There are a lot of books on gardening out there, some better than others. As always, I recommend using Amazon.com as a place to seek out the kinds of books you want and to learn something about them, but I urge you to actually buy your books from a locally owned bookstore - such as Book People in Austin.
Here are some gardening references of special interest to those of us who want to use our yards to produce healthy, plentiful food:
Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times
by Steve Solomon
This book, from the Mother Earth News Wiser Living
Series, is about how to grow an edible yard without major
skills or major outlays of effort or money - just what we're
talking about here, in other words.
Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and
Your Neighborhood into a Community
by Heather C. Flores
How (and why) to turn your lawn into a food garden.
Also includes a lot of information about how to help and
encourage your neighbors to do the same, with the
objective of creating a sustainable community around you.
All New Square Foot Gardening
by Mel Bartholomew
"Square foot gardening" is a way to get the maximum food yield
out of small areas of land.
It tells you in detail how to build and raise crops is "raised
beds," areas (4'x4' and 4'x8' are the most common) built of
wood or cinder blocks and filled with a mix of compost, peat
moss or coconut fiber, and filler such as vermiculite.
How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits (and Fruits,
Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops) Than You Ever
Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine
by John Jeavons
This is another excellent book on how to get the maximum
food yield out of a small plot of land.
The claim is that using the book's techniques, you can feed
a family of 4 on less than half an acre.
Texas Organic Vegetable Gardening
by J. Howard Garrett and C. Malcolm Beck
This is a guide to raising organic crops in Texas - and,
despite the title, it includes fruits as well as vegetables.
It also talks about Texas weather (what you can plant in what
parts of the state), Texas soil (what you may have to do in
order to make things grow), and Texas garden pests (how to
get rid of them without introducing poisons into your land).
The Organic Gardener's Handbook of Natural Insect and
Disease Control
edited by Barbara W. Ellis and Fern Marshall Bradley
You don't have to put poisons - herbicides and pesticides -
on your land to grow strong, healthy crops.
This book tells gardeners not only how to avoid getting
diseases and undesirable pests in their gardens, but how
to get rid of them safely.
Organic Gardening For Dummies
by The National Gardening Association
All right; I have to include this one, title notwithstanding.
It's an all-over introduction to gardening from an organic
perspective, including the newest and safest natural
fertilizers and pest control methods, composting, cultivation
without chemicals, and how to battle plant diseases.
Organic Gardening
A complete reference on how to garden organically.
Pay special attention to "The Beginner's Guide to Organic
Gardening" and "Growing A-Z" (which contains guides to
growing nearly anything you'll want to, organically).
Organic Gardening Tips, Techniques, & Basics
This site, from the House and Garden TV (HGTV) network,
contains information about just about every aspect of
organic gardening.
Travis County Agricultural Extension Service
"The Agricultural Extension Services conducts educational
programs in the areas of family and consumer sciences,
agriculture, horticulture, natural resources, 4-H, and youth
programs."
They have a detailed planting calendar for the Travis County
area, which you can reference either by month or by crop.
Vegetable Garden Planting Guide
This 1-page graphic, in PDF format, is a summary of when each
kind of vegetable can be most safely planted in the Austin area.
It's dated January 2010, so it takes into consideration the
fact that Austin has recently shifted from growing zone 8 to
growing zone 9.
Print this and post it on your refrigerator.
Travis County Master Gardeners Association
"We are folks who love plants and love to talk to people
about plants. As a program of the Texas AgriLife Extension
Service, we provide non-biased, sound horticultural
information to the community. Our non-profit organization,
Travis County Master Gardeners Association, is not a
garden club, but a service organization of certified master
gardeners - trained volunteers who give their time in the
community to help others garden well and joyfully in
Central Texas."
Texas Drought Monitor
You probably know this already, but it takes water
to grow plants.
Climatologists say that as the global climate changes because
of the hydrocarbon emissions we've been dumping into the
atmosphere over the past century, the Texas climate is going
to get hotter and drier.
How dry is it this week? The Texas Drought Monitor will tell you.
The drought levels range from "Abnormally Dry" to "Drought -
Exceptional."
In 2010 Travis County hovered in Exceptional, the worst category
they have, for several months during the summer.
Go see where we are now.
Vegetable Gardens
This page in the
Hobby Farms
web site's Popular Gardening Series describes a magazine-format
publication that came out in April 2011.
It's about (guess what) how to grow good vegetable gardens.
The whole site is worth a look, but "Vegetable Gardens" is
particulary useful, whether you buy it on-line - or better,
at a real "brick and mortar" store.
One caveat: they aren't into organics, so you'll probably
need to adapt their advice to keep your garden, and yourself,
healthy.
World Naked Gardening Day
This celebration of gardening naturally is held each year on the
second Saturday in May; in 2011 it will fall on May 14.
Look around and see if there will be an Austin NGD festival
this year.