(Part 2) Best organic gardening books according to redditors

So true! That was all we had...no internet, no Vice TV - HT was it! There used to be ONE book on growing weed during that time. It was called the "International Cultivator's Handbook" - and is so antiquated now that it's downright funny!

https://www.amazon.com/International-Cultivators-Handbook-Opium-Hashish/dp/1453816291

Producing 50% of the food for 6 people off 1/3 acre is a tall order. I would recommend looking into edible food forests for the wooded area(research agroforesty and edible food forests), and edible perennial landscaping for the front yard to stack functions and bring those areas into production. You could also keep your chickens and coop in the wooded area, so as not to waste space in your "open area". If you are planing on raising eggs to sell, they typically are a loss-leader until you get to about 150 birds, which doesn't sound feasible for the amount of land you have. With that in mind, I'd keep your flock small; 6-10 birds, depending on how many eggs your family eats a week.
If you have the time and the energy, I would highly recommend John Jeavon's "Grow Biointensive" method. This method produces more food with less water and less space, however, to be able to plant as close together as he recommends, you have to follow ALL of his steps. That means double digging, which is pretty labor intensive at the very beginning of the season.
As for fish, seems like you could set up an aquaponics greenhouse, which can be expensive to start up but wonderful once going, or you can dig a pond.

EDIT: To add resources.
http://www.johnjeavons.info/video.html - video introduction to bioitensive. (on your scale I might skip out on the compost crops)

"How To Grow More Vegetables*" By John Jeavons is a wonderful resource.

Gaia's Garden: A guide to Home-scale Permaculture by Toby Hemmingway

For greenhouse production: Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long

If you are thinking about a market stand of some kind, The Organic Farmer's Business Handbook: A Complete Guide To Managing Finances, Crops, and Staff - and Making a Profit

I did square foot gardening for a couple of years and found it really helpful. More than anything, it gives a solid framework (in a number of respects) by which to learn gardening. I found it to be a great "gateway" gardening technique.

This book is what I learned from.

Square foot gardening is most appropriate when first learning gardening, when learning about plant spacing, companion planting, etc. It isn't a great approach if you're trying to grow a tremendous amount of food, but if you have a few small beds and want to maximize your output from them, it's a great way to go.

Really, the best way to get started is to buy the/a book and read it. It will outline the reason for the method, and all aspects of how it works.

More recently, I'm a fan of John Jeavons' books, in particular How to Grow More Vegetables. It is more useful for when you want to go a bit further with space efficiency and sustainability. His book The Sustainable Vegetable Garden is on the same topic, but is more of an introductory overview.

I'm not sure what else to say, do you have any specific questions about square foot gardening? From your post, I couldn't tell how much you do or don't know about square foot gardening.

It varies pretty widely depending on where you are growing, and how. Biointensive gardening (French Intensive, and the like) can yield very high amounts in smallish areas, and if planned carefully can greatly reduce pests and weeds, and requires less water (even better if it is captured rainwater).

• Not to shill, but some books to read.
  
  
• A very useful set of calculators
  
  
• And, an answer from the Peace Corps
  
  Page XI (introduction) "To show the high productivity of the methods, it has been demonstrated that the intensive raised bed technique can produce enough vegetables from an area of 500 square
  feet to feed one person for an entire year! This area can yield well over 875 pounds of vegetables per year, and even much more when different crops are grown, and when the growing season of a total year is exploited."
  
  So, if you are vegetarian (meat eaters would need more to grow grain and such to feed the animals, plus land to keep them), you could get away with about 2000-2500 SF for a family of 4. About half your average 50x100 city lot.

I always tell people to check out Earth User's Guide to Permaculture. It's cheap and very user friendly.

You could compost human or dog manure too. But to be safe, you should compost it for a good 6 months to kill off any human pathogens that may be in it.

Source: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B005GPM98K/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1405396298&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40

Great book but my wife crushed my composting toilet idea after I read it. Farmers of Forty Centuries talks a lot of using Night Soil. Farmers would haul the Night Soil from the cities to their farm for free.

Yes, but you'll have to do some homework, you wouldn't be able to get all the info you need from a reddit comment. Check out this book to get started. There's also https://www.reddit.com/r/MushroomGrowers. Good luck!

Awesome man! I used this recipe and changed it up a bit as per a friend's suggestions. It can be a bitch to get all of the ingredients together and mixing it all up by hand was a mission on its own.

Teaming With Microbes is a pretty solid book for learning about the soil food web. Not much plot or character development, but worth a read.
Once I'm done with my assignments for the quarter I'm going to readTeaming With Nutrients by the same authors.

Well, good luck! Reach out if you have questions, I'm no expert but I love doing learning about this stuff and seeing the results.

Closed cycles are a nice idea but in practice you are always losing nutrients through leaching, crop export and mineralisation of nitrogen back into the air. Cropping spaces can't support themselves in terms of fertility, and while cover crops can help with a lot soil carbon and to a lesser extent nitrogen the minerals are going to become a limiting factor in time if you are taking a crop off the land. Often things seem to be going fine for years until some key mineral runs short. Traditionally land was in fallow about 4/5 of the time as weedy pasture over a long period does a lot more good for the soil than a cover crop of 2-3 species for one short season. Trees are important for bringing up minerals as well but difficult to incorporate directly with cropping spaces (animals that browse trees then transport manure like goats are ideal for that). The modern biointensive methods like Jeavons rely on heavy imports of fertility as manure/compost/mulch plus irrigation. The older methods that aren't so input intensive are mostly lost today it seems. I'm experimenting with zero/low input systems here and it is doable but requires more skill than just pumping everything up with water and fertiliser.
There are a few books on growing grains on a small scale
https://www.amazon.com.au/Homegrown-Whole-Grains-Harvest-Barley-ebook/dp/B003PGQK50
https://www.amazon.com.au/Small-Scale-Grain-Raising-Processing-Nutritious-ebook/dp/B005OCTJ3S
The trouble with grains is how dependent they are on local seasonal cycles since they need moisture to grow but dry weather to ripen and harvest successfully. Each species has its own specific preferences for soil and climate (with specific strains for low input conditions necessary beyond that, with the genetics of those old landraces mostly lost as well) and then on top of that each species has its own tricks and equipment for sowing, growing, harvesting, processing and storing. There is a reason why most traditional agricultural regions had just one dominant staple crop and maybe one or two minor ones to complement it.
If you live in a warm humid zone like I do then grains are pretty much off the menu since we get rainy weather at pretty much any time of year, so half the time the crop is ruined (if the birds and rats don't get it first, another disadvantage of growing grains on a small scale). Tuber crops are our better bet but outside the warmer zones the species choice is a lot more limited. With increasing climate instability grain growing might become more marginal even for the industrial farmers.
Keep dreaming and planning- I redesigned my place a few dozen times for years before I moved onto it full time and could put things into practice, but the plans are still changing on a regular basis.

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!

This book is the simplest way to get composting. It is short to the point and down to earth for gardening newbies.

For anyone inspired to try this approach, I found this book to be pretty helpful and accessible (as well as full of absolutely lovely illustrations)

I'm growing Allium tricoccum (ramps), Morus rubra (mulberry), Thymus vulgaris (thyme), Malva moschata (musk mallow), Chenopodium bonus-henricus (Good King Henry), Levisticum officinale (lovage), Vitis vinifera (grapes), Rumex acetosa (sorrel), Salvia officinalis (sage), Phaseolus coccineus (scarlet runner Beans), raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries in ~200 sq. ft of space, in addition to various annual vegetables and greens.

Being in zone 9, some of these may not work for you (I'm in z7), but there are surely others that would work for you that wouldn't for me. You'll find some scattered resources for free throughout the web, but I highly recommend Perennial Vegetables by Eric Toensmeier. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005JZGYHY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Probably the largest collection of perennial vegetables you will find.

I have this book (well, I used to until I permanently let grandma borrow it) Growing Vegetables in Hawaii by Kathy Oshiro and it's really good for people just starting gardening. It goes over general basics like fertilizing, pest management, and amending soil, and it has specifics for certain common crops grown in Hawaii. There's also recipes for the vegetables covered in this book. There's a table of the vegetables that are covered for what season each should be grown in.



http://www.besspress.com/all-other-products/growing-vegetables-in-hawaii






There's also a fruit book by the same author. I don't have this one, but it's similar in format. I glanced through it recently:


http://www.besspress.com/all-other-products/growing-fruits-in-hawaii






The same publisher has a few other books I'm interested in, but haven't gotten it yet about Hawaiian plants.


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I also have the book Liquid Gold: The Lore and Logic of Using Urine to Grow Plants because I was curious. I don't use my pee in the garden, but I guess if I had to I understand how to do it. It's an OK book, but it's not very in depth. The basic premise is don't store urine, dilute it, and don't use it if you take medication because the chemical build up could be bad for your soil.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0966678311/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_rcdMyb7Y84H6C


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I just ordered Compost Everything: The Good Guide to Extreme Composting because I like author's YouTube videos, so I'm looking forward to seeing what he has to say about the subject. He also has other books on permaculture and food forests.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/9527065569/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_5hdMyb63YHGJS

Vermicompost is compost made using worms. It's worm poo, basically. It's excellent fertilizer for house plants. There's a ton of info online if you're interested, or this is pretty much the standard reference.

If you just put apples and stuff in your plant pots they're just going to rot in there and possibly attract fruit flies and other pests. Indoor plant soil doesn't have enough life in it (worms, sowbugs, etc) to break down stuff like that.

The book Farmers of Forty Centuries describes how the Chinese managed to grow food for their population in an era that predated modern fertilizer.

The short answer is that no one will have a toilet that flushes anymore - all poop and urine will be collected for putting on crop land. And there will be "honey wagons" travelling through the streets of towns and cities hauling crap to the fields.

Recycling "nightsoil" directly will be needed to avoid crashing the population down to what it was in 1900 before the Haber-Bosch process was invented. Basically, the global population will be around 1,500,000,000 -which means that a lot of people will have to drop dead.

Wikipedia summary

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

Disclaimer: I haven't read these books, but the term I see used in this context a lot is "Veganic" gardening or farming so that may help you while searching for things.

Searching that I found this:

The Vegan Book of Permaculture: Recipes for Healthy Eating and Earthright Living https://www.amazon.com/dp/1856232018/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_FmwMBbXAVBB7X

And this:

Growing Green: Animal-Free Organic Techniques https://www.amazon.com/dp/1933392495/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_tmwMBb1XR1G0X

Once again, I haven't read either of these but I might check them out since this is also something I've wanted to do for some time too.

From wikipedia I gather that your warmer and wetter than your winters, as well as more humid... Is that right? You could be living in a completely different micro-climate.
It looks like there is a 12 day permaculture design certificate course being offered in detroit with this guy. You should check it out and see if it catches your intrest. If you don't do the course, that is fine, you don't need to. But I do highly recommend The Earth Care Manual by Patrick Whitefield. Most permaculture instructors I know don't have a degree in biology, ecology, or botany, so I'm impartial about where you get your education in this subject, so long as you understand it. Teaching yourself about permaculture is great if you are low on income or time. Another great book is Sepp Holzer's Permaculture. Watch his videos too.
Also I highly encourage you to volunteer a greenhouse, especially if it is within walking distance. If you volunteer there, I'm sure let you take some starts home so you can start a garden at your place. Greenhouses are great for extending seasons and are crucial for temperate/humid continental climates. Also, from the looks of topographical maps the land seems relatively flat, which means that you don't have to worry too much about south facing/north facing slopes, and you live next to large freshwater lakes.
I think more important than prepping with guns, ammo, and lifetime supply of food, people need to learn how to integrate themselves in natural systems. We evolved with ecosystems, mother nature, has the ability to feed, clothes, and shelter us without charging a single dime. The reason why 'prepper' food tastes so god-awful is to remind people that they should really be getting their food elsewhere, preferably from nature.
My number one recommendation to people who live in cities; get out. If you aren't tied down to a lover, friends, or family, move to the Pacific Northwest. Even if you are, convince them to come with you. We need people who are intelligent enough to understand that our lifestyle is unsustainable. I know you've already gotten a lot of shit for saying that you think a collapse will happen when your in your 50's, so I'm sorry to reiterate this, but collapse is happening now. This is a short concise article.
Nonetheless, if you plan on sticking around the Detroit area, it would be a good idea to have some gold and silver coins on hand as well as a bug-out-bag. They can come in handy in the event of a natural or man-made disaster.

Mel's book is great. However, I think he's very optimistic about spacing. It may be theoretically possible to plant things at those intervals, but a new garden plot needs a few years to develop the biodiversity it needs to achieve peak productivity.

I didn't use much other than Mel's book my first year. I think Teaming With Microbes is essential reading. If you understand soil, you'll understand your plants. Building Soils Naturally is also a good one and it's a little less dry.

I'll also say that Mel's "soil mix" did not work well for me at all. I don't have abundant sources of organic matter available, so I took his suggestion to mix 5 types of store-bought compost. I don't think commercial compost is a sufficient replacement for the homemade stuff. Perhaps if you mix it together with a small amount of homemade compost and let it decay for awhile, it would be better.

That said, plenty of people have success following Mel's book to a T, so your mileage may vary.

Pick up a copy of Worms Eat My Garbage by Mary Appelhof.

http://www.amazon.com/Worms-Eat-Garbage-Mary-Appelhof/dp/0942256107

Make sure you are using the right species of worm. Keep in shade! Make sure your container is well drained. Don't put a truckload of new material in all at once. When trying a new scrap for the first time, add a little at a time to see if it's okay for your worms. Water when dry, drain when wet. When there is too much worm compost in your bin, take half of it out and replace with new breeding. Repeat.

it's John Jeavons, the author of How To Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible :)