Fresh Food from Small Spaces: The Square-Inch Gardener's Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting, and Sprouting

I ought to give this a 4.5, and if you just accept it as an introductory book, not a detailed treatise, its a 5. There are some things in this book that not everyone may be comfortable with, though.I am a master gardener, so most of what's in here is not new, but there are some great ideas. For example, just seeing how the Europeans do fruit trellises on backstreets was inspiring. Learning how to make your own self-watering container is smart.The book covers vegetable gardening, berries and fruits, sprouting, yogurt/kefir making, bees, chickens, compost and worms, mushroom growing, container gardening, cold frames and building arbors/trellises to use more vertical space. It is written clearly and points you to other books to read after you've gotten started. And that's all great. Could you have found all that on the internet for free?.... yes. But its still a nice book.I think what I choked on while reading it is how much time is involved to keep up all these little projects. I would have also loved a "shopping list", with costs, for each project (like the self-watering container, for example, or how much it costs to build a trellis). If you've ever actually done any of these things, and I have, the sobering take away is how much work and time and money goes into getting the results, whether they are a couple of berries in your hand, or a small green salad with lettuce, sprouts and tomatoes you grew yourself. The book does not talk about this factor. It's significant. Most vegetable gardeners will get a merry twinkle in their eye if you ask them about $6 tomatoes, or even $2 zucchinis. Growing food is time intensive and labor intensive.The other thing (and I like this, but I may not be in the majority) is the last chapter talks about resource depletion, and a time when peak oil or other factors may knock the stuffing out of our food production system. This may not sit well with some people, and this "prep because the world is at end" sensibility is very lightly woven through the book, especially at the beginning and the end. It is where the author is coming from. Again, I personally was reassured by this, because it meant the author and I were on the same page about why we should be learning about this stuff in the first place. But, my mother (for example), would be really thrown off by any "prep for the end is near" talk and might just put the entire book aside for even bringing up something as crazy as peak oil. If your mother is like that, too, you might want to get a different book for her.

Beware. This is a dangerous book. Once you have read it, you will not be able to say: "I don't have enough space (or light, or the right climate, or soil) to grow any food." You'll have to find some other excuse.Faced with the recognition of climate change, energy depletion, and biofuel competition, even urban dwellers, says R.J. Ruppenthal, may have to "relearn basic food production skills in a hurry, if we are to survive and thrive in this new world" (p. x). Fresh Food From Small Spaces gives you a mini-course in urban food production and encourages you to practice many of the basic gardening techniques we normally associate with large suburban lots and small farms.What can you grow and where can you grow it? According to Ruppenthal, you can grow most of the usual vegetables (potatoes, beans, carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, etc.) and many fruits and berries in containers on balconies, on windowsills, in tiny patio spaces, and in small city backyards. His list of grow-your-own food also includes other strategies you might not have thought of as "gardening," but are equally valuable: growing sprouts (more nutritious than some grains), making fermented foods such as yogurt and kefir (as well as sauerkraut and kimchi), and raising mushrooms. And then there are chickens and bees, and oh, yes, worms and compost. As I said, once you've read and considered Ruppenthal's suggestions, you have no excuse. If you're willing to put in the effort, he says, there's no such thing as "not enough" of whatever it takes to produce up to twenty percent of your own food and enable you to eat homegrown food (as his family does) 365 days a year.But why bother? Why go to the trouble, when every urban dweller is within a stone's throw of a supermarket? Because, Ruppenthal says, our food supply is not as secure as we think, and in these uncertain times, it is prudent to prepare for short- and long-term disruptions in the food supply. The author says he's not a survivalist, but the strategies and methods he outlines in the final chapter may help urban and suburban residents function in the event of a major disruption, or in a time when cheap resources (oil and gas) are dwindling. And in the meantime, he suggests (and I agree) that we can all move closer to "sustainability living," even when resources are abundant. We need to take charge of our food, he says, and stop trusting industrial agriculture to feed us. (It can't, not forever.) We need to change the world, and we can only do it from the ground up.An index might have made this passionate, highly readable book a little easier to use, but there are helpful notes and references, an excellent resource list, and much of the information you need to start on a path to square-inch gardening.Go for it. You have no excuse.

Sehr interessant! Es sind super Ideen dabei, wie man auch in einer Stadtwohnung sein eigenes Essen ziehen kann. Hätte nicht gedacht, dass da so viel möglich ist. Werde es auf jeden Fall mal ausprobieren, da frisches Gemüse ja nun mal am gesündesten ist!