Grow a Sustainable Diet: Planning and Growing to Feed Ourselves and the Earth by Cindy Conner

Grow a Sustainable Diet: Planning and Growing to Feed Ourselves and the Earth

by Cindy Conner

Everyone loves to prepare a meal with ingredients fresh from their own garden. But for most of us, no matter how plentiful our harvest, homegrown produce comprises only a fraction of what we eat. And while many gardening guides will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about individual crops, few tackle the more involved task of helping you maximize the percentage of your diet you grow yourself.

Grow a Sustainable Diet will help you develop a comprehensive, customized garden plan to produce the maximum number of calories and nutrients from any available space. Avoid arriving in August buried under a mountain of kale or zucchini (and not much else) by making thoughtful choices at the planning stage, focusing on dietary staples and key nutrients. Learn how to calculate:


Which food and cover crops are best for your specific requirements How many seeds and plants of each variety you should sow What and when to plant, harvest, and replant for maximum yield
Focusing on permaculture principles, bio-intensive gardening methods, getting food to the table with minimum fossil fuel input, and growing crops that sustain both you and your soil, this complete guide is a must-read for anyone working towards food self-sufficiency for themselves or their family.

I received an ARC copy of this book from the publisher through Netgalley.

My family has always had a summer vegetable garden since I can remember.  Last year my husband built (with some help) a bigger, better garden fence.  It is 30'x70' and we've had vegetables galore.  We've been canning them, eating them, and giving away the excess.  Now I've been curious about trying a fall/winter garden on our way to become more sustainable.  It's a work in progress.  This year's fall seedlings didn't grow and I'm disappointed, but it's all a learning process. 
That's why I was excited to read this book.  Cindy Conner has a lot of very interesting and unique ideas, some of which I know and some I've never even heard about.  We've struggled with a compost turner and a compost pile, which the animals pick over so well there's nothing left the next day.  Mrs. Conner says to just put the compost piles on the ends of your vegetable beds and plant something like squash right on top.  The nutrients will go into your garden, not into a spot of ground you'll never plant in.   Who knew?

There are a lot of great ideas in this book.  I especially love how Mrs. Conner tells you exactly how to get all of the nutrients, and especially calories, you need from your garden, without having to rely on outside sources.  This is exactly what I want.  With the overuse of pesticides and GMOs, I'm not confident of what I buy in regular stores anymore.

The garden plans Ciny gives are for medium to very large gardens, but they can easily be changed to suit your needs. 
She has a lot of wonderful advice and I think everyone can benefit from this book, even if you only have a patio garden.