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Based on the James Beard Award–winning blog The One-Block Diet, this all-in-one home gardening, do-it-yourself guide and cookbook shows you how to transform a backyard or garden into a self-sufficient locavore’s paradise.

When Margo True and her fellow staffers at Northern California–based Sunset magazine walked around the grounds of their Menlo Park office, they saw more than just a lawn and some gardens. Instead, they saw a fresh, bountiful food source, the makings for intrepid edible projects, and a series of seasonal feasts — all just waiting to happen.

The One-Block Feast is the story of how True and her team took an inspired idea and transformed it into an ambitious commitment: to create four feasts over the course of a year, using only what could be grown or raised in their backyard-sized plot. She candidly shares the group’s many successes and often humorous setbacks as they try their hands at chicken farming, cheese making, olive pressing, home brewing, beekeeping, winemaking and more.

Grouped into gardening, project and recipe guides for each season, The One-Block Feast is a complete resource for planning an eco-friendly kitchen garden; making your own pantry staples for year-round cooking and gifts; raising bees, chickens and even a cow; and creating made-from-scratch meals from ingredients you’ve grown yourself. Chapters are organized by season, each featuring a planting plan and crop-by-crop instructions, an account of how that season’s projects played out for the Sunset team, and a multicourse dinner menu composed of imaginative, appealing and ultra-resourceful vegetarian recipes, such as:

Butternut Squash Gnocchi With Chard and Sage Brown Butter, Egg and Gouda Crepes, Whole Wheat Pizzas With Roasted Vegetables and Homemade Cheeses, Fresh Corn Soup With Zucchini Blossoms, Braised Winter Greens With Preserved Lemons and Red Chile, Summer Lemongrass Custards, Honey Ice Cream

Generously illustrated and easy to follow, this ultimate resource for today’s urban homesteader will inspire you to take “eating local” to a whole new level.

Recommended Product for Wiser Living: Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, MOTHER EARTH NEWS is recommending books to readers. For 40 years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS has been North America’s “Original Guide to Living Wisely,” creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.

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In an era when "go local," "organic food" and "sustainability" are on the tip of everyone's tongues, Harriet Fasenfest's A Householder's Guide to the Universe takes up the banner of progressive homemaking and urban farming as a way to confront the political, social and environmental issues facing our world today. Offering grass-roots practical advice on how to shop, garden, run a household, preserve and cook food, and more, Fasenfest also discusses the philosophy of householding.

In A Householder's Guide to the Universe, which is organized according to season and presented in monthly installments, Fasenfest invites the reader into her home, garden and kitchen to consider concrete tools for change. Streetwise and poetic, fierce and romantic, the book provides not only a way out of our current economic and environmental logjam but also a readable and often funny analysis of how we got there.

About the author:
Harriet Fasenfest is an avid gardener, food preserver, homemaker and lover of the soil. At 56, Harriet officially fled Main Street (and her restaurants) for the greener pastures of the backyard, where she teaches classes on householding. Born and raised in the Bronx, she currently lives in Portland, Ore.

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Daughter of Iowa farmers, Missouri homesteader and mother of five, Diane Ott Whealy never anticipated that one day she would become a leader in a grass-roots movement to preserve our agricultural biodiversity. The love for the land and the respect for heirloom seeds that Ott Whealy shared with her husband, Kent, led to their starting Seed Savers Exchange in 1975.

Seed Savers Exchange, the nation’s premier nonprofit seed-saving organization, began humbly as a simple exchange of seeds among passionate gardeners who sought to preserve the rich gardening heritage their ancestors had brought to this country. Seeds that Ott Whealy herself inherited from her paternal grandparents were the impetus for the formation of Seed Savers Exchange, whose membership has grown from a small coterie to more than 13,000. Its influence has been felt in gardens across America.

Ott Whealy’s down-to-earth narrative traces her fascinating journey from Oregon to Kansas to Missouri then back home to Iowa where, in 1986, Heritage Farm became the permanent home of Seed Savers Exchange. Her heartwarming story captures what is best in the American spirit: the ability to dream and, through hard work and perseverance, inspire others to contribute their efforts to a cause. Thus was created one of the nation’s most admired nonprofits in the field of genetic preservation.

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A windowsill is among the best possible places to put a plant that provides ample sunlight, brightens the look of your home from the outside, and adds what amounts to a filter to the air coming in and out of your home. In winter, they can add a touch of color to an otherwise drab view, and in summer they thrive. But not every plant grows well in these conditions: According to Garden Guides, as many as 40 percent of most houseplants don't need nearly that much sunlight. The selection of the right houseplants for your windowsill is a necessary step to ensuring they survive and thrive.

This book will guide you through the steps needed to select the perfect plants for your windowsill and cultivate them to both fit in with your space and to survive the conditions, whether inside or outside. You will learn everything you need to know to effectively plant windowsill plants and improve how your home and your windows look to the world outside. You will learn, through a series of detailed charts, which plants are best suited to the cramped space of a windowsill and which ones will only give you problems. You will learn how much light each plant needs and how much water and food they need and whether you need to supplement natural provision of these resources. You will learn how to care for your plants while keeping away pests and animals that may eat the leaves or dig up the dirt.

Top experts in gardening have been interviewed and their insights will help you learn what works and what doesn't work for your windowsill plants. From first planting, whether by seed or potted plant, you will have every resource you need to keep your windowsill plants alive and thriving in their new environment with this book.

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Aquaponics is a revolutionary system for growing plants by fertilizing them with the wastewater from fish in a sustainable closed system. A combination of the best of aquaculture and hydroponics, aquaponic gardening is an amazingly productive way to grow organic vegetables, greens, herbs and fruits, while providing the added benefits of fresh fish as a safe, healthy source of protein. On a larger scale, it is a key solution to mitigating food insecurity, climate change, groundwater pollution and the impacts of overfishing on our oceans.

Aquaponic Gardening is the definitive do-it-yourself home manual, focused on giving you all the tools you need to create your own aquaponic system and enjoy healthy, safe, fresh and delicious food all year round. Starting with an overview of the theory, benefits and potential of aquaponics, the book goes on to explain:

• System location considerations and hardware components
• The living elements — fish, plants, bacteria and worms
• Putting it all together — starting and maintaining a healthy system

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What’s the biggest problem facing gardeners? Drought, lack of sun, or the ever-present threat of disease? Nope, it’s deer. The beautiful animals immortalized in Disney's Bambi are also the garden’s biggest pests. Increased hunting regulations have caused the deer population to swell to more than 30 million. At the same time, suburban expansion has led to a loss of natural habitat. The result? Deer are looking for food and finding it in gardens all across the country.

50 Beautiful Deer-Resistant Plants makes keeping deer away as simple as choosing the appropriate plant. Instead of the typical barriers and fencing, expert plantswoman Ruth Rogers Clausen has chosen the 50 most beautiful (and least palatable) annuals, bulbs, ferns, grasses, herbs, perennials and shrubs. Whether it's the charming snow crocuses that bloom each spring or the vibrant, long-blooming Texas Sage, these 50 plants provide gardeners a chance to design a deer-proof garden without sacrificing style. Each plant profile includes a deer-resistance scale, tips on growth and care, zone recommendations, and gorgeous color photos showing the plant up close and in the garden setting. Also includes dozens of companion planting ideas.

With the helpful and trusted advice in 50 Beautiful Deer-Resistant Plants, gardeners can finally garden without fear of deer.

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CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $24.95 AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

"When your garden contains lots of earthworms, your soil is good." This maxim may not sound familiar, but before the days of landscapers and lawn-maintenance companies, this type of knowledge was common. Gardening skills were passed down from generation to generation, and yards were personal places that flourished under the care of time-tested wisdom. Today the pace of life is faster, and modern advances make gardening tasks easier, but we can all benefit from the techniques and common-sense advice of the past to have beautiful, fruitful gardens now. With Back to Basics: Traditional Garden Wisdom, anyone can:

• Develop a dream, green garden without spending a fortune
• Grow an organic and eco-friendly garden with minimum fuss and maximum taste
• Discover how to collect and save seeds
• Make your own compost and learn "no-dig" gardening
• Make a cold frame and protect plants from frost
• Repel moles with castor oil, prevent mice with the right plants, and make herbal insect repellents
• Find out the best way to prune a hedge, tree, or climbing flower
• Know which gardening tasks to do for each season
• Raise a panel fence and use recycled materials for landscaping
• Plant raised beds and container gardens, and build a natural grape arbor
• Discover how companion planting can discourage harmful pests and encourage growth

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CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $24.95 AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

Don’t like spending money in garden centers? Think you can make it yourself for a fraction of the price or find a cheaper option? Dave Hamilton shows you how, by recycling and reusing materials creatively and making the most of what you have, you can gather all you need to grow your food on a budget.

• Shows how to go through the gardening year on a shoestring, from making your own raised beds to fixing broken tools and taking cuttings.
• Gives money-saving tips for every season plus occasional tips on the actual gardening!
• Is crammed full of projects from seed-saving and making your own plant feed to building a fence or garden shed.
• Gives step-by-step instructions, with easy-to-follow diagrams.
• Includes beautiful photos and quirky illustrations.

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Simple in its format, yet packed with information of many, many ways to prevent deer damage to your commercial crops or home garden. Explains how to use fencing and other barriers and visual and scent repellents. Also lists plants deer like and those they don’t like. Practical information from a true innovator who lives in deer country.

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Winter and early spring require a different kind of gardening than the summer months: Not a lot grows at this time, but a well-planned plot may nonetheless be quite full.

This book explains how to have plenty of vegetables to eat during the winter months, both stored and fresh. Through winter, soil is cool and transforms the plot into a large outdoor larder where many vegetables keep healthy and alive, ready for harvesting when needed.

In the pages of this book, you'll discover:

• How to grow your own food for the "hungry gap" from April to June
• How to store food for eating in winter
• A monthly sowing, planting and growing calendar
• Harvesting advice from garlic in July to spring cabbage and pea shoots in May
• Stunning photographs from the author’s garden