I use books so often as inspiration for my blogs and as guidance in my daily living I thought I’d make a page where I could write short reviews of the ones I use most as a quick resource for you. I’ll continue to add books as I come across good ones!
Made From Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life by Jenna Woginrich: A book written in a very narrative style about different things you can do from scratch including raising chickens, raising bunnies, gardening, and even beekeeping. I’ll admit, I got annoyed at her single 26-year old free time and unlimited motivation as I read it amidst the chaos that is my 4 small children life but in reality the book only a little bit cheesy in some spots. I was inspired to attempt raising bees, my desire for chickens (and homemade Quiche) of my own has intensified to the point I can actually taste it, and now I want bunnies too. All in all a good book even though her referencing Research, Son throughout the book was actually annoying (it’s an appendix at the back of the book but I didn’t know that until halfway through the book when I, in my confusion, went looking for all the stuff she kept mentioning).
The Vegetable Gardeners Bible by Edward Smith: truly my gardening bible! I refer to this book OFTEN. I especially love how it has 1+ page spreads on each vegetable and herb for easy reference. Edwards Smith uses the “WORD” method of gardening: Wide rows, Organic methods, Raised beds, Deep digging all of which makes so much common sense it’s easy to completely adopt his ideas. He gives guidance from the first steps to breaking soil through harvesting and bedding down for the winter. I HIGHLY recommend this book to any new gardener or any seasoned gardener trying to make the switch to organic methods.
Crockett’s Victory Garden by James Underwood Crockett: An old book published in 1977 it outlines month by month what to do. This book covers vegetables and flowers. I liked the way the book was laid out because I am not familiar enough with plants to know when to start things indoors so they’ll be ready to be put outside or the intermediate steps (hardening off using cold frames for example) that should be used. Unfortunately Crockett is not an organic gardener which is frustrating because he talks often about what he’s spraying on his plants to keep the bugs and diseases away. There is another book written by Crockett’s partner, Bob Thomas, called The New Victory Garden. The Amazon reviews say he uses organic methods so I definitely want to check that out!