Reddit reviews Rodale's Ultimate Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening: The Indispensable Green Resource for Every Gardener (Rodale Organic Gardening)

I would suggest a general "How to garden" type book like The Garden Primer and a reference for different plants/methods like Rodale's Organic Gardening Encyclopedia. I got both of these used for like $10 from Alibris.com.

Really there's too much info to do gardening justice in a few blurbs. If you're serious you'll spend a few bucks on a lot of knowledge.

>We recently formed an Urban Homesteaders Meetup group in my area and were hugely surprised when 200 people signed up in three weeks and we hadn't even had a meetup yet. But we have, after about 4 months, 50-ish people helping each other learn how to raise chickens and keep bees in their backyards, raise their own produce, build greenhouses, preserve and store what they've grown, share seeds and young plants, and we've even have a botanist from the university who's led a couple of foraging hikes. It's been awesome and with the movement growing, there may very well be one in your area.

Sounds awesome. I just looked it up and it looks like there's one locally with about 20 people that was just founded a month ago.

>The Rodale's books on gardening. Even as long as I've been doing this, I refer to them constantly.

That's good. My university garden group uses this constantly too.