toys, wheeled cars, puzzles, a winged rocking chair and vintage-style doll accessories. Every project includes finishes or surface decoration options, plus drawings and patterns.

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Whatever your grandma did to fix and maintain things around the house and garden, it probably worked. That’s because the old ways are often the best ways when it comes to solutions for everyday problems, ideas for saving time, and handy advice for getting the job done. And that’s where 1,001 Old-Time Household Hints comes in. Find the best hints, tips and secrets for everything from cooking, cleaning and home maintenance to pet care, gardening and holiday celebrations. You’ll also find ways to adapt and improve some old-time methods. Discover an amazing variety of useful and clever ideas, including how to:

• Clean copper pans, using buttermilk and salt
• Make real sourdough bread the way the pioneers did
• Fight wrinkles and create kissable lips
• Use natural ingredients to repair your hair
• Create your own unique perfume
• Organize common space in your home
• Use ivory soap for polishing silver and insect control
• Safely separate drinking glasses that have been stuck together
• And more!

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Buttery yellow from garden weeds or gorgeous garnet-red dye from flowers — achieving stunning colors for your fabric, yarn and other natural materials is almost as easy as boiling water, with ingredients as close as your spice cabinet and as plentiful as fallen leaves on an autumn day. Through step-by-step instructions and color-saturated photographs, textile designer Sasha Duerr explains the basics of making and using natural plant dye, from gathering materials and making the dyes to simple ideas for how to use them.

Have a picnic on a sunny turmeric-yellow tablecloth, give a baby some adorable acorn-dipped booties, craft a set of stunning black-walnut pillows, or treat yourself to a little black(berry) dress. Experimenting with color has never been more tempting to try. Gentle, sustainable, garden-to-garment practices will inspire knitters, sewers and fabric lovers of all stripes to transform fiber, textiles and even pre-loved clothes into works of art — and to have a lot of fun in the process.

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The recent decline of the European honeybee, one of North America’s primary pollinators, poses a serious challenge to our food supply and ecological health. Close to 75 percent of all flowering plants rely on pollinators in order to set seed or fruit, and from these plants comes a third of the planet’s food. What can you do to help? Attracting Native Pollinators shows you how to encourage the activity of pollinators other than honeybees by creating flowering habitats and inviting nesting sites. Anyone can do it! You’ll find comprehensive information on every kind of pollinator, instructions for building nesting structures, ideas for involving children, and an extensive list of resources. This is an essential reference book and action guide for anyone who is growing food or is concerned about the future of our food supply.