Garden reading list 2018

This is a good example of mission creep, again.

Two years ago I wrote about going through several books on plants and gardening.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-gardening-reading-list.html

That was a pretty expansive list, but in the process I found four more that I wanted to read. I started reading those in October:

The Edible Front Yard: The Mow-Less Grow-More Plan for a Beautiful, Bountiful Garden by Ivette Soler

The Kitchen Gardener's Handbook by Jennifer Bartley

The Berry Grower's Companion by Barbara Bowling

Fruit Trees in Small Spaces: Abundant Harvests From Your Own Backyard by Colby Eierman

I learned the most from Eierman. Bowling's book was the least practical for home use, as she primarily focuses on larger scale agriculture. The other two focus a lot on aesthetics, and they are not necessarily wrong for that, but I am most interested in practical information.

Unsurprisingly, I found two more books that I wanted to read, but that it was only two seemed like a good sign. However, sometimes things intersect in interesting ways.

As I started my Native American Heritage reading, I read Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians.

That is just what it sounds like. Anthropologist Gilbert Wilson interviewed Buffalo Bird Woman extensively about the growing practices of her, her family, and her people. That covered the planting and harvesting, but also storage. I know it would have meant more to me if I had done more gardening, but there is still a lot to think about.

Sometimes you hear about Three Sisters gardening, with corn, beans, and squash. All of those plants were important for the Hidatsa, but they planted in rows, not mounds. Sunflowers were an important crop as well. Some people are starting to talk about four sisters, but if it's a different planting method, does it make sense to try and fit it onto the other paradigm?

As I was reading more gardening stuff, it felt like I should go ahead and grab those other two books that had come up. As it is, the Edible City Resource Manual  by Richard Britz is pretty hard to find, but I am currently reading Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn by Fritz Haeg.

Much of this rabbit hole does come from knowing lawns are bad but having a hard time finding a good alternative. I have gained a lot of ideas from this, but execution is still difficult.

And, direction is kind of changing too. Future knowledge will probably come more from talking to other people, watching videos, and building on things that don't work well when I try them. (Or that do work well; I'm not completely pessimistic.)

However, if we look at the greater reading list, of all the books I would like to someday read, I do have a lot of books by the Salatins on there, which could end up being read together in two years or so. Their farm was featured in The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, but I have known about them for a long time since a Smithsonian article, which was also where I first heard of mound farming and the three sisters.

It all connects.