Grow A Sustainable Diet Planning and Growing to Feed Ourselves and the Earth

Row by row -- maximize your harvest and feed your soil by developing a customized plan for your garden

Maximize Your Harvest and Feed Your Soil by Developing a Customized Plan for Your Garden

"Just the book you have been looking for! — John Jeavons, author, How To Grow More Vegetables (and Fruits, Nut, Berries, Grains and Other Crops) Than You Ever Thought Possible On Less Land Than You Can Imagine

"A combination of biointensive gardening, permaculture planning and straightforward down-home wisdom, Grow a Sustainable Diet shows us that good nutrition is as close as our own backyard." — Darrell E. Frey, Three Sisters Farm, author, The Bioshelter Market Garden

IT'S NOT JUST how you grow — what you grow and where you grow it are at the root of truly sustainable food production. Grow a Sustainable Diet will help you develop a comprehensive, customized garden plan to produce the maximum number of calories, dietary staples and key nutrients from any available space. Learn how to calculate:

• Which food and cover crops are best for your specific requirements
• How many seeds and plants of each variety you should sow
• What and when to plant, harvest and replant for maximum yield.

While many gardening guides will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about individual crops, few tackle the more involved task of helping you maximize the percentage of your diet you grow yourself. Focusing on permaculture principles, biointensive gardening methods, minimum fossil-fuel input and growing crops that sustain both you and your soil, Grow a Sustainable Diet is a must-read for anyone working toward food self-sufficiency for themselves or their family.

"Imagine gardening as a process which improves the soil even as we grow our crops, helps balance and enrich the ecology, relies on free services of nature rather than purchased inputs — and is powered with energy from the nearest star. That is the way of gardening Cindy Conner offers in Grow a Sustainable Diet ". — Harvey Ussery, author, The Small-Scale Poultry Flock

Cindy Conner is a permaculture educator, founder of Homeplace Earth and the producer of two popular instructional DVDs on sustainable gardening. Her passion lies in helping everyone to work towards growing a complete diet in a small space while minimizing the input of fossil fuels.

To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, Mother Earth News is recommending select New Society Publishers books to its readers. This book is one of them.

Everyone loves to prepare a meal with ingredients fresh from their own garden. But for most of us, no matter how plentiful our harvest, homegrown produce comprises only a fraction of what we eat. And while many gardening guides will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about individual crops, few tackle the more involved task of helping you maximize the percentage of your diet you grow yourself. Grow a Sustainable Diet will help you develop a comprehensive, customized garden plan to produce the maximum number of calories and nutrients from any available space. Avoid arriving in August buried under a mountain of kale or zucchini (and not much else) by making thoughtful choices at the planning stage, focusing on dietary staples and key nutrients. Learn how to calculate: * Which food and cover crops are best for your specific requirements * How many seeds and plants of each variety you should sow * What and when to plant, harvest, and replant for maximum yield Focusing on permaculture principles, bio-intensive gardening methods, getting food to the table with minimum fossil fuel input, and growing crops that sustain both you and your soil, this complete guide is a must-read for anyone working towards food self-sufficiency for themselves or their family. Cindy Conner is a permaculture educator, founder of Homeplace Earth, and the producer of two popular instructional DVDs on sustainable gardening. Her passion is exploring growing a complete diet in a small space while minimizing the use of fossil fuels.