Food Self-Sufficiency: Basic Permaculture Techniques for Vegetable Gardening, Keeping Chickens, Raising Bees, and More

by Robert Elger

Overview

A practical back-to-basics guide to achieving food security and financial independence.

What if you could really raise or grow all the food your family needs? In this fully illustrated book, you’ll learn to create an autonomous, diversified, and sustainable garden and to cultivate and maintain it following the main principles of permaculture. If you want to move towards greater food autonomy and you have sufficient space, you can also grow grains, keep chickens, and have a few beehives.

• Design and grow a prolific organic vegetable garden
• Learn how to save seeds from one year to the next
• Discover techniques for collecting water
• Read about beekeeping tools and how to use them
• Learn about chicken breeds and how to keep your birds healthy and happy

Gaining food autonomy means depending less on grocery stores and food supply chains. But it is also offers the pleasure of eating healthy and delicious products straight from your land, while respecting the environment.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781510768215
Publisher:	Skyhorse
Publication date:	04/19/2022
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	843,475
Product dimensions:	6.75(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Robert Elger specializes in fruit farming, and from 1980 to 2000 was responsible for maintaining several large garden centers. He has always advocated for simple, inexpensive ways of gardening that are natural and effective. More a practitioner than a theorist, he rejects any dogmatism, advising gardeners and farmers to stick with what works and abandon the rest without hesitation. Both innovative and respectful of old ways of doing things, he produces his own vegetables, condiments, and fruits.
 

Table of Contents

Foreword 6

1 Food Self-Sufficiency

Vegetables 9

Mushrooms 19

Herbs 19

Fruits and nuts 22

The chicken and the egg 25

2 A Fertile and Generous Soil

Plants need the soil… 27

… and the soil needs plants 28

Organic matter and humus 29

Flatbed gardening 30

What if I have very low-quality soil? 31

3 Water Independence and Sourcing Plant Material

Water availability 33

Meeting your own organic matter needs 35

Using organic matter in the garden 37

4 Making Your Own Garden Soil

A composite growing medium 39

Where to start 39

Making green compost 40

Composting chicken manure 42

Collecting topsoil 42

Mixing your garden soil 42

5 Seed Production

Simple, but also complicated … 45

Seed longevity 46

Testing your seeds 49

Precautions to take 51

Choosing the right varieties 61

Harvesting and storing seeds 67

6 Cultivating Your Garden and Starting Seedlings

Direct-seeding 69

Direct-seed or transplant? 70

Transplanting with soil blocks 72

Seeding a tray 72

Repotting seedlings before planting them in the garden 73

Propagation by division and cuttings 74

Nine months of kitchen gardening 75

Propagating fruit trees and bushes 78

7 Keeping Chickens

Chicken coop components 85

Food and drink 88

How many chickens? 91

Choosing chicken breeds 92

Happy hens 97

Your first hens 100

Creating a sustainable flock 100

Maintaining your henhouse 106

8 Beekeeping

A fascinating and complex universe 109

Getting started … 110

The beekeeper's calendar 110

Kenya top-bar hives 114

9 Grain Production

Should I grow grain? 117

Fall planting … 118

…And spring planting 118

How to plant grain seed 120

Harvesting, storing, and using grains 122

10 Harvest

Spring harvests 125

Summer harvests 127

Fall harvests 128

Winter harvests 129

11 Storing and Preserving Your Harvest

Root cellars 131

Cold storage 132

Canning 133

Freezing 134

Other food preservation techniques 135

12 Garden Calendar for a Self-Sufficient Year

Garden 10 minutes/120 square yards day 137

Why your garden needs you all year Long … 137

13 Permaculture and Autonomy

Using nature as a model 151

The right way to solve a problem 152

Best practices 152

Simplified interventions 154

Index 156