Here are 100 books that Practical Self-Sufficiency fans have personally recommended if you like
Practical Self-Sufficiency.
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Aged six, I was first given a tiny piece of garden where I grew radishes and lettuces. I haven’t stopped growing my own food since! Everything about it is good for you and I have been writing about this for many years in various magazines and books. I have always been fascinated with the idea of self-sufficiency and love to read about methods old and new.
This is the classic book on self-sufficiency that started my interest when I first read it decades ago. John Seymour was the master and teacher and the book is crammed with practical methods with many useful illustrations. Many people I know who are fascinated with the idea of self-sufficiency, and successful practitioners, were initially inspired by this book.
Embrace off-grid green living with this all-encompassing guide to self-sufficiency, your new go-to guide for a more sustainable way of life.
For over 40 years, John Seymour has inspired and motivated thousands of people to make more eco-friendly choices to enrich their lives and live sustainably. Now, his bestselling self-sufficiency book offers step-by-step instructions on all things environment-friendly, from preserving your harvest to living off land, this survival guide has it all. So what are you waiting for?
Dive straight in to discover:
-Detailed step-by-step guide for achieving a self-sufficient lifestyle tailored to your needs and environment -Encyclopaedic knowledge on…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
Aged six, I was first given a tiny piece of garden where I grew radishes and lettuces. I haven’t stopped growing my own food since! Everything about it is good for you and I have been writing about this for many years in various magazines and books. I have always been fascinated with the idea of self-sufficiency and love to read about methods old and new.
The photography in this book is so gorgeous you can just imagine yourself on a sunny smallholding or homestead, tending your crops and looking after your livestock. The instructions are clear and concise from someone who lives the good life. It certainly encouraged me to have a go at various aspects of self-sufficiency that other books didn’t. A great book to dream over while you plan your future.
There is a part in every one of us that wants to be a home farmer: a part that yearns to get back to the earth and to revel in the healthy experiences of growing rearing and making. In Home Farm well-known journalist TV and radio presenter and part-time farmer Paul Heiney shows you how to turn that dream into a reality beginning from the premise that anyone can bring an element of home farming however small into their life. Country Living for All Paul Heiney addresses the needs of both country livers and country dreamers including advice for those…
Aged six, I was first given a tiny piece of garden where I grew radishes and lettuces. I haven’t stopped growing my own food since! Everything about it is good for you and I have been writing about this for many years in various magazines and books. I have always been fascinated with the idea of self-sufficiency and love to read about methods old and new.
This is a true story of Chas Griffin’s attempts at living a self-sufficient life on a new smallholding in Wales. Not only is it hilarious but describes all the ups and downs and unexpected disasters yet remains warm and inviting. Rather than just an instruction book, this will show you what it’s really like and possibly give you second thoughts! This was Chas’s first book and so good I went on the read his subsequent titles.
In 1982 the Griffins left the security of suburbia to grow garlic in West Wales. From the struggle with rurality that ensued grew (organically) the very amusing, and informative, warts-and-all account Scenes From a Smallholding .
Now in this sometimes touching, but always funny sequel, Chas reveals what happened four years after their arrival - when the dream had been well and truly dreamt and they were experiencing some rather rude awakenings. Did they ever achieve the blissful good life? Are they surrounded by organic veg? How have the family coped with their new rural life?
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Aged six, I was first given a tiny piece of garden where I grew radishes and lettuces. I haven’t stopped growing my own food since! Everything about it is good for you and I have been writing about this for many years in various magazines and books. I have always been fascinated with the idea of self-sufficiency and love to read about methods old and new.
I have read this book several times it is so packed with ideas and inspiration. The author travels to a variety of communities, some small, some larger, and investigates how the people are tackling their ambition for self-sufficiency in numerous different ways. If you’re thinking of an alternative off-grid life of self-sufficiency then you will learn just as many ways that may not suit you as those that do. A great education into the realities of this sort of life.
Off-grid: a place, building or person without mains water or power. Static or mobile - in a house or a hut, a boat or a camper van - to live off-grid is all about loosending the ties that bind us to teh fmailiar world of commuting, mortgages, no time and fast food, in order to rediscover our place in the natural world. Complete with camper van, Nick sets off around the UK to find off-grid heaven and meet people who are living the dream. Along the way he runs into backpackers and businessmen, radical hermits and right-wing survivalists - and…
If I'm honest, I became a gardener because I like getting dirty. Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Tom Kitten is the story of my childhood (and my adulthood too, only now I don't have to pretend I'm going to stay clean). Of course, high-quality soil leads to high-quality produce, and I deeply adore the flavors of strawberries growing in deep, dark soil. Biting into a juicy, homegrown tomato still warm from the summer sun is bliss.
First, let me explain where I'm coming from – my husband and I spent over a decade growing nearly all of our own vegetables and a considerable portion of our other sustenance on our homestead. So even though our current smaller plot only feeds us a side dish or three per day, I tend to think of gardening as something that should be good for our wallets as well as our bellies and the earth. Gardening When It Counts is all that and is 100% based on the author's personal experience growing most of his own food. Highly recommended.
The decline of cheap oil is inspiring increasing numbers of North Americans to achieve some measure of backyard food self-sufficiency. In hard times, the family can be greatly helped by growing a highly productive food garden, requiring little cash outlay or watering. Currently popular intensive vegetable gardening methods are largely inappropriate to this new circumstance. Crowded raised beds require high inputs of water, fertility and organic matter, and demand large amounts of human time and effort. But, except for labor, these inputs depend on the price of oil. Prior to the 1970s, North American home food growing used more land…
Hiking in the flower-covered hillsides of Central California as a nature-loving kid, I couldn’t help but wonder about my companions. One of my first purchases (with babysitting money!) was a wildflower guide. I’ve moved around the country many times and every time I’ve had to start over, make new plant acquaintances and discoveries—always an orienting process. Of course, I’ve also studied plants formally, in college and in my career, and (honestly, best of all) via mentors and independent study. All this has shown me that flowers are more than just beautiful! They’re amazingly diverse, and full of fascinating behaviors and quirks. In fact, they are essential parts of the complex habitats we share.
Most books about plant biology—trust me, I know, I have many!—are thick and complicated, decidedly not easy reading. This book, on the other hand, is a slim and accessible paperback. The author, a horticulture professor, has a wonderful and welcome knack for explaining things like how far roots spread, plant-cell biology, powerful and eccentric plant hormones, why and how sunflowers follow the sun, even when to prune your trees and shrubs. She’s smart, up-to-date, and entertaining.
Why do slugs prefer your lettuces to eating weeds which are just as tasty? Why do container plants wilt even though they have plenty of water? Linda Chalker-Scott tackles these and other questions gardeners ask and explains the plant physiology that is behind these everyday gardening challenges.
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
William Alexander’s best-selling gardening memoir, The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for a Perfect Garden has been praised for its fresh, humorous, and honest take on home gardening. The books he’s selected similarly break the mould for garden books, featuring rabid rose gardeners, an obsessive breeder, and a Czech playwright.
Gardening, whether in a backyard or a hundred-acre orchard, is an audacious attempt to improve on nature, and Smith’s fascinating hybrid of biography, history, and botany brings to life the most audacious of them all. The only biography on my list, I’ve included it because, in an age where we might be forgiven for thinking it takes millions of corporate dollars and genetic engineers to produce a new plant, The Garden of Invention reminds us how one man’s singular determination, patience, and brilliance can change the world. And produce the perfect potato for McDonald’s French fries.
The wide-ranging and delightful history of celebrated plant breeder Luther Burbank and the business of farm and garden in early twentieth- century America
At no other time in history has there been more curiosity or concern about the food we eat-and genetically modified foods, in particular, have become both pervasive and suspect. A century ago, however, Luther Burbank's blight-resistant potatoes, white blackberries, and plumcots-a plum-apricot hybrid-were celebrated as triumphs in the best tradition of American ingenuity and perseverance. In his experimental grounds in Santa Rosa, California, Burbank bred and cross-bred edible and ornamental plants-for both home gardens and commercial farms-until…
Although I am no gardening expert, I’ve always been intrigued by seeds. It amazes me that such tiny things hold so much: colour, scent, flavour, food, and the community that grows in the tending and sharing of it. Every winter since I published What Grew in Larry’s Garden,the real Larry sends me an envelope filled with tomato seeds and reminds me to give some to my neighbours. It makes me smile to think that my story has become its own kind of seed, growing friendship, and connecting people. I hope the book does that for you too.
This book is colourful, joyful, and deliciously diverse. The simple rhyme is rollicking but not too sweet, the illustrations are bright and playful, with plenty of fun detail. I love the mixture of people (all ages and colours and abilities) at work in the community garden, and how there is room for different ways of doing things (some plots are neat and proper while others are messy and wild). Best of all is how the story ends with everyone sitting down together to enjoy a garden-grown feast. Community, humour, hospitality, gratitude, and care for the earth—this little story is a cornucopia of good things.
From the author of the Caldecott Honor-winning picture book All the World comes an exuberant, lyrical celebration of the plants-and people-that grow and thrive in a busy community garden.
A community garden unites children and neighbors in this celebration of all the things that grow there, from flowers and fruits to friendships. In the spirit of her Caldecott Honor -winning picture book All the World, this ode to friendship, community, and working together for a better world will have young readers gathering their friends young and old to plant something together.
I grew up next to a cemetery, and being an avid young artist, I loved to draw all kinds of monsters and spooky themes. Halloween books are a perfect way to express my creepy…but not too creepy side. When I look at Halloween picture books, I'm immediately focused on the pictures, long before I read the story. What medium did the artist use? How do they depict night scenes? Are they realistic or stylized? How interesting are their characters? Halloween picture books are a perfect way to create moody and somewhat scary scenes that balance the creepy with the not-so-creepy. Kids love to be scared, but we don’t want to give them nightmares!
What I loved most about Ashley Wolff’s How to Help a Pumpkin Grow was her color! This luscious book is filled with gorgeous, intense full-spectrum color! Wolff’s wet on wet washes flow seamlessly into each other as a base layer. I am guessing, there may be some smooth pastel added to enhance the color in places. Wolff’s adept painting skill brings out details with multi-colored painted line work on top of the washes.
Unusual touches like the addition of saturated royal blue to highlight the black coat of the dog and crow feathers add an interesting pop of color. The great asset of acrylic gouache is that it can be both transparent or opaque, enabling Wolff to add light line work on top of dark washes.
What does it take to help a pumpkin grow? Find out in this warm, rhyming tale of gardening and unexpected friendship.
Dog is planting a garden, doing all he can to help his pumpkins grow: protecting them from snow, weeding and watering their patch, and keeping them safe from barnyard creatures who might eat the sprouts! But are Crow, Rabbit, Duck, and Goat really out to destroy the garden? Or are they be new friends hoping to pitch in and help the pumpkins thrive?
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I have spent 25 years working at the New York Botanical Garden! My life’s pursuit of the green has been my greatest achievement. I'm a self-made terrarium designer. I developed my style and skills at NYBG and knew that I had to share this with the world. My books have sold over 14,000 copies worldwide. This is amazing to me and has taught me that my though-ness and step-by-step lessons were worth every word! Horticulture is a subject that comes naturally to me. I happily know the names of dozens and dozens of trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, tropical, desert, you name plants from all over the world and I’m learning new ones every season.
Stephanie has taught me so much about gardening that I didn't even know I needed to know. Her beautiful lessons about permaculture, a word that I didn't understand what it meant until Stephanie took the time to teach me! This is a must-need book in your gardening library.
She has created a beautiful garden of her own where she time-tests all her teachings. The climate in Vancouver Canada makes this a great environment. Stephanie and I became friends years ago when she started her blog and she has promoted my work on several occasions.
I trust her judgment and know she knows her subject and then some!
Discover how to work with nature, instead of against it, by employing permaculture techniques to create a garden that is not just more beautiful and productive, but also more resilient.
While the word permaculture might sound intimidating, the principals behind it are not. The main goal of permaculture is to turn your space into a functioning ecosystem that’s less reliant on external resources and better able to sustain itself through many seasons of growth and change as it resists pests, diseases, and climate extremes. Whatever the size of your space, from a tiny patio garden to a big backyard, and…
