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Anyone can learn to store fruits and vegetables safely and naturally in a cool, dark space with the step-by-step advice in this book. Root cellaring is a way of using the earth's naturally cool, stable temperature to store perishable fruits and vegetables and preserve them for months to come. This book will show you a no-cost, simple, low-technology, energy-saving way to keep your harvest fresh all year long.

Recommended Product for Wiser Living: Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, Mother Earth News is recommending books and products to readers. For 40 years, Mother Earth News has been North America’s “Original Guide to Living Wisely,” creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.

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Although the garden may beckon as strongly as ever, the tasks involved — pulling weeds, pushing wheelbarrows, digging holes, moving heavy pots — become increasingly difficult, or even impossible, with advancing age. But the idea of giving it up is unthinkable for most gardeners. So what’s the alternative?

In Gardening for a Lifetime, now in paperback, author Sydney Eddison draws on her own forty years of gardening to provide a practical and encouraging roadmap for scaling back while keeping up with the gardening activities that each gardener loves most. Like replacing demanding plants like delphiniums with sturdy, relatively carefree perennials like sedums, rudbeckias, and daylilies. Or taking the leap and hiring help — another pair of hands, even for a few hours a week, goes a long way toward getting a big job done. Or maybe it makes sense to get rid of high-maintenance trees, shrubs, or perennials.

The paperback edition features a new chapter in which Eddison’s struggles with hip and back problems force her to walk the walk. As a friend of hers says, “Last summer you wrote the book. Now, I’m happy to see that you’ve read it.” Gentle, personable, and practical, Gardening for a Lifetime will be welcomed by all gardeners looking to transform gardening from a list of daunting chores into the rewarding, joy-filled activity it was meant to be.

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For the food-loving gardener, Mark Diacono has a new mantra: Life is too short to grow ordinary food. Head gardener at the famed River Cottage, Diacono wants us all to stop growing onions, potatoes, and carrots, because it's just as easy to cultivate mouthwatering delights such as Chilean guava, kai lan, daylilies, Japanese wineberries and Szechuan pepper. In The Food Lover's Garden he shows how easy it can be to reap extraordinary flavor. Selected for their deliciousness and ease of growing, the fruits and vegetables in the book come with straightforward gardening advice and detailed information on how and when to harvest. Preparation suggestions plus fifty recipes, such as sweet Blue Honeysuckle Pancakes, stunning and delicate Daylily Fritters, and a rich, double cream Cardoon Gratin, teach readers how to showcase the unusual ingredients in their home cooking.

Brimming with practical advice for growing and enjoying 39 of the most remarkable fruits, vegetables, nuts, herbs, spices and flowers, The Food Lover's Garden is a sumptuous and lyrical invitation to garden, eat, and live more adventurously.

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At last count, Martyn Cox had more than 250 different plants growing in his 600-square-foot garden in London. He knows from experience that you don't need a lot of space to have an exuberant garden. Big Gardens in Small Spaces provides boundless inspiration and ingeniously practical solutions for taking advantage of every square inch of a small space — including gardening in shady corners, on rooftops, around doorways, and in the cracks of pavement.

His ideas are stunningly simple to follow: squeeze as many plants as you can into your garden by any means possible; grow your own fruit, vegetables and herbs; seek out rare, unusual and bizarre plants; don't pay for something you can make or do yourself; learn from nature; welcome change, and most of all enjoy the garden. The happy results? Apparently unuseable spaces become home to myriad plants. Sempervivums and aeoniums nestle in wall crevices, hardy annuals bloom between slabs of pavement, and a grapevine climbs around the back door. Carefully chosen larger plants like bananas, bamboos, and trees find themselves entirely at home. Cox also recommends fruit trees, herbs, and vegetables.

There are many books on small gardens, but they tend to focus on design at the expense of the plants. Big Gardens in Small Spaces proves this doesn't have to be the case: Follow the advice and a small garden full of healthy, happy plants will be yours.

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Everyone wants healthy children who choose potatoes over chips and oranges over Oreos, but it isn't always easy to convince a picky child to try something new.

The Family Kitchen Garden integrates the garden and kitchen in a simple, fun way that parents and children can enjoy together. By teaching kids how to garden, they will be more likely to eat what they grow — what a rewarding way to encourage healthy foods!

Unlike other guides to gardening with children, these are not simple projects just for kids. Rather, the authors believe that kids can do — and will enjoy — the same type of gardening that adults do. Part One focuses on the nitty-gritty of gardening with kids: how to keep sessions short, tips on how much to grow, and important safety precautions. Part Two is a month-by-month guide on what to sow, plant, harvest, and eat. Seasonal recipes include nutritious, kid-friendly foods like parsnip chips, rhubarb cake, and homemade ketchup. Part Three is an A–Z guide to vegetables, fruit, herbs, and flowers. Icons note which are plants particularly easy to grow and suitable for young children.

The Family Kitchen Garden is for parents who want to get their kids outside and for families looking for simple ways to lead a healthier life. Grab your kids and get gardening!

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No longer content with separating the plants they grow to eat and the plants they grow for beauty, gardeners are discovering the pleasures of incorporating both edibles and ornamentals into their home landscapes. The Kitchen Gardener's Handbook makes it easy by showing how a well-designed landscape can yield both bounty for the table and beauty for the soul.

Whether she's sharing tips on planting radishes in spring, harvesting tomatoes in summer, or pruning perennials in winter, Bartley's friendly advice gives gardeners the tools they need to build and maintain a kitchen garden. Readers will learn how to plant, grow, and harvest the best vegetables, fruits, greens, and herbs for every season. They'll also find seasonal recipes that celebrate the best of the harvest, monthly garden chores, eight sample garden designs, and information on using cut flowers for decoration. The Kitchen Gardener's Handbook is a guide for gardeners who want it all — the freshness of fruits and vegetables and the beauty and simplicity of hand-picked bouquets.

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Informative and entertaining, this book will stimulate experimentation and encourage gardeners to review and improve their current gardening practices. Once gardeners learn how plants are constructed, it is easier to envision how they'll grow and flourish. An understanding of the structure behind good, healthy soil gives clues as to how to improve one's own garden tilth. This practical guide helps readers identify what plants need to survive and how these fundamental scientific facts are at the heart of good plant care. A chapter on seeds and germination will encourage gardeners at any level to try their hand at propagation, while discussion of soil, pests, and diseases adds to the skills of all gardeners. The final sections of the book take a closer look at biodiversity, ecology, genetic engineering, and nomenclature. For the enthusiastic beginner or the master gardener, Practical Science for Gardeners unravels the mysterious inner life of plants.

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Smart gardeners know that soil is anything but an inert substance. Healthy soil is teeming with life — not just earthworms and insects, but a staggering multitude of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms. When we use chemical fertilizers, we injure the microbial life that sustains healthy plants and become increasingly dependent on an arsenal of artificial, often toxic, substances. But there is an alternative to this vicious cycle. We can garden in a way that strengthens the soil food web — the complex world of soil-dwelling organisms whose interactions create a nurturing environment for plants.

Teaming with Microbes extols the benefits of cultivating the soil food web. First, it clearly explains the activities and organisms that make up the web. Next, it explains how gardeners can cultivate the life of the soil through the use of compost, mulches and compost tea. The revised edition updates the original text and includes two completely new chapters — on mycorrhizae (beneficial associations fungi form with green-leaved plants) and archaea (single-celled organisms once thought to be allied to bacteria).

With Jeff Lowenfels's help, everyone — from devotees of organic gardening techniques to weekend gardeners who simply want to grow healthy, vigorous plants without resorting to chemicals — can create rich, nurturing, living soil.

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Can beer make plants grow? How about buttermilk? Or music — classical or rock? Is it true about planting trees in deep holes? And how about chasing insects with hot sauce and stopping slugs with eggshells? Remedies for all garden woes are there for the taking: the challenge is to know what will work and what won't. Fearlessly conducting original experiments and harvesting wisdom from the scientific literature, horticulturist Jeff Gillman assesses new and historic advice and reveals the how and why — and sometimes the why not — for more than 100 common and uncommon gardening practices. The results will surprise even experienced gardeners.

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Gardeners tend to assume that any product or practice labeled as organic is automatically safe for humans and beneficial to the environment. And in many cases this is true. The problem, as Jeff Gillman points out in this fascinating, well-researched book, is that it is not universally true, and the exceptions can pose a significant threat to human health. To cite just two examples: animal manures are widely viewed as prime soil amendments. When properly treated, they are; but if they are insufficiently composted, they can be a source of harmful E. coli contamination. Even more dangerous, potentially, are organic insecticides like rotenone, which is every bit as toxic as the synthetic compounds it is meant to replace.

Gillman's contention is that all gardening products and practices — organic and synthetic — need to be examined on a case-by-case basis to determine both whether they are safe and whether they accomplish the task for which they are intended. When gardeners are well informed about the precise nature and consequences of what they use and do in the garden, they are in a much better position to make responsible, effective choices.

If you've ever wondered about the merits of a specific insecticide, herbicide, or fungicide, or debated whether practices such as planting cover crops or companion plants are worth the trouble, you'll find the answers you've sought in these pages, along with a clear, careful, and good-humored analysis of benefits and drawbacks.

Ultimately, Gillman concludes, organic methods are preferable in most situations that gardeners are likely to encounter. After reading this eye-opening book, you will understand why, and why knowledge is the gardener's most important tool.