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Harvest tropical fruits and berries from your own houseplants! Enjoy fresh coffee brewed from beans grown in the kitchen, juice from an orange picked in the living room, or pomegranate seeds from a tree in the dining room. It’s now possible in any climate. This book, from the co-owners of Logee’s Tropical Plants, gives you everything you need to successfully plant, grow and harvest 47 varieties of tropical fruiting plants—from chocolate to cherries, papaya to passion fruit, grapefruit to guava, pepper to pineapple. It’s easy, fun and rewarding—and local food has never been more exotic.

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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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Discover the wonderful diversity of herbs in this complete guide for the organic grower. Easy to grow and hassle-free, herbs are often tough and resilient to pests and diseases. Be amazed at the range of plants to discover and learn about their unique flavors, perfumes and uses.

From sowing seeds to controlling pests, every subject an organic gardener needs to know about is covered in this A-Z directory of herbs. Along with tested advice on growing these attractive, rewarding, hardy and resilient plants without chemicals, there is detailed information on culinary, medicinal and cosmetic uses for each herb. Practical tips on planning the garden and propagating, planting, harvesting, drying and storing the herbs is included, along with a handy calendar.

About the author:
Graham Clarke has been a gardening writer and journalist for more than 25 years. He has written a dozen books and countless articles for many of the major United Kingdom gardening magazines. He lives in Dorset, on England's south coast, with his wife and two daughters.

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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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The most complete book on urban farming, covering everything from growing organic produce and raising chickens, to running a small farm on a city lot or in a suburban backyard.

Eating locally and growing one's own food is a rapidly evolving movement in urban settings: Hantz Farms in Detroit has transformed 70 acres of abandoned properties into energy-efficient gardens; Eagle Street Rooftop Farm, a 6,000-foot vegetable farm in Brooklyn, New York, yields 30 different kinds of produce; and private square-foot farms are cropping up in cities all over the country.

Created by Lisa Taylor and the gardeners of Seattle Tilth, Your Farm in the City covers all of the essential information specific to gardening and farming in a city or town. Clear, easy-to-follow instructions guide and inspire even the most inexperienced urbanite in how to grow and harvest all types of produce, flowers, herbs, and trees, as well as how to raise livestock like chickens, ducks, rabbits, goats and honeybees. Important information particular to gardening in a city or town is included, such as planning and maximizing limited space, building healthy soil, managing irrigation, understanding zoning laws, outwitting urban pests, and being a considerate farming neighbor.

With 100 two-color instructional illustrations throughout and dozens of vital resources, Your Farm in the City is the most practical, comprehensive, and easy-to-follow guide to the burgeoning trend of urban farming.

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People everywhere are turning patches of soil into bountiful vegetable gardens, and each spring a new crop of beginners pick up trowels and plant seeds for the first time. They're planting tomatoes in raised beds, runner beans in small plots, and strawberries in containers. But there is one place that has, until now, been woefully neglected — the front yard.

The typical veggie garden, with its raised beds and plots, is not the most attractive type of garden, and favorite edible plants like tomatoes and cucumbers have a tendency to look scraggily, even in their prime. But The Edible Front Yard isn't about the typical veggie garden, and author Ivette Soler is passionate about putting edibles up front and creating edible gardens with curb appeal.

Soler offers step-by-step instructions for converting all or part of a lawn into an edible paradise; specific guidelines for selecting and planting the most attractive edible plants; and design advice and plans for the best placement and for combining edibles with ornamentals in pleasing ways. Inspiring and accessible, The Edible Front Yard is a one-stop resource for a front-and-center edible garden that is both beautiful and bountiful year-round.

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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.

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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

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You don't have to journey to a rural paradise to find the farm of the future. It's your neighbor's suburban lawn, the roof of your uptown condominium, or the co-op market garden in the vacant lot down the street. Urban Agriculture is a detailed look at how food is taking root in our cities. It offers inspirational advice and working examples to help you dig in and become more self-sufficient with your own food choices.

Taking the local food movement to its next logical step, this fully-illustrated, design-rich guide presents a cornucopia of proven ideas for:

• Windowsill and balcony growing
• Edible landscaping
• Farming the commons
• Community gardening, from allotments to orchards
• Taking urban agriculture to the next level with creative spaces, bigger lots and higher yields.