This Set includes:

The Backyard Homestead

With just a quarter acre of land, you can feed a family of four with fresh, organic food year-round. This comprehensive guide to self-sufficiency gives you all the information you need to grow and preserve a variety of vegetables, fruits, herbs, nuts, and grains; raise chickens for eggs and meat; raise cows, sheep, and goats for meat or milk; raise pigs and rabbits, and keep honeybees.

Simple instructions make it easy to enjoy canned, frozen, dried, and pickled produce all winter; use your own grains to make bread, pasta, and beer; turn fresh milk into delicious homemade yogurt, butter and cheese; make your own wine, cordials, and herbal teas; and much, much more. It truly is possible to eat entirely from your backyard.

The Backyard Homestead Seasonal Planner

This hardworking addition to the best-selling Backyard Homestead series offers expert advice on what tasks to do around your farm and when to do them — no matter where on the planet you call home. Author Ann Larkin Hansen sets the priorities for each farm area, including the barn, garden, orchard, field, pasture, and woodlot. For every critical turn of the year (12 in all), Hansen provides an at-a-glance to-do list, tips, and a more in-depth discussion of crucial topics for the season. Easy-reference charts, checklists, and record-keeping sections help you keep track of it all.

The Backyard Homestead Guide to Growing Organic Food

This essential guide to growing a bountiful food garden includes detailed seed-starting, growing, and harvesting information for 62 vegetables, fruits, and herbs, a complete companion-planting guide, and organic pest-control handbook.

The latest addition to Storey's bestselling Backyard Homestead series, The Backyard Homestead Guide to Growing Organic Food is a one-stop reference for all the key information food gardeners need to grow a healthy, bountiful garden. Author Tanya Denckla Cobb presents key information based on extensive research and years of experience, including when to start seeds for each type of crop (and at what temperature), how far apart to space seedlings, how to tell when a crop is ready to harvest, and notes on preservation. The book features a comprehensive companion planting guide and an in-depth review of the most effective organic pest control practices, including recipes for how to make your own pest deterrent sprays.

Have you ever thought of growing flowers and vegetables together? Or consider how the pH level in your garden’s soil affects the growth of your fruits and vegetables? What about the idea of pruning for small-space fruit trees? These topics and many more are all covered in the Mother Earth News Collector Series: Organic Gardening, 2nd Edition!

This guide explores season by season the best crops and growing tips to help make your garden thrive in every weather condition. Read how it’s best to grow strawberries and red peppers in the spring and cucumbers and melons in the summer. Get expert advice on greenhouse growing, transplanting seedlings, and growing organic potatoes. Plus, learn new ways to grow, such as aquaponics, low-tunnel greenhouses, and trellising.

Other articles in this issue include:

• Best Seeds for a Bigger, Better Garden – It’s time to start planning your garden and ordering seeds! Check out these 15 great ideas for organic gardens.
• Winning Against Weeds – Keep weeds in their place with these seven organic techniques.
• Create an Edible Landscape – A garden writer gives her outdoor dining area a European feel with four-table grape varieties you can enjoy fresh off the vine.
• 3 Rare Root Crops You Should Be Growing – Experience the unique flavors of crosnes, salsify, and skirret by adding these unsung treasures to your vegetable garden.
• Grow Your Best Fall Garden – Here’s expert advice for the next half of the gardening season.
• And more!