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

This is *the* book. There are a lot of other fine books out there but if you want to achieve food self-sufficiency living off your own land, particularly if you won't be adding animal inputs for any reason, this is a very straightforward, well-organized and well-written guide. Bonsall's practices are a result of decades of research and experimentation. Because he lives in mountainous west-central Maine, his book is tailored to the short growing season and acidic, rocky, forest-derived soils of the area. He doesn't have the fertility of midwest soils, or the long growing season of the west. Bonsall has discovered how to maximize fertility for a difficult growing region, using the most inexpensive equipment and inputs. Everything in this book is directly relevant to what I personally need to know to produce well on my own property, including unusual self-sufficiency subjects like how to grow grain in a garden plot, how to construct a very efficient composing system, how to fertilize with available inputs like leaves, how to neutralize acid with available inputs like wood ash, how to choose the right cover crop, when to plant, what tools to use, I could go on and on.Bonsall is much in demand in his region for lectures because he is an engaging, entertaining speaker and this comes through in his book. In person, he answers a straight question with a straight answer, and that is how his book is. He gets to the point, doesn't dither, gives you concrete, practical information born of a boundless curiosity and long experience.What's more, all his decisions are backed by an essential desire to work _with_ nature and not against it, to farm ethically and eat ethically. You could love his book for his philosophy alone. Bonsall is known for his Scatterseed Project, which makes sure that plant diversity is maintained in an era when a few corporate seed giants have virtually eliminated thousands of plant varieties. The danger of our food sources being reduced to only a few landraces is that this threatens a food with extinction if a disease or insect should wipe out the breed. Bonsall's Seed Saver's network is literally behind ensuring that we and our progeny will have food in the future. This is only relevant to the book in that he mentions certain varieties of vegetables and grains that work with various climatic or soil challenges. He demonstrates that the choice of plant variety alone can make you productive when the industrial seeds do not work in your region.Get this book. It's terrific.

Most gardening books are written based on information from other gardening books - I never realized that until I read this book. It isn't that he disagrees with conventional information, it is that he seems to have developed his knowledge and skills in a vacuum. Every chapter contains ideas that blow my mind.For example, composting books all talk about manure, manure, manure. In chapter one, this author points out that manure is less efficient than just taking the same grass and composting it. It is obvious, but it provided a totally new perspective to me. In chapter two, he casually gives a run down of green manures (cover crops) and each of their individual strengths and weaknesses that is better than anything I have read elsewhere. In chapter three, he makes a very strong case for just using shredded leaves as a primary fertility builder for a garden, rather than smaller amounts of richer fertilizer - again, something I had not heard of before or seriously considered.He goes on like this, chapter after chapter. Part of the reason his viewpoint is so unique is precisely because he is so radical. He still uses an outhouse and based on his writing style, I think he is probably a very uncompromising man. Plus, he is in Maine, so anything that works for him will probably work anywhere. I have read a lot of gardening books, and this is a rare masterpiece.

This book exceeded my expectations! I have been gardening for over 40 years and I learned new, valuable things from Mr. Bonsall's book. I love his writing style, his sense of humor, and the practical information he shares. He doesn't give shallow, general information like so many gardening books but goes deeper and shares the results of his garden experiments and experiences, shares time and energy saving tips, companion planting tips that actually make sense, tips on cover crops, growing and harvesting grains, growing fruit crops. I own dozens of gardening books on various topics and I'll have to say that this is one of the most informative and entertaining gardening books I have ever read for the experienced gardener. It is probably not the best for the beginning gardener looking for the basic how-tos but it is a joy to read anyway!

This is a book I can read from cover to cover. So far it addresses everything I want to do in my garden including composting, mulching and how to prepare for all seasons using everything you have. Bonsall is an entertaining writer and is knowledgeable without being preachy. You can take some ideas and leave others. I'm getting a clearer understanding of how to setup and work my garden and work flow and I can't wait to start these things in the spring. Whether I needed step by step setup or just ideas for putting all my resources and waste to work, this book really helped me make sense of it all.

I'm almost finished with my first reading, and while I haven't implemented any of the practices yet to see how functional they are, I really like his simplicity and practicality and intend to implement as much of his fertilization techniques as much as possible. A lot of his experience and focus is specific to his location in Maine, so if your temperate zone is too far away from his, a pretty good portion of the book will be of little use. He has some odd humor, but, he's a farmer; I'm guessing that the plants don't give good feedback on his jokes.

I have many books on sustainable agriculture and organic growing. They all have their special spot in my garden as I build a permaculture customized to my AZ environment. Mr. Bonsall doesn’t disappoint and has brought new ideas by way of incorporating methods benefiting the entire natural world around me. It’s not just a means to an end of growing food for my family - although amazing, healthy crops are a natural biproduct of Mr. Bonsall’s ways of doing things. Highly recommended!

This book has all that you'd ever need to know to grow plant foods on a smallholding or home farm, independent of externally sourced fertility. It's written beautifully and provides enough confidence for families worried about the current economic climate, to become as self sufficient as they choose to be. A timeless heirloom tome that will be highly valued as it's passed down the generations.

It's an excellent book, full of very useful information. Not 5-star though, because I was a little bit disapointed. Lots of the information can't be applied to a home garden of average size. A) The author gardens on several acres. B) His property is surrounded by woods. A and B are essential to most of his success in producing vegetables and grains. This book will be most useful to owners of large properties out in the country. Still a useful book for me with a small 1000 square feet vegetable garden and 7 mature trees on my property, but a good number of the author's strategies can't work for people like me, especially the strategies he developped over the years to limit importing things from the marketplace. The author will do anything in his power to avoid spending money to grow enough food for his household to eat all year. It's a good philosophy. Not applicable as easily on a subburban plot, even if said plot is large by today's standards. The other strategies he lays out and that won't work and were a big disapointment for me. Namely, companion planting. On my 1000 sq. ft. veggie garden, if I am to produce as much food as possible, I need to practise intensive gardening. His companion planting strategies are adapted to gardens where space is no issue. This is not a gardening manual. It is, however, an excellent blueprint for sustainability, ready to tweak and modify to fit one's space/time availability. It also redefines the work "organic" and boy! Do we need to redefine that word. I'm glad I bought the book. Now I need to spend some time re-reading it next winter and figure out how to adapt his ingenius ideas to my own space and lifestyle.

Really enjoying this book, tons of great ideas that I plan to implement, some ideas that I am currently applying. A resource one can keep visiting. Will's writing style is very enjoyable to read and many ideas are very thought provoking and useful as we develop our property and learn to live healthier, better, and more connected to our food. Tim Ross

Possibly the best volume on soil health that I have ever read - well worth the money and time to read,I suspect several times because of the wealth of Bonsall's specific recommendations.

I'm reading this book right now and I just love the way Bonsall explains himself and his reasons for how he came to farm the way he's is. I'm learning a lot and can't wait to apply many of his techniques and ideas.