Grow a Sustainable Diet: Planning and Growing to Feed Ourselves and the Earth

by Cindy Conner

Overview

MAXIMIZE YOUR HARVEST AND FEED YOUR SOIL
BY DEVELOPING A CUSTOMIZED PLAN FOR YOUR GARDEN

Just the book you have been looking for!—John Jeavons, author of How To Grow More Vegetables—and Fruits, Nuts Berries, Grains and Other Crops Than You Ever Thought Possible On Less Land Than You Can Imagine

A combination of bio-intensive gardening, permaculture planning , and straight forward down home wisdom Grow a Sustainable Diet shows us that good nutrition is a close as our own back yard.—Darrell E. Frey, Three Sisters Farm, author of The Bioshelter Market Garden

It’s not just how you grow – what you grow and where you grow it are at the root of truly sustainable food production. Grow a Sustainable Diet will help you develop a comprehensive, customized garden plan to produce the maximum number of calories, dietary staples and key nutrients from any available space. Learn how to calculate:

• Which food and cover crops are best for your specific requirements
• How many seeds and plants of each variety you should sow
• What and when to plant, harvest and replant for maximum yield.

While many gardening guides will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about individual crops, few tackle the more involved task of helping you maximize the percentage of your diet you grow yourself. Focusing on permaculture principles, biointensive gardening methods, minimum fossil fuel input, and growing crops that sustain both you and your soil, Grow a Sustainable Diet is a must-read for anyone working toward food self-sufficiency for themselves or their family.

Imagine gardening as a process which improves the soil even as we grow our crops, helps balance and enrich the ecology, relies on free services of nature rather than purchased inputs—and is powered with energy from the nearest star. That is the way of gardening Cindy Conner offers in Growing a Sustainable Diet. —Harvey Ussery, author of The Small-Scale Poultry Flock

Cindy Conner is a permaculture educator, founder of Homeplace Earth and the producer of two popular instructional DVDs on sustainable gardening. Her passion lies in helping everyone to work towards growing a complete diet in a small space while minimizing the input of fossil fuels.

To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, Mother Earth News is recommending select New Society Publishers books to its readers. This book is one of them

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780865717565
Publisher:	New Society Publishers
Publication date:	03/04/2014
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	7.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Cindy Conner is a permaculture educator and founder of Homeplace Earth. She is the producer of two popular instructional DVDs entitled Develop a Sustainable Vegetable Garden Plan and Cover Crops and Compost Crops IN Your Garden . A former market gardener, Cindy was instrumental in establishing a sustainable agriculture program at her local community college which she taught for over a decade. Her passion is exploring growing a complete diet in a small space and getting food from garden to the table while minimizing the use of fossil fuels.

Table of Contents

Foreword John Jeavons xiii

First, a little history xv

1 Sustainable Diet 1

What If the Trucks Stop Coming? 4

Making Changes 5

2 Garden Maps 9

Plan Outside the Box 14

Permaculture Plan 18

Tools for Map Making 20

3 Crop Choices 25

Growing Calories 26

Growing Protein 28

Growing Calcium 31

Oils and Sweeteners 31

Other Crops 32

More Planning Tools 33

Worksheet: Temperatures 36

Worksheet: Precipitation 37

4 How Much to Grow 39

Worksheet: How Much to Grow 40

Biosphere 2 42

Homegrown Fridays 43

Oils and Sweeteners 44

Keeping Records 46

5 Cover Crops and Compost-Planning for Sustainability 49

Beware of Bringing in Outside Inputs 50

Grow Your Own Compost 52

Sixty Percent Compost Crops 54

Worksheet: 60/40 Bed Crop Months 57

Cutting Rye at Pollen Shed 58

Harvesting the Grain 59

6 Companion Planting 63

Potatoes 66

Achieving Balance 67

Borders 69

7 Plan for Food When You Want It 73

Frost Dates 74

Worksheet: Plant/Harvest Times 75

Plant/Harvest Times 77

Length of Harvest 78

Determinate and Indeterminate 80

Plant and Harvest Schedule 81

Worksheet: Plant/Harvest Schdeule 82

Plan for Special Events 83

8 Rotations and Sample Garden Maps 85

Transition Garden 88

Quartet of Beds 94

Garden of Ideas 97

9 Seeds 101

Seed Inventory 103

Worksheet: Seed Inventory 104

How Many Seeds? 105

Worksheet: Seeds and Plants Needed 106

Germination Test 108

Save Your Own 109

10 Including Animals 113

Chickens 116

Dairy-Goats and Cows 120

Swine 124

Rabbits 125

11 Food Storage and Preservation 129

Make Use of the Space You Already Have 130

Crawl Space Root Cellar 132

Pantry 134

Cooling Cabinet 136

Fermentation 137

Canning 139

Solar Food Dryers 142

Grain Mills 144

12 Sheds, Fences, and Other Stuff 147

Garden Shed 147

Water Storage 150

Outdoor Washing Station 150

Coldframe 152

Chicken House 153

Trellises 154

Fencing 154

13 Rethink Everything! 159

Endnotes 165

Resources 169

Index 177

About the Author 187

Editorial Reviews

Grow A Sustainable Diet is just the book you have been looking for!
—John Jeavons, author of How To Grow More Vegetables—and Fruits, Nuts Berries, Grains and Other Crops Than You Ever Thought Possible On Less Land Than You Can Imagine

Amid the plethora of how-to garden books, this book stands out as the comprehensive resource written from the lifetime of rich experience of a successful gardener.
Cindy not only gives us experienced guidelines for the management of a healthy organic garden, but clearly explains the practical details of every aspect of managing a successful garden-homestead from planning, tending, harvest and storage to preserving the harvest. If you are seeking one book to to carry you through the full cycle of gardening, seek no further!
—Eli Rogosa . Heritage Grain Conservancy, growseed.org

Grow a Sustainable Diet is both timely and timeless. Cindy Connor’s book is a valuable addition to current locavore lexicon. The practical down home advice she provides will be of use for generations of gardeners to come. Cindy speaks with authority, drawing on her real life experience, her teaching skills and her love of the earth, providing practical guidance to help readers to design the garden and to grow, store and use the fruits of their labor. A combination of bio-intensive gardening, permaculture planning , and straight forward down home wisdom Grow a Sustainable Diet shows us that good nutrition is a close as our own back yard.
—Darrell E. Frey, Three Sisters Farm, author of The Bioshelter Market Garden

Are you looking for ways to better nourish your family, care for your garden, and walk more lightly on the planet? Come spend a day, a season or the cycle of seasons with one of the nation’s leaders in ecological home food production in the pages of Grow a Sustainable Diet. Ms. Conner’s practical innovations will guide your homesteading endeavors, and her commitment to living in harmony with all life will inspire you.
— Mark Schonbeck, consultant in sustainable agriculture

Too many of us see gardening as an analog in miniature to Big Ag—an essentially extractive process powered by machines and fossil fuel, requiring purchased inputs to replace depleted soil fertility and protect crops from insects. Imagine gardening instead as a process which improves the soil even as we grow our crops, helps balance and enrich the ecology, relies on free services of nature rather than purchased inputs—and is powered with energy from the nearest star. That is the way of gardening Cindy Conner offers in Growing a Sustainable Diet. ~
—Harvey Ussery, author of The Small-Scale Poultry Flock

From the Publisher