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An environmentally friendly sourcebook that is actually two books in one, providing everything the gardener needs to know about setting up a healthy, growing environment within a sunspace. Plus, a complete guide to growing flowers, vegetables and herbs in the greenhouse. Highly recommended.

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Humanure: waste or resource? Joseph Jenkins answers this question in this guide to reclaiming and recycling human waste through composting. Offers simple and practical solutions anyone can use.

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 to its 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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The decline of cheap oil is inspiring increasing numbers of North Americans to achieve some measure of backyard food self-sufficiency. In hard times, the family can be greatly helped by growing a highly productive food garden, requiring little cash outlay or watering.

Currently popular intensive vegetable gardening methods are largely inappropriate to this new circumstance. Crowded raised beds require high inputs of water, fertility and organic matter, and demand large amounts of human time and effort. But, except for labor, these inputs depend on the price of oil. Before the 1970s, North American home food growing used more land with less labor, with wider plant spacing, with less or no irrigation, and all done with sharp hand tools. But these sustainable systems have been largely forgotten. Gardening When It Counts, a Mother Earth News book, helps you rediscover traditional low-input gardening methods to produce healthy food.

Designed for readers with no experience and applicable to most areas in the English-speaking world, except the tropics and hot deserts, this book shows that any family with access to 3-5,000 sq. ft. of garden land can halve their food costs using a growing system requiring just the odd bucketful of household wastewater, perhaps $200 worth of hand tools and about the same amount spent on supplies — working an average of two hours a day during the growing season.

About the author:

Steve Solomon is a well-known West Coast gardener and author of five previous books, including Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, which has appeared in five editions.

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 to its readers. For more than 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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CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $18.95 AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

The most comprehensive and entertaining single-volume gardening reference ever printed is now 100 percent organic. This beloved classic has been revisited by author Barbara Damrosch to reflect the latest research on plants, soils, tools and techniques.

The updated edition includes expanded information on planning an organic garden, recommended plants and the best tools. Ecological issues are addressed more extensively, covering lawn alternatives, the benefits of native species, wildlife-friendly gardens and how to avoid harmful invasive species. More attention is also paid to plants native to the South, Southwest and West Coast, while cold-climate gardeners are given detailed advice on how to extend the growing season. Simply put, this new edition is a richer and fuller compendium than ever before, including more text and illustrations, additional garden plans and expanded plant lists. This new version of Damrosch's classic guide rejuvenates the original material while maintaining its primary appeal — practical, creative ideas and friendly style.

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A perfect lawn may not always be a good thing, as manicured lawns are high-maintenance, chemical-dependent water guzzlers. This handsome, informative and amusing book should serve as an inspiration to those who are tired of manicured lawns.

Alternatives to the traditional lawn effectively cut down on water usage and may also play host to beneficial insects and birds. Once the desire to do away with grass takes root, readers can turn to author Liz Primeau for help in rejuvenating a front yard so that flowers, foliage textures and hardscaping come together in inviting swaths to both beautify and benefit the environment.

Useful as a source book, this volume presents photographs and text that suggest potential ideas to increase curb appeal through the transformation of front yards and parkways.

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Beginning with the down-to-earth basics of soil, sun and water, fertilizer and seeds and propagation, The Bountiful Container is an extraordinarily complete guide to container gardening. Written by two seasoned container gardeners and writers, Rose McGee and Maggie Stuckey share their expertise and experience in the art of container gardening.

Armed with this manual, frustrated apartment dwellers can indulge their passion for growing edible things. If there is an available balcony, porch, front or back steps, growing produce in containers can be easy and rewarding. With some limitations, it is even possible to grow foods in a window box or on an indoor windowsill.

This collection of practical advice includes detailed information on the types of containers to use, equipment needed, the right soil, when to plant which seeds and how best to deal with problems such as too much or too little sunlight. Written for the beginner as well as for those with a background in gardening, the book contains comprehensive, clearly written and frequently inspiring directions from authors McGee and Stuckey.

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

The reader will find much in this third book in a trilogy of information on growing giant pumpkins. How-to-Grow World Class Giant Pumpkins, Third Edition presents the newest information on cultural methods, who’s who and records. New ideas about plant size and pruning strategies throw a whole new light on the grower with only a small area to devote to giant pumpkins. New discoveries involving the use of considerably more calcium in feeding programs, a steadily growing consensus on the use of nitrogen, the beginnings of a real effort at applying genetic theory in pollination strategies, how-to select the best seed, and the controversial subject of genetic manipulation, all required an airing-out here.

The explosion in the number of growers gathering information via the internet, either through website information, or through open forums with other growers via message boards, has become a major accelerator in the learning curve of all growers. Seed auctions, message boards, and a site devoted entirely to maintaining a database of pumpkin genetic backgrounds, all contribute to a shortening of the time it takes to succeed in this sport.

If you want to grow a world record giant pumpkin, you will find much in this book to to help you.

If your goal is 1500 pounds, then you’ve come to the right place.

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From the best-selling author of The New Organic Grower and Four-Season Harvest comes a revolutionary guide to year-round harvests of fresh, organic produce — with little or no energy inputs.

Choosing locally grown organic food is a sustainable living trend that’s taken hold throughout North America. Celebrated farming expert Eliot Coleman helped start this movement with The New Organic Grower, published 20 years ago. He continues to lead the way, pushing the limits of the harvest season while working his world-renowned organic farm in Harborside, Maine.

Now, with his long-awaited new book, The Winter Harvest Handbook, anyone can have access to his hard-won experience. Gardeners and farmers can use the innovative, highly successful methods Coleman describes in this comprehensive handbook to raise crops throughout the coldest of winters.

Building on the techniques that hundreds of thousands of farmers and gardeners adopted from The New Organic Grower and Four-Season Harvest, this new book focuses on growing produce of unparalleled freshness and quality in customized unheated or, in some cases, minimally heated, movable plastic greenhouses.

Coleman offers clear, concise details on greenhouse construction and maintenance, planting schedules, crop management, harvesting practices and even marketing methods in this complete, meticulous and illustrated guide. Readers have access to all the techniques that have proven to produce higher-quality crops on Coleman’s own farm.

His painstaking research and experimentation with more than 30 different crops will be valuable to small farmers, homesteaders and experienced home gardeners who seek to expand their production seasons.

A passionate advocate for the revival of small-scale sustainable farming, Coleman provides a practical model for supplying fresh, locally grown produce during the winter season, even in climates where conventional wisdom says it “just can’t be done.”

Praise for The Winter Harvest Handbook:

"How do you produce first-rate food all year-round in northern places? This is the big question facing the local food movement, and Eliot Coleman, one of America's most innovative farmers, has come up with excellent answers. ... The Winter Harvest Handbook is an indispensable contribution." Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food

"If we are going to create a good, clean, fair food system, we've got to learn how to grow affordable, local food year-round and make a living at it. Eliot Coleman knows more about this than anyone I've met. Here he gives the detailed information needed to make it work." Josh Viertel, president, Slow Food USA.

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 more than 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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This revised and expanded fifth edition of Create an Oasis With Greywater describes how to quickly and easily choose, build and use a simple greywater system. Some can be completed in an afternoon for under $30.

It also provides complete instructions for more complex installations, and how to deal with freezing, flooding, drought, failing septics, low perk soil and nonindustrialized world conditions. This book helps in coordinating a team of professionals to get optimum results on high-end projects and "radical plumbing" that uses 90% less resources.

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 more than 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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Master gardener Barbara Pleasant takes the guesswork and anxiety out of growing food, explaining in simple language exactly how to start, maintain and eventually expand an organic vegetable garden, even in the smallest of spaces. Choose one of 24 no-fail, small-scale garden plans and find out how easy it is to enjoy your own fresh food all season long!