Design and build a hoophouse or polytunnel, and grow abundant produce year-round in any climate. Growing in hoophouses – also known as high tunnels or polytunnels – reduces the impact of an increasingly unpredictable climate on crops, mitigates soil erosion, extends the growing season and keeps leafy greens alive through the winter, and enables growers to supply more regional food needs.

The Year-Round Hoophouse is a comprehensive guide to designing and building a hoophouse and making a success of growing abundant, delicious fresh produce all year, whatever your climate and land size. Chapters include:

• Hoophouse siting, size, style, frame construction, and tools
• Bed layout, soil, crop rotations, and extensive coverage of various crops for all seasons
• Organic solutions to pests and diseases
• Disaster preparation
• Tested resources for each chapter

The Year-Round Hoophouse is ideal for farmers who wish to move into protected growing, as well as beginning farmers in rural and urban spaces. It is an essential reference resource for professors and students of courses in sustainable agriculture, as well as interns and apprentices learning on the job.

Many people daydream about a self-sufficient existence. A few rare ones live it every day. Ron and Johanna are what some people call modern-day pioneers. Ever since the late 1970s, they’ve been surviving and thriving off-the-grid by:

• Growing their own food year-round
• Collecting enough water for drinking, cooking, and bathing
• Making their natural remedies from backyard plants
• Heating the house and getting hot water practically for free
• Generating the electricity needed by their entire homestead from solar and wind
• Plus, many…many others!

In their new book, The Self-Sufficient Backyard: For the Independent Homesteaders, they share the homesteading and self-sufficiency knowledge they’ve acquired over 40 years for the first time.

This is simply a must-have for anyone interested in going off-the-grid or just saving and making some money on their property. And it all adds up! Ron and Johanna don’t have a big pension to fall back on, but they still manage to make a more than decent living just with what their tiny ¼-acre homestead produces.

That’s how little you need to be self-sufficient in modern-day America. And the best part is that it doesn’t matter if that property is a few acres big or just a tiny apartment in the city. Everything inside the book can be upscaled or downscaled to fit your daily needs.

With over 100 practical DIY projects, there is something for everybody’s property inside The Self-Sufficient Backyard: For the Independent Homesteader – so get ready to start living the life others will keep dreaming about.