This past Christmas I was lucky enough to finally get into some long overdue garden-related reading, it is winter after all. My dear friend Bethany gave me
From the Ground Up: A Food Grower's Education in Life, Love, and the Movement That's Changing the Nation eons ago and I finally got around to reading it
. I really enjoyed how this book flowed, it was mainly about how the author's disillusionment with modern life lead her to living and working on an organic farming commune. After seventeen years, she returned to the modern life she shunned, where she helped foster the urban farming movement in suburban Chicago. I found its equal parts autobiography and urban farming activism enjoyable and just what I needed to get a new garden started in our new home.
As reading
From the Ground Up reignited my passion for gardening and starting some semblance of a garden in our new home, my husband declared that if I'm going to start gardening again, we have to start composting again. Well then, challenge accepted. I dusted off
Let it Rot: The Gardener's Guide to Composting. Oof, guys, composting is not a fun read. I don't blame the author, this book is informative, but one can only make reading about dirt so fun. My only frustration with this book is it details more composting solutions (i.e., trench, tumbler, California method, etc...) than anything else. It does cover compost troubleshooting, which I'm sure I'll find more useful. But as someone who has a compost tumbler, there was one whole page dedicated to tumblers.
Lastly, after it being mentioned several times in
From the Ground Up, I treated myself to a copy of
Rodale's Organic Gardening. I haven't read it page-by-page yet, but I'm hoping to finish it by summer and expand my gardening knowledge base. A good chunk of the book is also dedicated to specific vegetables, which I have to approach with a grain of salt. What might work in West Virginia will not work in Colorado.
This past Christmas I was lucky enough to finally get into some long overdue garden-related reading, it is winter after all. My dear friend Bethany gave me From the Ground Up: A Food Grower's Education in Life, Love, and the Movement That's Changing the Nation eons ago and I finally got around to reading it. I really enjoyed how this book flowed, it was mainly about how the author's disillusionment with modern life lead her to living and working on an organic farming commune. After seventeen years, she returned to the modern life she shunned, where she helped foster the urban farming movement in suburban Chicago. I found its equal parts autobiography and urban farming activism enjoyable and just what I needed to get a new garden started in our new home.
As reading From the Ground Up reignited my passion for gardening and starting some semblance of a garden in our new home, my husband declared that if I'm going to start gardening again, we have to start composting again. Well then, challenge accepted. I dusted off Let it Rot: The Gardener's Guide to Composting. Oof, guys, composting is not a fun read. I don't blame the author, this book is informative, but one can only make reading about dirt so fun. My only frustration with this book is it details more composting solutions (i.e., trench, tumbler, California method, etc...) than anything else. It does cover compost troubleshooting, which I'm sure I'll find more useful. But as someone who has a compost tumbler, there was one whole page dedicated to tumblers.
Lastly, after it being mentioned several times in From the Ground Up, I treated myself to a copy of Rodale's Organic Gardening. I haven't read it page-by-page yet, but I'm hoping to finish it by summer and expand my gardening knowledge base. A good chunk of the book is also dedicated to specific vegetables, which I have to approach with a grain of salt. What might work in West Virginia will not work in Colorado. 
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