Food Grown Right, in Your Own Backyard: A Beginner's Guide to Growing Crops at Home - Paperback
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Complete Beginner's Guide to Backyard Vegetable Gardening
Food Grown Right, in Your Own Backyard is a comprehensive guide for anyone looking to start growing their own vegetables, herbs, and berries at home. Written by Colin McCrate and Brad Halm, founders of the Seattle Urban Farm Company, this full-color book addresses the real questions and challenges faced by first-time growers.
What You'll Learn
This guide covers everything needed to start and maintain a productive home garden:
- Garden Design for Any Space: Solutions for small backyards, containers, and limited areas
- Soil Fundamentals: Understanding soil types, composting materials, and fertilization
- Watering Systems: Irrigation techniques and water management
- Plant Selection: Detailed profiles of recommended vegetables, herbs, edible flowers, and berries
- Essential Tools: What you actually need and time-saving techniques
- Crop Planning: Year-round garden calendar and harvest management
Practical, Accessible Approach
The book presents technical information in clear, layman's terms with step-by-step instructions. Beautiful photographs illustrate each concept, making it easy to understand processes from building garden beds to identifying plant problems. Tables throughout provide quick reference for composting materials, planting schedules, and crop requirements.
Q&A sections address common concerns like dealing with pests on tomatoes, managing abundant harvests, and working with limited space. Profiles of other beginner gardeners show real-world applications of the techniques.
About the Authors
Colin McCrate has been growing food organically for more than a decade. He worked on small farms in the Mid-West before taking a position as Garden Manager at an Environmental Education center on Orcas Island, WA. After working for Farmhouse Organics in Poulsbo, WA and as a residential landscaper in Seattle, he founded the Seattle Urban Farm Company in January 2007.
Brad Halm's interest in food production started at Denison University in Ohio. After apprenticing on organic farms in Ohio and managing CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) for Village Acres Farm in Pennsylvania, he moved to Seattle in 2007 to help Colin start the Seattle Urban Farm Company.
Hilary Dahl joined the Seattle Urban Farm Company in 2010, bringing an educational background in landscape architecture and urban planning from the University of Washington. She spent three summers on a sustainable, net-zero energy housing construction project on Lopez Island, learning traditional construction skills and organic gardening methods. She is also the in-house photographer for the company.
Why This Guide Works
The book's strength lies in its practical, field-tested approach. The authors built vegetable gardens for busy families, restaurants, and urban dwellers, teaching organic food production techniques to beginners from all walks of life. This hands-on experience translates into advice that works regardless of your location or experience level.
As The National Gardener notes: "The book is clear, concise, and beautifully illustrated. Even the more technical sections are presented in 'layman's terms,' so even if you are new to gardening you will understand them. Because of the way the information is laid out, it won't matter where you live, you will still be able to use the information."
Contributor(s)
Author
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Complete Beginner's Guide to Backyard Vegetable Gardening
Food Grown Right, in Your Own Backyard is a comprehensive guide for anyone looking to start growing their own vegetables, herbs, and berries at home. Written by Colin McCrate and Brad Halm, founders of the Seattle Urban Farm Company, this full-color book addresses the real questions and challenges faced by first-time growers.
What You'll Learn
This guide covers everything needed to start and maintain a productive home garden:
- Garden Design for Any Space: Solutions for small backyards, containers, and limited areas
- Soil Fundamentals: Understanding soil types, composting materials, and fertilization
- Watering Systems: Irrigation techniques and water management
- Plant Selection: Detailed profiles of recommended vegetables, herbs, edible flowers, and berries
- Essential Tools: What you actually need and time-saving techniques
- Crop Planning: Year-round garden calendar and harvest management
Practical, Accessible Approach
The book presents technical information in clear, layman's terms with step-by-step instructions. Beautiful photographs illustrate each concept, making it easy to understand processes from building garden beds to identifying plant problems. Tables throughout provide quick reference for composting materials, planting schedules, and crop requirements.
Q&A sections address common concerns like dealing with pests on tomatoes, managing abundant harvests, and working with limited space. Profiles of other beginner gardeners show real-world applications of the techniques.
About the Authors
Colin McCrate has been growing food organically for more than a decade. He worked on small farms in the Mid-West before taking a position as Garden Manager at an Environmental Education center on Orcas Island, WA. After working for Farmhouse Organics in Poulsbo, WA and as a residential landscaper in Seattle, he founded the Seattle Urban Farm Company in January 2007.
Brad Halm's interest in food production started at Denison University in Ohio. After apprenticing on organic farms in Ohio and managing CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) for Village Acres Farm in Pennsylvania, he moved to Seattle in 2007 to help Colin start the Seattle Urban Farm Company.
Hilary Dahl joined the Seattle Urban Farm Company in 2010, bringing an educational background in landscape architecture and urban planning from the University of Washington. She spent three summers on a sustainable, net-zero energy housing construction project on Lopez Island, learning traditional construction skills and organic gardening methods. She is also the in-house photographer for the company.
Why This Guide Works
The book's strength lies in its practical, field-tested approach. The authors built vegetable gardens for busy families, restaurants, and urban dwellers, teaching organic food production techniques to beginners from all walks of life. This hands-on experience translates into advice that works regardless of your location or experience level.
As The National Gardener notes: "The book is clear, concise, and beautifully illustrated. Even the more technical sections are presented in 'layman's terms,' so even if you are new to gardening you will understand them. Because of the way the information is laid out, it won't matter where you live, you will still be able to use the information."
Contributor(s)
Author