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For more than a decade, this best-selling title has helped countless gardeners produce bountiful harvests of organic vegetables. Now, Ed Smith is back with a thoroughly revised and updated second edition, including coverage of 15 additional vegetables; an expanded section on salad greens; more attention to European and Asian vegetables; growing information on more fruits and herbs; new cultivar photographs; a much-requested section on extending the growing season into the winter months; and more. No vegetables are healthier, fresher, less expensive, or more local than the ones you grow in your own back yard. The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible will show you how.

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In this new book, Ann Lovejoy exuberantly consolidates her gardening and cooking expertise into a year-round feast of fruits, vegetables and herbs, complete with color photographs. Her simple, uncluttered recipes emphasize bright flavors and a creativity centered on an abundance of fresh produce, from the familiar to the exotic.

Fresh from the Garden will appeal even to readers who don't have a vegetable garden or orchard in their backyard. Thanks to the ever-expanding farmers markets and popular community-supported agriculture programs in the Pacific Northwest, fresh, organic produce is always easy to come by.

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With a catalog of 150 different culinary herbs and their varieties, more than 30 recipes, step-by-step photographs on how to plant, nurture, harvest and store, and flavor charts that list the best herbs to partner with popular ingredients, The Cook's Herb Garden shows you how to grow your own supply of herbs whether on a window ledge, in pots, on the patio, or in a vegetable garden.

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Rather than cover hundreds of plants in abbreviated accounts like the typical field guide, author Samuel Thayer has chosen a smaller selection of species to discuss in exhaustive detail, including only those plants he has eaten 50 times or more. This book contains as many as 10 high-quality color photographs of each plant. These have been painstakingly selected to facilitate identification and depict the plant parts at exactly the stage of growth in which they should be harvested. The accompanying text is accurate and thorough, giving readers of any experience level the confidence to harvest wild plants for food. Botanically, the text is accurate — yet it remains accessible to the layperson by using technical terms only when necessary.

The Forager’s Harvest has many unique features that will appeal to naturalists, hikers, campers, survivalists, homesteaders, gardeners, chefs, Native Americans and whole-food enthusiasts. The book contains a calendar of harvest times for wild produce, a step-by-step protocol for positive identification, an illustrated glossary tailored to the needs of foragers, a recommended reading list, plus special sections on conservation, safety, nutrition, harvest techniques, preparation methods and storage. While The Forager’s Harvest is not a regional guide, it will prove most useful to readers in the eastern US and Canada, the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Northwest.

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With easy recipes using ingredients grown in your window box or bought at the local market, ethnobotanist James Wong shows you how easy – and cheap – it is to make simple creams, salves, teas, lozenges and much more. Wong uses his top-class academic knowledge to reveal how many plants contain the same active ingredients as over-the-counter drugs, and offers recipes to relieve a whole range of common conditions, including:

• Digestive disorders: bad breath, heartburn and indigestion, digestion, irritable bowel syndrome, constipation, flatulence, diarrhea
• Skin complaints: athlete's foot, eczema, insect bites and stings, acne, sunburn, age spots, fungal conditions, burn scars, poor foot circulation, chapped hands and sores, insect deterrent
• Kids' remedies: vitamin booster, head lice, eczema, ear wax buildup, colic
• Aches and pains: water retention, varicose veins, aching muscles, arthritis
• Female-specific problems: hot flashes and night sweats, morning and travel sickness, PMS, cystitis
• Under the weather: colds and flu, coughs and sore throats, cholesterol reducer, hangover, cold sores, immune system booster, mouth ulcers, restorative
• Mind: memory enhancer, insomnia, migraine prevention, anxiety, memory booster
• Face and body: hair strengthener, body scrub, bath and massage oil, deodorant, face mask, hand care, bath bomb, exfoliator, face toner/hair rinse, sore eyes, tired/red eyes, glycerine soap, plague remover and gum soother, chapped lips

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In this groundbreaking resource, two school garden pioneers offer parents, teachers and school administrators everything they need to know to build school gardens and to develop the programs that support them.

Today, both schools and parents have a unique opportunity — and an increasing responsibility — to cultivate an awareness of our finite resources, to reinforce values of environmental stewardship, to help students understand concepts of nutrition and health, and to connect children to the natural world. What better way to do this than by engaging young people, their families and teachers in the wondrous outdoor classroom that is their very own school garden?

It's all here: developing the concept, planning, fundraising, organizing, designing the space, preparing the site, working with parents and schools, teaching in the garden, planting, harvesting, and even cooking, with kid-friendly recipes and year-round activities. Packed with strategies, to-do lists, sample letters, detailed lesson plans and tricks of the trade from decades of experience developing school garden programs for grades K–8, this hands-on approach will make school garden projects accessible, inexpensive and sustainable.

Reclaiming a piece of neglected play yard and transforming it into an ecologically rich school garden is among the most beneficial activities that parents, teachers and children can undertake together. This book provides all the tools that the school community needs to build a productive and engaging school garden that will continue to inspire and nurture students and families for years to come.

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This definitive month-by-month guide brings gardeners into the delicious world of edible landscaping and helps take a load off the planet as we achieve greater food security. Full of illustrative color photos and step-by-step instructions, The Zero-Mile Diet shares wisdom gleaned from 30 years of food growing and seed saving with comprehensive advice on:

• Growing organic food year-round
• The small fruit orchard and backyard berries
• Superb yet simple seasonal recipes
• Preserving your harvest
• Seed saving and plant propagation
• Dirt-cheap ways to nourish your soil
• Backyard poultry — it's less time-consuming than you think
• Growing vegetables in the easiest way possible
• A-Z guide to growing the best vegetables and herbs

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The Herb Companion Guide to Healing Herbs is packed with valuable and illuminating information on more than 136 favorite herbs for growing, cooking and healing.

A 100-page guide is filled with articles on herbs that help you save money and help you stay healthy throughout the year. Articles cover everything from skin-soothing herbs to herbs that help with cold and flu.

Other articles include:

• Don't Break the Bank: Discover 15 herbs that will save you money on medical bills
• Beat Winter Colds: Treat and prevent winter colds with natural remedies
• Lower Your Blood Pressure: Help correct hypertension with four effective herbs
• Soothe Psoriasis: Control this skin condition with natural remedies

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Conventional agriculture destroys our soils, pollutes our water and is a major contributor to climate change. What if our agricultural practices could stabilize, or even reverse these trends?

The Biochar Solution explores the dual function of biochar as a carbon-negative energy source and a potent soil-builder. Created by burning biomass in the absence of oxygen, this material has the unique ability to hold carbon back from the atmosphere while simultaneously enhancing soil fertility. Author Albert Bates traces the evolution of this extraordinary substance from the ancient black soils of the Amazon to its reappearance as a modern carbon sequestration strategy.

Combining practical techniques for the production and use of biochar with an overview of the development and future of carbon farming, The Biochar Solution describes how a new agricultural revolution can reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to below zero while increasing world food reserves and creating energy from biomass wastes. Biochar and carbon farming can reduce fossil fuels inputs into our food system; bring new life to desert landscapes; filter and purify drinking water; and help build carbon-negative homes, communities and nations.

Biochar is not without dangers if unregulated, and it is not a panacea, but if it fulfills its promise of taking us back from the brink of irreversible climate change, it may well be the most important discovery in human history.