Gaia's Garden, Second Edition: A Guide to Home-Scale PermacultureReclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture Author: Toby Hemenway | Language: English | ISBN:
B005GLMASS | Format: PDF
Gaia's Garden, Second Edition: A Guide to Home-Scale PermacultureReclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture Description
The first edition of Gaia’s Garden sparked the imagination of America’s home gardeners, introducing permaculture’s central message: Working with Nature, not against her, results in more beautiful, abundant, and forgiving gardens. This extensively revised and expanded second edition broadens the reach and depth of the permaculture approach for urban and suburban growers.
Many people mistakenly think that ecological gardening—which involves growing a wide range of edible and other useful plants—can take place only on a large, multiacre scale. As Hemenway demonstrates, it’s fun and easy to create a “backyard ecosystem” by assembling communities of plants that can work cooperatively and perform a variety of functions, including:
•Building and maintaining soil fertility and structure
•Catching and conserving water in the landscape
•Providing habitat for beneficial insects, birds, and animals
•Growing an edible “forest” that yields seasonal fruits, nuts, and other foods
This revised and updated edition also features a new chapter on urban permaculture, designed especially for people in cities and suburbs who have very limited growing space. Whatever size yard or garden you have to work with, you can apply basic permaculture principles to make it more diverse, more natural, more productive, and more beautiful. Best of all, once it’s established, an ecological garden will reduce or eliminate most of the backbreaking work that’s needed to maintain the typical lawn and garden.
- File Size: 15636 KB
- Print Length: 328 pages
- Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing; 2nd edition (August 9, 2011)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B005GLMASS
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #24,371 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #5
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Horticulture > Techniques > Organic - #34
in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Landscape Design > By Technique > Organic - #77
in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Sustainable Living
- #5
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Horticulture > Techniques > Organic - #34
in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Landscape Design > By Technique > Organic - #77
in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Sustainable Living
I have to agree with other reveiwers that this is a readble, approachable book. It has excellent charts, graphs and visuals, and covers the concepts of permaculture in much less space then Bill Mollison's permaculture guide, which is currently running over a hundred dollars, so for these purposes, this is a decent book.
That said, I decided to try his advice out in my own garden, and here is what I am experiencing thus far. For background, I am an experienced gardener of 25+years, who has spent the last ten or so years transitioning over to the organic and sustainable approach.
Last year my 80x30 garden and two hoop houses were entirely planted in rows - monoculture. Upon reading Toby's advice, I have planted all of them this year with broader raised beds, with "key hole" type paths to reduce the traffic and compaction areas. The improvement has been from 50% to now being at least 70% plantable space. Very good.
I also did the multiple layer mulching that he details, and followed his instructions very closely. Here is were the garden encountered some very real problems. Toby suggested that the mix of seeds be directly sown - scattered more like - into this top layer of mulch. What I am discovering is that the germination and survival rate for the seedlings is abyssmal due to the high acidity of the mulch. What I found is that if I start the seedlings separately, and then plant them deeply enough to enjoy the compost layer, the plants do well. If however, they were direct sown seeds that have not penetrated through the mulch layer, they are struggling for nutrients, remaining stunted with pale color.
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