Book
Will Bonsall's essential guide to radical, self-reliant gardening : innovative techniques for growing vegetables, grains, and perennial food crops with minimal fossil fuel and animal inputs / Will Bonsall.
Record details
- ISBN: 1603584420 (pbk.)
- ISBN: 9781603584425 (pbk.)
- Physical Description: 385 pages : illustrations (chiefly colour)
- Publisher: White River Junction, Vermont : Chelsea Green Publishing, [2015]
- Copyright: ©2015
Content descriptions
| Bibliography, etc. Note: | Includes bibliographical references, Internet addresses and index. |
| Immediate Source of Acquisition Note: | LSC 48.95 |
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | Gardening. Sustainable agriculture. Self-reliant living. |
Available copies
- 1 of 1 copy available at Tsuga Consortium.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cookstown Branch | 635 Bon | 31681002849057 | NONFICPBK | Available | - |
- Baker & Taylor
Provides readers with an in-depth guide to sustainable farming from planting to processing, offering information processing, threshing, and composting. - Book News
Maine-based gardener Bonsall shares the insights he has developed over the years, the first being that a garden is not an entity in itself, but is an organ in the larger biosphere, constantly interacting with everything that is not garden. He is particularly well known for growing grains on a garden scale, for fertilizing organically without animal manure, and for saving seeds. Here he covers soil fertility, the seed, the crops, the garden in context, and using the harvest. Annotation ©2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com) - Chelsea Green Publishing
"If you wish to live well and eat well no matter what is going on in the rest of the world, this book is for you. . . . Will Bonsall will help you enjoy the good life under any and all conditions."âEliot Coleman, author of The New Organic Grower
"Society does not generally expect its farmers to be visionaries." Perhaps not, but longtime Maine farmer and homesteader Will Bonsall does possess a unique clarity of vision that extends all the way from the finer points of soil fertility and seed saving to exploring how we can transform civilization and make our world a better, more resilient place.
In Will Bonsall's Essential Guide to Radical, Self-Reliant Gardening, Bonsall maintains that to achieve real wealth we first need to understand the economy of the land, to realize that things that might make sense economically don't always make sense ecologically, and vice versa. The marketplace distorts our values, and our modern dependence on petroleum in particular presents a serious barrier to creating a truly sustainable agriculture.
For him the solution is, first and foremost, greater self-reliance, especially in the areas of food and energy. By avoiding any off-farm inputs (fertilizers, minerals, and animal manures), Bonsall has learned how to practice a purely veganic, or plant-based, agricultureânot from a strictly moralistic or philosophical perspective, but because it makes good business sense: spend less instead of making more.
What this means in practical terms is that Bonsall draws upon the fertility of on-farm plant materials: compost, green manures, perennial grasses, and forest products like leaves and ramial wood chips. And he grows and harvests a diversity of crops from both cultivated and perennial plants: vegetables, grains, pulses, oilseeds, fruits and nutsâeven uncommon but useful permaculture plants like groundnut (Apios).
Inside Will Bonsall's Essential Guide to Radical, Self-Reliant Gardening you'll also find:
- Milling, baking and sprouting
- Freezing and vermentation
- Best practices to handle plant disease and animal pests
- Collecting and storing seeds
- And so much more!
In a friendly, almost conversational way, Bonsall imparts a wealth of knowledge drawn from his more than forty years of farming experience.
"My goal," he writes, "is not to feed the world, but to feed myself and let others feed themselves. If we all did that, it might be a good beginning."
- Random House, Inc.
âIf you wish to live well and eat well no matter what is going on in the rest of the world, this book is for you. . . . Will Bonsall will help you enjoy the good life under any and all conditions.ââEliot Coleman, author of The New Organic Grower
âSociety does not generally expect its farmers to be visionaries.â Perhaps not, but longtime Maine farmer and homesteader Will Bonsall does possess a unique clarity of vision that extends all the way from the finer points of soil fertility and seed saving to exploring how we can transform civilization and make our world a better, more resilient place.
In Will Bonsallâs Essential Guide to Radical, Self-Reliant Gardening, Bonsall maintains that to achieve real wealth we first need to understand the economy of the land, to realize that things that might make sense economically donât always make sense ecologically, and vice versa. The marketplace distorts our values, and our modern dependence on petroleum in particular presents a serious barrier to creating a truly sustainable agriculture.
For him the solution is, first and foremost, greater self-reliance, especially in the areas of food and energy. By avoiding any off-farm inputs (fertilizers, minerals, and animal manures), Bonsall has learned how to practice a purely veganic, or plant-based, agricultureânot from a strictly moralistic or philosophical perspective, but because it makes good business sense: spend less instead of making more.
What this means in practical terms is that Bonsall draws upon the fertility of on-farm plant materials: compost, green manures, perennial grasses, and forest products like leaves and ramial wood chips. And he grows and harvests a diversity of crops from both cultivated and perennial plants: vegetables, grains, pulses, oilseeds, fruits and nutsâeven uncommon but useful permaculture plants like groundnut (Apios).
Inside Will Bonsallâs Essential Guide to Radical, Self-Reliant Gardening youâll also find:- Milling, baking and sprouting
- Freezing and vermentation
- Best practices to handle plant disease and animal pests
- Collecting and storing seeds
- And so much more!
In a friendly, almost conversational way, Bonsall imparts a wealth of knowledge drawn from his more than forty years of farming experience.
âMy goal,â he writes, âis not to feed the world, but to feed myself and let others feed themselves. If we all did that, it might be a good beginning.â
