Reddit reviews Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, 2nd Edition
We found 38 Reddit comments about Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, 2nd Edition. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Ships from Vermont
Dave Jacke's book:
http://www.amazon.com/Edible-Forest-Gardens-2-set/dp/1890132608
Gaia's Garden:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1603580298/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1?pf_rd_p=1944687542&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1890132608&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0DKFRRSMRZE5HP5F3XDB
They wouldn't claim to be scientists, more like ecological engineers, but there are tons of writeups. They write a lot of books; there are a lot of "test sites" around the world.
Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home Scale Permaculture --> most accessible guide for the layperson
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1603580298/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1603580298&linkCode=as2&tag=postapocaly06-20&linkId=PARY4RJKHWLQYGER
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0908228015/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0908228015&linkCode=as2&tag=postapocaly06-20&linkId=NSVF65UXGPBESS3D --> Permaculture: A Designer's Manual, by Bill Mollison --> the textbook for the so-called "permaculture design course"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture
Some famous demonstration sites:
Zaytuna Farm, Australia - http://permaculturenews.org/2012/06/01/zaytuna-farm-video-tour-apr-may-2012-ten-years-of-revolutionary-design/
Bealtaine Cottage, British Isles - http://bealtainecottage.com/before-permaculture/
Agroforestry UK - https://www.agroforestry.co.uk/
It's quite a rabbit hole! Good luck exploring!!
Glad to help. Now is a great time to get back into gardening and build up the soil where you live. You might want to consider throwing in some perennial edibles. And this book is a good read if you want a collapse-resistant garden. Good luck and have fun!
I was introduced by Gaia's Garden , it was a wonderful read and an even better starting point
Toby Hemenway would disagree with you.
the aggressive nature of bamboo is greatly overstated. This is partly due to the fact that things like sidewalks actually make it more aggressive - it will eagerly shoot under 24" of concrete to come out the other side. It is also partly due to bamboo's need for trimming - in the wild, all sorts of critters eat the shoots when they're small so only a few ever reach the crown. However, there are all sorts of bamboo barriers that do a righteous job of containing bamboo even if you're too lazy to go out and eat the shoots every now and then.
Is bamboo a voracious grower? Yes. Are its rhizomes tough to eradicate once a clump is established? Yes. But compared to some perfectly mainstream-acceptable plants like ivy and blackberries, it's a pussycat. People freak out about bamboo because it's what the cool kids do. Likely there was someone who moved into a house with a bamboo grove in the back, decide to take it out, and discover that it doesn't go quietly.
I once had eight sawed-off 55gal drums full of golden bamboo. They were beautiful. They were also on pallets, in a parking lot, 150 feet from the nearest bare earth.
That didn't stop total strangers from walking up while I was watering and saying "better be careful, that stuff will get away from you!"
Start with Gaia’s Garden (https://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-Guide-Home-Scale-Permaculture/dp/1603580298/)
Permaculture on the scale for those of us that aren’t farmers.
if its your first house can i suggest a couple books?
http://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-Second-Home-Scale-Permaculture/dp/1603580298/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278971308&sr=1-1
or
Intro to Permaculture by Mill Mollison
http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Permaculture-Bill-Mollison/dp/0908228082
p.s. pssssst... get rid of the lawn and put in something useful and beautiful.
I am relatively new to this subject and these books have been useful for me:
The Urban Homestead A good introductory book that touches on a lot of relevant topics.
Gaia's Garden This is not specifically a homesteading book but it is a very useful book for growing food and learning about small scale permacultural design.
Four Season Harvest Another useful book for growing, especially for those of us in cold climates.
Country Wisdom & Know How A fun reference for many homestead topics.
> Gaia's Garden
First search result is some woo-woo New-Agey crap site. I think this is what you meant? Looks like a very good book. May have to pick it up.
Well, as someone who worked a blue collar job while studying philosophy in my leisure time, I'd have to say I've come to the same conclusion. Plan on moving out west and joining an ecovillage/worker cooperative. You might want to look into permaculture for your gardening, better yields through organic farming.
(Not trying to one-up you, just saying that thanks to the wide-spread nature of information, you don't have to be an academic elite to come to such conclusions)
Sepp Holzer is also from Austria and has done some great things and written a few books.
Toby Hemenway's book, Gaia's Garden, is fantastic.
If you only care about growing vegetables in a garden bed, there are a lot of books on how to get started and any one of them would work for you. Go to a used book store and see what they have, I'm sure you'll find something you like.
Get Gaia's Garden. Read it. Then decide what trees to plant.
Your soil looks nice but I think you're going to have a hell of a time getting to the veggies and whatnot that are in the middle of the bed once everything starts growing.
Also, if you read any book about gardening read Gaia's Garden which is a home scale permaculture gardening book. It's all about working with natural systems instead of working against it. How to intercrop plants to get higher production in the same amount of space by creating layers and interactions in plants. For example here in Texas it gets super hot in the summer and it'll pretty much kill my tomatoes. This year I'm experimenting with growing pole beans up the outside of my tomato cages. The beans shouldn't compete with the tomatoes for nitrogen since they can provide much of their own. Also once they beans get tall enough to start shading the tomatoes they'll actually serve to protect them from the blast furnace that is the sun here in late July through August.
Another great thing about intercropping is that it helps with deterring insects that want to eat your garden. Plenty of insects are plant specific so if you have all your cabbage planted in a row then a cabbage looper moth is going to go cabbage to cabbage to cabbage laying her eggs. When they hatch the caterpillars can easily get to all sorts of cabbage. Now if you scatter your cabbages around, have them surrounded by things like arugula, lettuce or other things that cabbage loopers don't care for as much then you slow their spread and it gives natural predators a chance to keep the pest populations in check.
Wasps are one of a gardeners best friend.
Look into no till gardening. Not only is it less work but it treats the soil like the complex system that it is instead of destroying it by mixing it up over and over.
Mulching is your best defense against weeds and water evaporation from the soil. Don't be scared of mulching to deep.
Successful organic gardening and farming is a question of figuring out how to turn what seem like liabilities into assets. It seems like you have too much sun. Try putting up some shade cloth to block out sun during the most intense parts of the day. Mulch your plants. A lot. Mulch will save you.
Read some books. Eliot Coleman's books are fabulous, and contain a lot of good general information even though the author lives in Maine. I particularly recommend Four Season Harvest. Gaia's Garden is great, and is well suited to someone who owns very little land. Teaming with Microbes is an easy-to-read introduction to bringing your soil to life. And Roots Demystified has some great information about how to best design watering systems for specific plants you're growing. These books all have good pest-fighting information.
You can PM me if you have any questions. Get started!
>we've got to fight to survive
Absolutely. Giving up is certainly worse. When I first learned of the economic and energy aspects of collapse I thought things would fall apart much sooner than they did. It's almost excruciatingly slow once you see how untenable the trajectory is. The good news is you can take action personally to be less dependant on the failing system and to help others wake up.
If you're looking for some positive ways to prepare, consider Prosper by Martenson and Taggart, this intro to permaculture, this intro to Appropriate Technology, and/or this collapse-aware career book.
Good luck with your upcoming semester. You've come so far, and you'll be glad you finished what you started.
Gaia's Garden, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle are two great ones. Gaia's Garden regards permaculture and making your garden more in touch with what occurs in nature. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, while it is not a "Gardening" book, is a great read and was what inspired me to start a garden as soon as I moved out of my apartment to the country.
One Straw Revolution
Teaming with Microbes
Teaming with Nutrients
Master Cho's Lessons
Gaia's Garden
This is a good base into the natural side of things, if that interests you at all.
Toby Hemenway. This book has some discussion of the non-native issue. This video might be the one you're looking for. See also this discussion thread.
If you haven't already, introduce yourself to permaculture. A good start is Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway and this video right here by Geoff Lawton.
If you have a place where you can grow a few things in the house or outside covered in colder weather, you have more options. Some are tropical. I would say make a list of your favorites. One example of something you could likely grow if you found the right bulbs is saffron. It's often used in Indian cuisine and comes from a variety of crocus. You can grow your own pepper. You can also grow flavorings for old-fashioned candies, herbal teas or tisanes, root beer ... anything you can think of if you look hard enough. Even if you can't grow the exact plant, there are often alternative plants you can grow and get a very similar flavor. Nasturtium flower buds can be made into "poor man's capers". You can grow more than just food. If you are into crafting, you can also make your own plant-based dyes and paints from plants, eggs, and other things.
For a book that lists other plants you may not think of, as well as ways to attract and help wildlife try Gaia's Garden. I think you may also enjoy Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden.
This is a topic that I've just barely started to get into, but right now I'm reading Gaia's Garden and its really interesting so far.
Your first year I suggest growing vegetables like paste tomatoes and some nice roasting peppers. Paprika is a particular variety of sweet or hot peppers that have been dried and ground to a powder. Usually the grocery stores sell 2 varieties: Hot or sweet. Another redditor recommended the Alma peppers for a nice paprika.
Before you plant a large, fussy but interesting, tree get some experience under your belt. Gardening can be expensive and some of the more exotic and interesting plants and trees come with a big price tag. You can quickly kill many dollars. I did that when I first started my garden (but with perennial flowers) so, I'm trying to stop you from making (what can be) a costly mistake.
The best place to start is to get to know your garden site's sun and soil. Does it drain well? Does it need amendments? Is it full sun, partial sun or full shade?
A really good way to go is to first read Gaia's garden and plant smart with permaculture.
A cool and interesting 1-season plant that likes full sun and a trellis is loofah gourds.
Gaia's Garden is a book written with North America in mind. It has lists of plants by function, layer, and hardiness USDA climate zone.
Plants for the Future is a free online database of 7000 plants. You can search this database by hardiness USDA climate zone, size, soil type, and use (medicinal, edible, soil conditioners, fiber, etc.)
Edible Food Forest is a two volume set of books. The second volume also has lists of plants.
Depending on how much space you've got, this one is pretty nice: The Backyard Homestead. There's a little bit of everything :)
If you're into permaculture and that kind of thing, I'd recommend Gaia's Garden and Edible Forest Gardens, Vol 2. Be warned, Edible Forest Gardens is a bit like reading an engineering text!
You might consider what kind of gardener you want to be more philosophically, too.
Do you want to grow a food ecosystem? Permaculture is your thing - Gaia's Garden would be a good book for you
https://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-Guide-Home-Scale-Permaculture/dp/1603580298/
Do you need compact lazy-persons garden? Square Foot Gardening
"Square Foot Gardening" (Beginners Guide) as a start.
Like the idea of a themed garden like u/SedatedApe61 recommended? Groundbreaking Food Gardens has loads of ideas along those lines
https://www.amazon.com/Groundbreaking-Food-Gardens-Change-Garden/dp/161212061X/
There are as many ways to garden as gardeners. Finding the plants that suit both your location and your style of gardening goes a long way.
The two absolute best books on the subject. I'd also recommend Gaia's Garden for some useful plant lists. Also, West Coast Food Forestry is a nice comprehensive list of little known plants.
Everyone here has already covered all I was going to say. In some of your comments you said you wanted to learn more about permaculture might I recommend Gaia's Garden. It is very general but it gave me a really great foundation for permaculture and the lists and ideas are fantastic.
Reading "Gaias Garden" right now. Lifechanging stuff.
Permaculture can help save our world!
Don't know about adobe construction, but Gaia's Garden is a great introduction to practical permaculture. The photo on the cover is from a farm in Arizona.
i can personally attest to the benefits of building your garden this way. i think i pulled 2 weeds all season and my tomatoes, peppers, sunflowers and lettuce did great! i have already started next year's garden and can't wait to try a few new things! some added bonuses (other than not having to till) are that with this technique you don't have to disrupt the ecosystem under the soil and the cardboard actually draws the worms up into your garden, adding even more fertilizer. i will never build garden any other way! an excellent book that talks about this and other ways to create and work with a natural ecosystem is gaia's garden. it teaches you how to have a beautiful, useful yard/space with minimal work.
sadly, permaculture has been the victim of greenwashing. Check out Gaia's Garden: http://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-Second-Home-Scale-Permaculture/dp/1603580298
The core concept of permaculture is to integrate systems into each other so intimately that the waste streams of a single process become input for others and eventually recycle into the first. Rainwater harvesting, grey-water plumbing, black-water irrigation and purification, and food production can all be tied together to make the most of the water that you collect, and by mulching the compostable materials on the property you can create healthy happy soil that is exponentially safer than pumping in pesticides and fertilizers to make it viable.
Often, its not that technology has been overlooked, Its that technology harms the land that it is used on. Such as row planting and mechanized plowing. By planting only ONE crop, the farm's soil instantly loses most mirco-nutrient content due to lack of plant diversity. The large machines come in and destroy the fungal and bacterial water networks that take many years to develop. With these gone, and the crop layer having been harvested, there is no water or biomass to hold down the top soil and we get dust storms, while the farmer has to spend tons of money to aerate and fertilize the sand which he hopes to grow food on again.
Sorry to be so long winded, but Permaculture takes every method by its input/output and matches it to a system that can handle those flows. IF you can create a system that is healthy for the planet, uses less (or no) oil, and creates healthy food for millions, then permaculture can save agriculture, but imho, its gotten too big to tame, and we need to look at other avenues to provide food security.
Again, great questions. Here's a video I did on hugelkultur a bit ago. I don't recommend going to my website at the moment though because it's been recently hacked and I'm working on cleaning it up. The youtube video will be fine though. Check out that video, if you have more questions, feel free to ask.
You can do the flat raised bed idea, and I did the same last year, but I believe you will get more benefit from doing the piqued hills.
Grey water collection and rainwater harvesting are excellent ideas. I don't know if you could make use of it, but here is a super cool idea for a ram pump which requires no external input other than elevation change. Other than that, I don't know much about water tanks.
One really cool thing I've seen used is where people dig a trench under their garden and bury weeping tile in that trench which snakes around their garden. Then they connect that weeping tile to their downspout from there gutters and when it rains, they get a massive deep soak in their garden.
Swales are a fantastic thing to think about as they will help keep water on your land. Swales mixed with heavy mulching are a huge force in keeping your land irrigated. Check out greening the desert for more on that.
As for the PDC, you don't even have to pay for it. I googled free online PDC and found this.
http://www.permaculturedesigntraining.com/
If you want to learn more about it, there are amazing books which can help.
Gaia's Garden and Sepp Holzer's Permaculture
That's awesome that your SO is taking that course. She'll probably learn some really cool sustainable farming things.
Also, check out http://www.permies.com. There's tons of info there, and super amazing people who are very helpful.
Permaculture: A Designer's Manual is considered the bible for permaculture because of how comprehensive it is and how much information is packed into that book. It won't explain all of the effective strategies for different climates that we've developed over the last 30 years but I would definitely start there for the foundation. Then move on to books on topics that are specific to a particular topic within permaculture design.
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My Recommendations:
This started me down the path: http://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-Home-Scale-Permaculture-Edition/dp/1603580298
Have a go at Gaia's garden, home scale permaculture design.
It's the textbook in this permaculture class.
You should check out Gaia's Garden or a similar permaculture book. As others have said, there's ways to protect your plants without relying on herbicides or weed pulling! :)
Namely, what I've read is that you should plant cover crops that will fight your weeds for you.
Good luck and grats on the baby!
I highly recommend Gaia's Garden a guide to home scale scale permaculture. It's not specifically homesteading, it's permaculture, but it is a way to supercharge the efficiency of your food production with the leist inputs.
https://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-Guide-Home-Scale-Permaculture/dp/1603580298