September is National Organic Harvest Month dedicated to promoting local organic growing and celebrating the bounty of organic food. In support of organic gardeners and the important goal of food independence for our Garden Island, this week’s Book Buzz offers
September is National Organic Harvest Month dedicated to promoting local organic growing and celebrating the bounty of organic food. In support of organic gardeners and the important goal of food independence for our Garden Island, this week’s Book Buzz offers a taste of the luscious selection of gardening and farming resources available at your local library. So hurry on over to your neighborhood library to read about growing our own organic food or supporting the Kaua‘i folks that do it for us.
Happy reading.
All-in-One Garden: Grow Vegetables, Fruit, Herbs and Flowers in the Same Space
By Graham Rice
612.042 Kr
Shows that it is possible to grow food plants alongside your flowers while still enhancing the beauty of your garden. Inspirational ideas for how to plant a garden that provides a year-round feast both for the eyes and for the table.
Animal Vegetable Miracle:
A Year of Food Life
By Barbara Kingsolver
641.0973 Ki
Novelist Kingsolver recounts a year spent with her husband and two daughters eating home-grown or local food. The narrative is peppered with useful sidebars on industrial agriculture and ecology (by husband Steven Hopp) and recipes (by daughter Camille), as if to show that local food-in the growing, buying, cooking, eating and the telling-demands teamwork. Her tale is classy and disarming, substantive and entertaining, earnest and funny.
The Complete Compost Gardening Guide
By Barbara Pleasant
631.875 Pl
This how-to, why-to manual about composting covers the basics. The authors present their system of keeping compost heaps right in the garden where the compost and the plants live together from the beginning in a nourishing, organic environment. All you need to know to manage a composting system that saves you from excessive physical labor.
Drip Irrigation For Every Landscape and All Climates
By Robert Kourik
650.14085 Co
This revised classic clearly explains how to use less water yet increase the yields of vegetables and promote the growth and flowering of all plants-trees, shrubs, and container plants-in any climate, even where it rains irregularly. Learn why drip irrigation is water-saving, how to streamline your configuration of hardware and tubing, choose the best hardware, timesaving tips for installation, how to capture and reuse gray water and cistern water and how to manage limited water supplies with precision and efficiency.
The Edible Asian Garden
By Rosalind Creasy
635 Cr
From the doyenne of edible landscaping comes a guide to growing Asian herbs and vegetables in your backyard. It includes common Asian ingredients and cooking methods. For other local food plants try Exotic Foods: A Kitchen and Garden Guide by Marian Van Atta or the classic Growing Vegetables in Hawaii by Kathy Oshiro.
Fresh Food from Small Spaces
By Chelsea Green
155.232 Bo
This guide fills a gap in gardening literature: for a holistic highly productive urban home food system, full of new and proven sustainable ways to grow and process your favorite foods using every square inch of useable space. The author walks gardeners through assessing their available space and its lighting, deciding what to grow in the spaces they have, and buying (or building) vegetable garden containers. The book is both an intelligent reference and a great story.
See also Incredible Vegetables from Self-Watering Containers by Edward C. Smith.
Gardens: An Essay on the Human condition
By Robert Pogue Harrison
712 Ha
A fascinating examination of the human quest for happiness through centuries of gardens and gardeners, real and fictitious. Drawing from religious, literary and scholarly sources, Harrison observes that gardens have provided food, education, creative expression and sanctuary throughout time, yet are “by nature impermanent creations that only rarely leave behind evidence of their existence. Neither consumption nor productivity fulfills. Only caretaking does.” Elsewhere in garden philosophy try Plant Seed, Pull Weed: Nurturing the Garden of Your Life by Geri Larkin, a light and accessible but no less profound, tour down the garden path. Funny, touching, enlightening stories, wise insights and even recipes from the garden. She writes about the healing power of nature, how gardening can calm your nerves, heal your sorrows and inspire the best in you.
IPM for Gardeners: A Guide to Integrated Pest Management
By Raymond A. Cloyd
632.9 Cl
For amateur and professional gardeners. The first step is to observe plants regularly, and if there is trouble, the least toxic cure is tried first. No potentially hazardous chemical is ever used as a preventative, and no action is taken before there is a true problem. Knowledge is the number one weapon in the gardener’s IPM arsenal.
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
By Michael Pollan
394.12 Po
In this clearheaded book Pollan examines “our national eating disorder” by tracing four meals back to their…species. All food, he points out, originates with plants, animals and fungi. It’s a fascinating journey up and down the food chain and besides Stephen King, few other writers have made a corn field seem so sinister. In his subsequent book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto Pollan makes a strong argument for serious reconsideration of our eating habits and casts a suspicious eye on the food industry and its more pernicious and misleading practices. Also try Jane Goodall’s Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating.
The One Straw
Revolution
By Masanobu Fukuoka
631.58 Fu
Manifesto about farming, eating, and the limits of human knowledge presents a radical challenge to the global systems we rely on for our food. It is also a spiritual memoir of a man whose innovative system of cultivating the earth reflects a deep faith in the wholeness and balance of the natural world. The book is valuable because it is at once practical and philosophical.
Sharing the Harvest: A Citizen’s Guide to Community Supported Agriculture
By Elizabeth Henderson
658.302 Be
This updated classic about community supported agriculture (CSA) is for interested growers and consumers alike, and for new CSA farmers—it is essentially the CSA ‘bible’. Each chapter is a mix of both the highly practical and the more philosophical, in sections that explore the connections between biodiversity and social diversity. Each chapter, illustrated with small black-and-white photos and graphs, closes with source notes, and a lengthy resource section. Those interested in starting a new CSA will find useful ideas, but this is intended more as a comprehensive survey of the subject for all readers who are concerned about the food industry and the future of agriculture.
Sell Your Specialty Food
Market, Distribute, and Profit from Your Kitchen Creation
By Stephen F. Hall
664.00688 Ha
Artisanal, organic, fair trade, natural, handmade, your homemade garden product has it all. The specialty foods industry is a growing concern. This book tells exactly how aspiring gardeners and cooks can turn an original product into a money-maker. Identify a winning product and its most appropriate markets, get your product ready to market, advertise, promote, and sell your product and create your own success niche. Includes up-to-date information about the role of the Internet, health and food markets and government regulations.
Tropical Fruit
By Desmond Tate
634.6 Ta
Gorgeous color drawings and informative text help the uninitiated identify tropical fruits. Some fruits, such as the bilimbi and snakefruit, may be novel to readers, but hey, we already know plenty about bananas, avocados, and mangoes. Each listing has a recipe to encourage using the fruit and to persuade eaters to try the exotic products. For a broad survey of all aspects of tropical fruit production and usage try the well-used Tropical Fruits by H.Y. Nakasone and R E. Paull from the Crop Production Science in Horticulture Series. It covers climate, soils, and each type of fruit: botany, origin, distribution, ecology, genetics, and cultivars, culturing practices, pests and diseases, harvest, and postharvest handling and utilization.
Vegetable Gardening
From Planting to Picking, The Complete Guide to Creating a Bountiful Garden
By Jane Courtier
635 Co
Delicious, nutritious fresh vegetables are as close as your back yard, whether you have a small plot or several acres of land. Covers everything you need to know to sow, reap, and savor over 80 varieties, from summer salad greens to winter squash. Learn how to select and cultivate the best crops for your space, climate and taste. Design, prepare the site and soil and start up seedlings, feed and water plants and what to do about pests, weeds and diseases. The Gaia Book of Organic Gardening by Charlie Ryrie is a primer on the principles and practices of growing food naturally.
Barnyard in your Backyard: A Beginner’s Guide to Raising Chickens, Ducks, Geese, Rabbits, Goats, Sheep, and Cattle
Edited by Gail Damerow
636 Ba
If you wanna go whole hog with the eating what you grow life style check out this everything-you-need-to-know guide to animal husbandry for first-time farmers. Simple instructions on how to keep livestock healthy and happy. See also Living with Pigs: Everything You Need to Know to Raise Your Own Porkers by Chuck Wooster.
• Carolyn Larson, head librarian at Lihu‘e Public Library, brings you the buzz on new, popular and good books available at your neighborhood library. Book annotations are culled from online publishers’ descriptions and published reviews.
