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Since 1984, Chelsea Green has been the leading publisher of books about organic farming, gardening, homesteading, integrative health, natural building, sustainable living, socially responsible business, and more. In 2012, Chelsea Green became an employee-owned company to help us remain an independent publisher, keep our roots firmly planted in Vermont, and ensure that the publishing vision started in 1984 lives far into the future.
Understanding the Heart
Paperback $24.95 Pre-Order
Understanding the Heart
Surprising Insights into the Evolutionary Origins of Heart Disease—and Why It Matters
“The most mind-blowing information on heart disease. . . . I consider this to be one of the best books I’ve ever read on cardiovascular health.”—Ben Greenfield, New York Times bestselling author
Heart disease is the number-one killer in the world. Despite ever-advancing medical procedures and more and more powerful pharmaceutical drugs, the rate of heart disease continues to rise.
According to Dr. Stephen Hussey, this is due in part to misunderstandings about how the heart really functions and how to keep it healthy. These misunderstandings result in improper medical approaches and off-target intervention therapies.
As a type 1 diabetic, Dr. Hussey has always known that he was at two to four times greater risk of developing heart disease. As a result, he has dedicated his entire adult life to understanding the heart, to prevent himself from becoming a statistic.
And then his worst nightmare came true. Dr. Hussey suffered a “STEMI,” a blockage in the left anterior descending artery of his heart. STEMIs are typically so fatal that they are known as “widowmakers.” Only 12 percent of those who experience them outside of a hospital setting survive.
Dr. Hussey was among the lucky 12 percent, but faced a difficult decision during his recovery: follow the standard of care laid out for him by the attending cardiologist, or politely decline and apply everything he’d learned about the heart to a recovery protocol that would look massively different than what the doctors were recommending.
In Understanding the Heart, Dr. Hussey shares the information that guided him through the highest-stakes decision of his life, including:
- A large body of research suggesting that the heart is not the main mover of blood in the body, and what that means for your overall health
- The evolutionary origins of the nervous system, and how these manifest today in rampant rates of heart disease
- Deep analysis of the widely accepted idea that saturated fat and cholesterol will clog your arteries
- The importance of reducing oxidative stress for a heart healthy lifestyle
In Understanding the Heart, Dr. Stephen Hussey lays bare everything he has learned in his deep investigation into the heart, and guides you on a path to prevent disease in the context of a highly diseased modern world in order to enjoy lifelong good health.
Barn Club
Paperback $17.95 Pre-Order
Barn Club
A Tale of Forgotten Elm Trees, Traditional Craft and Community Spirit
“In today’s ego-techno-centred world, Robert Somerville’s . . . Barn Club approach is a way forward that utilizes local traditions, local materials, and local hands to create a built environment that is more harmonious with the natural world and of course more beautiful.”—Jack A. Sobon, architect, timber framer, and author of Hand Hewn
“Somerville knows more about wooden barn construction than almost anyone alive.”—The Telegraph
Natural history meets traditional hand craft in this celebration of the elm tree and community spirit.
When renowned craftsman Robert Somerville moved to Hertfordshire in southern England, he discovered an unexpected landscape rich with wildlife and elm trees. Nestled within London’s commuter belt, this wooded farmland inspired Somerville, a lifelong woodworker, to revive the ancient tradition of hand-raising barns.
Barn Club follows the building of Carley Barn over the course of one year. Volunteers from all walks of life joined Barn Club, inspired to learn this ancient skill of building elm barns by hand, at its own quiet pace and in the company of others, while using timber from the local woods.
The tale of the elm tree in its landscape is central to Barn Club. Its natural history, historic importance, and remarkable survival make for a fascinating story.
This is a tale of forgotten trees, a local landscape, and an ancient craft.
This book includes sixteen pages of color photographs, and black and white line drawings of techniques and traditional timber frame barns feature throughout.
Perfect for fans of Norwegian Wood and The Hidden Life of Trees.
Earth Grief
Paperback $24.95 Pre-Order
Earth Grief
The Journey Into and Through Ecological Loss
News reports appear every day now on the ecological state of our planetary home and the news is not good. Ecological systems are in terrible peril, species are dying by the millions, and global warming is getting worse. Increasing numbers of people feel the impact of this, feel some form of what is being called climate grief, ecological loss, or sometimes even solastalgia. Our species is entering a time of difficult and deep mourning. As environmentalist Leslie Head has said, “Grief will be our companion on this journey—it is not something we can deal with and move on.” It will be with us for a long time to come.
Stephen Harrod Buhner takes the reader on a journey into and through that grief to what is waiting on the other side, a place that Viktor Frankl, Jacques Cousteau, Vaclav Havel, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and so many others have found. It’s where one becomes an engaged witness, alive to the losses that are occurring and the grief that is felt but is not overcome by them. Then he travels into and through the common feelings of guilt and shame (feelings that are put on so many but in actuality belong to very few) that come from ecological devastation. From there Stephen moves deep into what occurs when those we love die, when the planetary landscapes, forests, fields and rivers that are engraved into our deepest selves are lost, when we are forced to travel into the territory of death and loss and deep grief ourselves.
Throughout it, Stephen draws on his studies with Elizabeth Kubler Ross and others who worked with the dying, his years as a psychotherapist, extensive work with the chronically ill, and deep immersion in and relationship with plants, wild ecosystems, and this living planet that is our home. At journey’s end what arises is not the optimism of false hope (as Greta Thunberg calls it) but a deeper and more realistic hope, one that is intimately entangled with gravitas and the journey through loss. It’s born from the heart’s integration of grief and a deep faith in the green world, in this planet from which we have emerged, and in the new life that comes with every spring.
Stephen’s book is written with the exquisite prose style, intimacy, depth of insight, and engaged storytelling for which he is known. No one who reads it will remain unmoved or ever again feel as if they are alone in the grief they feel for what is happening to our home.
Living PCOS Free
Paperback $25.95 Pre-Order
Living PCOS Free
How to Regain Your Hormonal Health with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome
When faced with her own premature menopause, Dr. Nitu Bajekal, the “plant-based gynae,” learned that the Western medicine in which she had trained and practiced had too long ignored the real impact of nutrition and lifestyle on both health and disease. To allow women to achieve their full health potential, lifestyle medicine and conventional medicine can complement each other, offering an appropriate blend of solutions for the individual patient. Based on her research, 35 years’ clinical practice, and her personal experience of a plant-based diet—with input from her daughter, nutritionist and former PCOS sufferer Rohini Bajekal—she offers this practical lifestyle guide to recovery from polycystic ovarian syndrome. Dr. Bajekal shows how this endocrine condition can be managed via the six pillars of lifestyle medicine, with interventions of Western medicine available as adjuncts as needed. The book features a 21-day lifestyle plan for hormonal health together with tried-and-tested plant-based recipes by the authors and illuminating case histories.
The Vertical Veg Guide to Container Gardening
Paperback $34.95 Pre-Order
The Vertical Veg Guide to Container Gardening
How to Grow an Abundance of Herbs, Vegetables and Fruit in Small Spaces
From the creator of the wildly popular website “Vertical Veg” and with over 200k people in his online community of growers, comes the complete guide to growing delicious fruit, vegetables, herbs, and salad in containers, pots, and more—in any space, from window boxes to garden yards, no matter how small!
If you long to grow your own tomatoes, zucchini, or strawberries, but thought you didn’t have enough space, Mark Ridsdill Smith, aka the “Vertical Veg Man,” will show you how to make the most of walls, balconies, patios, arches, and windowsills.
Ridsdill Smith has spent over ten years teaching people to grow bountiful, edible crops in all kinds of containers in small spaces.
Inside The Vertical Veg Guide to Container Gardening, you’ll find:
- Mark’s “Eight Steps to Success”
- How to make the most of your space
- How to draw up a planning calendar so you can grow throughout the year
- Planting projects for beginners
- Compost recipes and wormery guide for the more experienced gardener
- Troubleshoots for specific challenges of growing in small spaces
- How growing food at home can contribute to wellbeing, sustainability, and the local community
With quick, proven results from his own tests, failures, and successes, Mark will show you how gardening in containers is not just a hobby, but a way of creating a significant amount of delicious, low-cost, high nutrition food.
Don’t be confined by the space you have—grow all the food you want with Mark’s Vertical Veg Guide to Container Gardening.
Scanned
Paperback $17.95 Pre-Order
Scanned
Why Vaccine Passports, Mandates, and Digital IDs Will Mean the End of Privacy and Personal Freedom
Imagine being physically denied access to your office, business, or livelihood. Imagine being refused entry to a grocery store or being told who you can or cannot sit with at a restaurant. Imagine being barred from a hospital room when you or your family member needs critical care.
Unthinkable? Today, these scenarios and worse are happening in “democracies” all over the world, and could be our collective future—orchestrated by AI, Big Tech, and state-sponsored apps—all in the name of “protecting” public health with vaccine passports.
The stakes could not be higher. If you do not have a vaccine passport, you will be prevented from accessing basic services, from earning a living or traveling within your own country. Even if you do have one, you will be exposed to unprecedented levels of government and corporate surveillance, data mining, and behavioral control.
In Scanned, investigative journalist Nick Corbishley examines and exposes the lies and overreach that underpin the wholesale erosion of personal freedoms that is happening at an alarming rate. In clear language supported by rigorous research, Corbishley uncovers how the rollout of vaccine passports not only represents an unprecedented violation of privacy and bodily autonomy, but how it perpetuates the idea that a “small” collective sacrifice will allow us to return to normality.
If things continue on the current path, Corbishley makes clear, getting back to “normal” is never happening. Put simply, instead of a return to normality, we will see the creation of a starkly different form of existence in which most of us will have virtually no agency over our own lives.
Inside Scanned, you’ll also find:
- The massive implications of a tech-enabled digital ID, social credit systems, and biometric tracking
- How basic freedoms and privacy are being handed over to the state and private companies without our knowledge or consent
- How government programs and increased surveillance will facilitate discrimination, segregation, and stigmas for huge segments of the population
Few people want to be seen as outliers, especially if it means feeling responsible or being blamed for the suffering and deaths of others.
“But there is a fundamental flaw in applying the ‘greater good’ argument to vaccine passports,” Corbishley writes, “because the passports themselves offer precious little in the way of potential good—and a huge amount in the way of potential harm.”
This is not a liberal or conservative debate. This is not a vaccinated or unvaccinated debate. This is about freedom, global democracy, and how much we are willing to give up. This is about deciding when it is time to say, “enough!”
A Food Forest in Your Garden
Paperback $28.95 Pre-Order
A Food Forest in Your Garden
Plan It, Grow It, Cook It
Grow your own seasonal food in a low maintenance, nature-friendly garden that feels like a woodland glade. Scottish plant expert Alan Carter shows you how to plan and plant a temperate forest garden for any sized plot—from a small terrace garden to an allotment or smallholding.
Learn how to successfully layer root crops, fruit, perennial vegetables and edible shrubs below tree crops, cultivating an edible garden that doesn’t look like a traditional vegetable plot. A forest garden is wildlife friendly, provides nutrient-dense and often unusual food through every season, and requires minimal work to maintain.
The first part of this in-depth, practical guide explains how a forest garden works, how to map your climate and design your own plot, and how to manage it with mulching, weeding and pruning. What’s not to like about Alan’s motto of “the more you pick, the more you get,” and intriguing concepts such as the Panda Principle?
The second half of the book is a detailed directory of more than 170 plants and fungi suitable for a wide range of temperate climates, complete with growing, harvesting and cooking tips based on over a decade of Alan’s own experience. Learn how to incorporate traditional fruit and vegetable crops, such as strawberries and beans, into your forest garden, and how to weave in more unusual crops, such as shiitake mushrooms and ferns.
Techniques from agro-ecology bring regenerative farming into the backyard, helping you to work towards greater self-sufficiency. Useful tips on seed saving and propagation help keep plant costs low, and there is practical advice on soil health, compost—essential for all no dig, organic gardeners—and pests and disease. A Food Forest in Your Garden will help you create your own productive forest gardens even in cooler climates.
The Orchard Book
Paperback $19.95 Pre-Order
The Orchard Book
Plan, Plant and Maintain Fruit from Garden to Field
Wonderlands of bounty and beauty, orchards offer an abundance of fruit in a wildlife haven full of diversity. A well-managed orchard works with nature to provide maximum harvest for minimal effort.
Wade Muggleton has distilled 20 years of orchard know-how into this practical handbook to help you plan, plant and manage your orchard, whatever your garden size or budget.
With his expert guidance you can have an orchard on any plot—garden, yard, allotment or smallholding—and both maximise your harvest and minimise your outlay. The book covers:
- Rootstocks and fruit varieties
- Planting plans
- Maintenance strategies
- Pruning
- Propagation
- Eco-friendly pest and disease management
- Harvesting
- Storing
- Preserving the harvest
The diversity, history and heritage of apples and other fruit trees is fascinating, and Wade’s passion for them is infectious. Let him draw you into a world of apples and pears, walnuts and cobnuts, cherries and plums; of ancient varieties such as quince, medlar and mulberry; and even of juicy apricots, figs and peaches. Imagine having organic fruit all year round from your own little nature haven and use Wade’s tried and tested experience to create your perfect orchard.
Eating Plant-Based
Paperback $29.95 Pre-Order
Eating Plant-Based
Scientific Answers to Your Nutrition Questions
Questions—and answers—about the virtues of a plant-based diet
Despite plant-based diets being associated with some of the best health outcomes, myths about the need for meat, dairy and eggs in the diet persist. Following a Q&A format, two medical doctors (who both specialize in cancer treatment, one in the UK and one in Canada) answer all the commonly asked questions and concerns raised when people first consider transitioning to a plant-based diet. How do you get enough protein? Is it safe for children? Is soya problematic for hormones? Simple and straightforward answers are supported with the scientific background making this book also the go-to guide for health professionals who are increasingly meeting patients and clients who have chosen a plant-based diet.
Restorative Practices of Wellbeing
Hardcover $49.00 Pre-Order
Restorative Practices of Wellbeing
Drawing on cutting-edge neurophysiology and ancient awareness practices, a pioneering connection phenomenologist maps a medicine of the ancestral future.
The landmark Adverse Childhood Experiences study, the largest epidemiological study of trauma ever done, suggests that more than two thirds of American adults are carrying trauma from early childhood adversity. Yet the study did not even conceptualize social trauma: the impacts of racism, sexism, and other forms of structural oppression, or ecological trauma: the trauma of being disconnected from the Living World. By this metric, almost all modern people are traumatized.
Trauma activates the toxic stress response, which translates to a wide variety of stress-related adverse health outcomes later in life. It shapes how we feel in our bodies, our emotional landscape, and structures the thoughts we are able to think. It shapes how we see ourselves, how we interpret the world, and the behaviors available to us.
For the two million years that humans have lived on earth, we have sought to nourish thriving in our children by creating a kind of developmental nest for them. For humans, this nest is of culture and its function is to connect us with three things: ourselves, one another, and the Living World. When this is done properly, the human nervous system becomes baselined in safety and connection, turning on the Connection System, the physiological fountain of wellbeing and resilience.
Over the past 10,000 years, humans have deviated from this ancestral nest at an accelerating rate, which has intensified over the past 500 years. Most modern humans therefore do not feel safe, and are therefore not able to reside in the biology of wellbeing. Humans who are disconnected do not care for themselves, one another, or the Living World.
In this pioneering volume, connection phenomenologist Gabriel Kram addresses two fundamental practical questions: how do we address the trauma and disconnection endemic to the modern world, and how do we turn on the Connection System? Marrying cutting-edge neurophysiology with awareness technologies from a wide variety of traditions and lineages, this book maps a novel approach to the creation of wellbeing informed by the most cutting-edge science, and the most ancient of awareness practices.
It teaches over 300 restorative practices of wellbeing to connect with Self, Others, and the Living World. Learn practices for
- Assessing your defensive responses
- Down-shifting threat responses
- Turning on your Connection System
- Weaving Mindfulness into daily life
- Fine-tuning your senses
- Becoming more embodied
- Developing non-cognitive Ways of Knowing
- Building Healthier relationships
- Relating Across difference
- Connecting deeply with Nature
- Opening to creativity
- Using language restoratively
For anyone who has faced a difficult childhood, grown up with a sense that there is something missing in the modern world, or yearns for deeper connection with Self, Others, or the Living World, this book provides a map to a (r)evolutionary approach to wellbeing so ancient it hasn’t been invented yet.
Our Wild Farming Life
Paperback $19.95 Pre-Order
Our Wild Farming Life
Adventures on a Scottish Highland Croft
As seen on the BBC’s This Farming Life
The inspirational story of Lynbreck Croft—a regenerative Scottish farm rooted in local food, community, and the dreams of two women.
Lynn and Sandra left their friends, family, and jobs in England to travel north to Scotland to find a bit of land that they could call their own. They had in mind keeping a few chickens, a kitchen garden, and renting out some camping space; instead, they fell in love with Lynbreck Croft—150 acres of opportunity and beauty, shrouded by the Cairngorms and deep in the Highlands of Scotland.
But they had no money, no plan, and no experience in farming.
In Our Wild Farming Life, Lynn and Sandra recount their experiences as they work out what kind of farmers they want to be, learning how to work with Highland cattle, become part of the crofting community, and understand how they can farm with nature to produce food for themselves and the people around them. “Through their journey to becoming farmers,” as The Guardian recently wrote, “it’s clear that nature and the health of the environment plays a central role in everything they do…” And through efforts like these, Lynn and Sandra have been able to combine regenerative farming practices with old crofting traditions to keep their own personal values intact.
Our Wild Farming Life is what happens when you follow your dreams of living on the land; a story of how two people became farmers—and how they learned to make a living from it, their way.
Green Mother
Paperback $24.95 Pre-Order
Green Mother
Families Fit for the Future
A no-nonsense guide to pregnancy and child rearing for those who want to reap the advantages of modern Western life while avoiding its pitfalls
“Modern Western life is eroding the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health of our children so seriously that the very survival of our species is threatened. More children than ever are fat and fatigued, learning disabled and emotionally damaged, and the responsibility lies with us. We are killing with kindness in an attempt to provide a stress-free, safe environment for our most loved.”—Sarah Myhill and Michelle McCullagh
Green Mother is for those who want the best of both worlds—to reap the advantages of modern Western life but recognise its pitfalls. This book aims to give parents, would-be parents, grandparents, siblings and all members of the ‘tribe’ that surround a new baby the theoretical and intellectual imperatives to tread this difficult path, the practical day-to-day realities that must be overcome, and the encouragement to do so. The book is beautifully illustrated with 50 of Michelle’s sketches.
Contents include:
- Mothers and fathers: what to do pre-conception to reduce risks
- The Paleo-Ketogenic (PK) diet: the non-negotiable foundation for success
- Normal pregnancy: avoiding complications
- Childbirth and immediate postpartum: being informed and involved in decision-making
- Breastfeeding and weaning
- Sleep
- The baby who cries
- The ‘first brain’—the immune system: vaccination decisions, training the immune system
- Minor childhood ailments
- Serious avoidable childhood problems
- The ‘second brain’—emotional confidence
- The ‘third brain’—sub-conscious, conscious and intellectual
- Infertility and assisted conception
Cold-Hardy Fruits and Nuts
Paperback $34.95 Pre-Order
Cold-Hardy Fruits and Nuts
50 Easy-to-Grow Plants for the Organic Home Garden or Landscape
The easy-to-use resource for growing healthy, resilient, low-maintenance trees, shrubs, vines, and other fruiting plants from around the world—perfect for farmers, gardeners, and landscapers at every scale.
Illustrated with more than 200 color photographs and covering 50 productive edible crops—from Arctic kiwi to jujube, medlar to heartnut—this is the go-to guide for growers interested in creating diversity in their growing spaces.
Cold-Hardy Fruits and Nuts is a one-stop compendium of the most productive, edible fruit-and nut-bearing crops that push the boundaries of what can survive winters in cold-temperate growing regions. While most nurseries and guidebooks feature plants that are riddled with pest problems (such as apples and peaches), veteran growers and founders of the Hortus Arboretum and Botanical Gardens, Allyson Levy and Scott Serrano, focus on both common and unfamiliar fruits that have few, if any, pest or disease problems and an overall higher level of resilience.
Inside Cold-Hardy Fruits and Nuts you’ll find:
- Taste profiles for all fifty hardy fruits and nuts, with notes on harvesting and uses
- Plant descriptions and natural histories
- Recommended cultivars, both new and classic
- Propagation methods for increasing plants
- Nut profiles including almonds, chestnuts, walnuts, and pecans
- Fertilization needs and soil/site requirements
- And much more!
With beautiful and instructive color photographs throughout, the book is also full of concise, clearly written botanical and cultural information based on the authors’ years of growing experience. The fifty fruits and nuts featured provide a nice balance of the familiar and the exotic: from almonds and pecans to more unexpected fruits like maypop and Himalayan chocolate berry. Cold-Hardy Fruits and Nuts gives adventurous gardeners all they need to get growing.
Both experienced and novice gardeners who are interested in creating a sustainable landscape with a greater diversity of plant life—while also providing healthy foods—will find this book an invaluable resource.
Toda la verdad sobre el COVID-19
Paperback $17.95 Pre-Order
Toda la verdad sobre el COVID-19
La historia detrás del gran reinicio, los pasaportes de vacunación y la nueva normalidad
USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Bestseller Internacional
“Una [crítica] elocuente, carismática e informada de un sistema corrupto.”—Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,del prólogo
“El Dr. Mercola es un visionario, pionero y líder.”—Del Bigtree, anfitrión de The Highwire
El muchas veces ganador de libros más vendidos del New York Times, Dr. Mercola y Ronnie Cummins, fundador y director de la Asociación de Consumidores Orgánicos y Vía Orgánica, se unen para exponer la verdad – y terminar con la locura – sobre el COVID-19.
Mediante una robusta investigación, más de 500 referencias de artículos de revistas científicas arbitradas, estadísticas oficiales gubernamentales y descubrimientos de investigación de salud pública de todo el mundo, los autores muestran la necesidad urgente de un despertar global. Es hora de unirnos, exigir la verdad y tomar el control de nuestra salud. La Verdad Sobre el COVID-19 es tu invitación a unirte al Dr. Mercola y Cummins mientras educan y organizan un futuro sano, equitativo, democrático y regenerativo.
*Edición actualizada con un nuevo prólogo*
Going to Seed
Paperback $19.95 Pre-Order
Going to Seed
A Counterculture Memoir
An unforgettable firsthand account of how the hippie movement flowered in the late 1960s, appeared spent by the Thatcher-consumed 1980s, yet became the seedbed for progressive reform we now take for granted—and continues to inspire generations of rebels and visionaries.
At a young age, Simon Fairlie rejected the rat race and embarked on a new trip to find his own path. He dropped out of Cambridge University to hitchhike to Istanbul and bicycle through India. He established a commune in France, was arrested multiple times for squatting and civil disobedience, and became a leading figure in protests against the British government’s road building programs of the 1980s and—later—in legislative battles to help people secure access to land for low impact, sustainable living.
Over the course of fifty years, we witness a man’s drive for self-sufficiency, freedom, authenticity, and a deep connection to the land.
Fairlie grew up in a middle-class household in leafy middle England. His path had been laid out for him by his father: boarding school, Oxbridge, and a career in journalism. But everything changed when Simon’s life ran headfirst into London’s counterculture in the 1960s. Finding Beat poetry, blues music, cannabis and anti–Vietnam War protests unlocked a powerful lust to be free. Instead of becoming a celebrated Fleet Street journalist like his father, Simon became a laborer, a stonemason, a farmer, a scythesman, and then a magazine editor and a writer of a very different sort. In Going to Seed he shares the highs of his experience, alongside the painful costs of his ongoing search for freedom—estrangement from his family, financial insecurity, and the loss of friends and lovers to the excesses and turbulence that continued through the 70s and 80s.
Part moving, free-wheeling memoir, part social critique, Going to Seed questions the current trajectory of Western “progress”—and the explosive consumerism, growing inequality, and environmental devastation laid bare in our daily newsfeeds—and will resonate with anyone who wonders how we got to such a place. Simon’s story is for anyone who wonders what the world might look like if we began to chart a radically different course.
Charles Dowding’s Skills For Growing
Hardcover $31.95 Pre-Order
Charles Dowding’s Skills For Growing
Sowing, Spacing, Planting, Picking, Watering and More
The knowledge and techniques you need for successful vegetable growing, based on Charles’ decades of experience
- Grow vegetables easily throughout the year
- Use time creatively to maximise growth
- Learn cost-effective and productive-per-area methods
- Learn to plan, sow, multisow, transplant, space, water, harvest, and succeed with succession
- Improve growth while working alongside nature
Master gardener Charles Dowding explains the skills and understandings you need for successful growing. His approach sometimes diverges from the mainstream because he assays and develop new or lesser-known methods, for easier and better results.
Skills for Growing illustrates how you create planting plans and advises on succession and rotation, interplanting and multisowing, how to propagate plants and quick ways to set them in the ground.
It gives detailed information on spacing, harvesting methods and timings, watering, and using covers for both warmth and pest protection.
Dowding describes the skills needed for successful winter gardening, growing in containers and growing perennial vegetables and herbs.
The advice given in the book is based on having a clean and fertile area in which to grow vegetables. It may not be large, but that is fine: there are examples of how much food you can grow every year in just one bed, and in containers too.
The book comprises 18 chapters, grouped into 6 parts. Each chapter is illustrated with captioned, full-colour photographs from Dowding’s garden in Southwest UK.