CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction
xi xiii
1. Honoring the Land
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Gardening in Nature’s Image—But Which Nature and Which Image? | Has Nature Thought of Everything? | On Being a Member of a Keystone Species. | Organic and Beyond.
2. Honoring the Essential Nature of the Plants
11
Sun, Earth, Air, Water, Warmth. | What Can We Grow? | Expected First and Last Frost Dates. | Sun and Shade Tolerance. | Some Like It Hot; Some Like It Cold. | When to Plant Everything. | Planting Guide.
3. Honoring Your Own Essential Nature
21
Discovering Your Inner Gardener. | Planning Versus Spontaneity. | Structure, Labor, and Freedom.
4. Flexibility
27
Choosing Gardening Styles and Methods. | Getting the Most from the Small Garden. | Volunteers. | How to Eat a Weed— Dandelions, Lambsquarters, Purslane. | The Prepper’s Garden.
5. Balance
43
Grand Versus Prosaic. | How Much Garden? | Limiting Factors. | Too Much Tilling. | Too Much Watering. | Too Much Fertilizer. | Too Many Pests. | Knowing When to Stop.
6. Non-Doing
59
Daring to Not Do. | On Not Tilling, Digging, Mowing, or Tending Absolutely Everything. | Twenty-Four Good Places Not to Plant a Tree. | Seven Reasons Not to Chop Down a Tree. | Thirty-Seven Reasons for Not Planting Various Vegetables. | On Not Planting Purple Flowers in Front of an Orange Brick House. | Flower-Patterned Shirts Attract Bees. | A Weed by Any Other Name Is Usually Still a Weed.
7. Beginning—Tomatoes
71
Begin with Something You Really Love. | Tomato Kinds and Colors. | Flavor Favorites. | Thirty Interesting Open-Pollinated Tomato Varieties. | Starting Tomatoes from Seed—Growing Transplants. | Potting Soil for Germinating Seeds and Starting Transplants. | Preparing the Ground. | Hardening Off and Planting Transplants. | Do Carrots Really Love Tomatoes?—Garden Woman Adventures. | Polycultures. | Supporting and Nurturing. | Watering and Mulching. | Why It Will Soon Be Impossible to Grow Our Current Generation of Heirloom Tomatoes and What to Do About It—Late Blight 101. | Dealing with Late Blight. | Late Blight Resistant Hybrid Tomato Varieties. | Late Blight Resistant Heirloom and Open-Pollinated Varieties. | Why the Best-Flavored Tomato May Not Be the One That Is Picked Vine-Ripe. | Using Green Tomatoes.
8. Nurturing—Weeding
111
Avoid, Delay, Remove. | Garden Woman Meets Pigweed with Attitude. | The American Square Hoe. | Buying, Using, and Sharpening the Peasant Hoe. | Buying, Using, and Sharpening the Coleman Hoe. | Stirrup Hoes. | Wheel Hoes. | Electric Wheel Hoe and Electric Tiller.
9. Non-Knowing—Squash
127
Adventures in Ignorance. | The Perfect Polyculture—Squash and Overwintering Kale. | ‘Candystick Dessert Delicata’ Squash. | ‘Lofthouse Landrace Moschata’ Squash. | Apologizing to a Squash. | Butternut Squash Cookery. | Planting by the Moon. | Talking to Your Plants. | True Understanding.
10. Effortless Effort—The Eat-All Greens Garden
151
The No-Labor Garden—Just Sow and Harvest. | The Nutritionally Most Important Home Garden Crop. | Leaves Versus Heads or Stems. | The Essential Role of Cooking. | Using Greens in Soups and Stews. | The Mess o’ Greens. | Harvesting and Handling Eat-All Greens. | Freezing Eat-All Greens. | Dried Greens and Herbal Teas. | Lactofermenting Greens. | Growing Eat-All Greens. | Eleven Great Eat-All Greens Varieties.
11. Peas and Beans
181
Nitrogen Fixing and Legumes. | Dry Seeds Versus Edible Pods Versus Green Seeds. | Pea Vine Types and Support. | Shelling Peas. | Edible-Podded Peas. | Growing Peas. | Presoaking Legume Seed Without Suffocating It. | Keep Peas and Beans Picked. | Harvesting and Using Edible-Podded Peas. | Kinds of Bean Varieties—Green, Dry, Shelly. | Pole Versus Bush Green Beans. | Seed Color and Green Bean Flavor. | Supporting Pole Beans. | Growing Beans. | Growing Pole Beans on Corn. | Harvesting and Using Green Beans.
12. Joy
201 Jumping for Joy. | On Carrying Vegetables. | Weeding Meditation. | Noticing. | Simple Pleasures. | Sunset.
13. Completion—Seeds
209
Cycles and Circles. | The Do-It-Yourself Seed Bank. | You Will Not Fall Off the Edge of the Earth If You Don’t Save All Your Own Seed. | Preparing Seed for Long-Term Storage. | Containers for Storing Seed. | Eight Seed-Saving Myths. | Creating Your Own Modern Landraces. | Rejuvenating Heirloom Varieties. | Breeding Crops for Organic Systems. | Dehybridizing Hybrids—DiseaseResistant Tomatoes. | Tomato Genes and Genetics. | Breeding the Heirloom Tomatoes of Tomorrow.
Appendix. Seed Companies and Sources
245
Index
249
I like to pick tomatoes into monolayers in cardboard trays to prevent their bruising in transporting and storing. These ‘Stupice’ tomatoes are very early and have great flavor.
A nice batch of ‘Black Krim’ tomatoes with one red tomato, a ‘Cosmonaut Volkov’, in the upper right for color comparison.
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Garden Woman Meets Pigweed with Attitude Garden Woman: “Tra la la la la. A pole bean picking I will go . . . Yipe! What are you doing here!?!” A giant pigweed has sprawled over the whole area. Garden Woman cannot even get to her beans. Giant Pigweed: “Ha ha ha! Puny human! You ignored me when I was little. Now my stalks are half an inch across and solid wood at the base. You’ll never get me out of here now! You can kiss your beans good-bye!”
Garden Woman: “Humph! We’ll see about that!” She reaches for her secret weapon, her heavy-duty peasant hoe.
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