fast grow the weeds

I love libraries! And our libraries here in the boonies plainly suck, so I love Interlibrary Loan! That said, some books just need to be possessed.
Managing your greenery:

• Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening, Managing Vegetables and Fruits with the Organic Method: Rodale. Frankly, any addition of these hefty tomes are helpful. The older additions (1960s) are actually just as relevant.
• The Rodale Book of Composting: Rodale. Enough said.
• The Garden Primer: Barbara Damrosch. This is a great book about everything.
• Seed to Seed: Suzanne Ashworth. How to save your seed. Definitive. Good on how to grow the darned things, too.
• The Well-Tended Perennial Garden: I can’t say I strive to do what she suggests, and often feel highly guilty about it.

Managing your harvest:

• Root Cellaring: Mike and Nancy Bubel. The simplest way to preserve the harvest.
• Stocking Up: Carol Hupping. It’s easy.
• Putting Food By: Janet Greene. This book is the best book to learn that Microbes Are Bad. However, it really tells you how to do something, like canning.
• Nourishing Traditions: Sally Fallon. This is the best book to learn that Microbes Are Good. She could really use an editor (when was the last time you called someone of Asian descent an Oriental?) but historically, this is important information.
• Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning: Let’s just say these folks think Microbes Are Good, too.
• The Ball Blue Book of Preserving is a great and inexpensive first book of canning.  It does a wonderful job explaining the different methods, and should be available anywhere you find canning equipment.
• The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving is a treasure trove of beyond-just-pickles recipes for canning.  It is also written in a you-can-do-it style.
• Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone: Deborah Madison. I worship this woman. Any of her cookbooks are great, but this one is positively dog-eared in our house. Don’t let the “V” word scare you.
• Chez Panisse Vegetables, Chez Panisse Fruits, and The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters. To say this woman has high standards is an understatement, HOWEVER, food is highly important, so you, too, should expect more of what you eat.

Managing your life (okay, I exaggerate):

• Anything by M.F.K. Fisher. Eating is an art.
• Anything by Wendell Berry. He is our agrarian poet laureate.
• Most things by Gene Logsdon. He tends to repeat himself, but he is great for finding the easiest way to do something.
• This Organic Life: Joan Dye Gussow. I’m a sucker for a gardening story, and this is her tale of two gardens, two houses and two lives.
• Second Nature: Michael Pollan. Likewise, another gardening story, and how obsessive we become when we become gardeners.
• Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden: Eleanor Perenyi. I wish I had an eighth her style, a sixteenth her talent for writing, and a thirty-second of her money.