Synopses & Reviews
The Tao of Vegetable Gardening explores the practical methods as well as the deeper essence of gardening. In her latest book, groundbreaking garden writer Carol Deppe
The Resilient Gardener, Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties focuses on some of the most popular home garden vegetables -- tomatoes, green beans, peas, and leafy greens -- and through them illustrates the key principles and practices that gardeners need to know to successfully plant and grow just about any food crop.
Deppe's work has long been inspired and informed by the philosophy and wisdom of Tao Te Ching, the 2,500-year-old work attributed to Chinese sage Lao Tzu and the most translated book in the world after the Bible. The Tao of Vegetable Gardening is organized into chapters that echo fundamental Taoist concepts: Balance, Flexibility, Honoring the Essential Nature (your own and that of your plants), Effortless Effort, Non-Doing, and even Non-Knowing. Yet the book also offers a wealth of specific and valuable garden advice on topics as diverse as:
- The Eat-All Greens Garden, a labor and space-efficient way to provide all the greens a family can eat, freeze, and dry -- all on a tiny piece of land suitable for small-scale and urban gardeners.
- The growing problem of late blight and the future of heirloom tomatoes -- and what gardeners can do to avoid problems, and even create new resistant varieties.
- Establishing a Do-It-Yourself Seed Bank, including information on preparing seeds for long-term storage and how to "dehybridize" hybrids.
- Twenty-four good places to not plant a tree, and thirty-seven good reasons for not planting various vegetables.
Designed for gardeners of all levels, from beginners to experienced growers, The Tao of Vegetable Gardening provides a unique frame of reference: a window to the world of nature, in the garden and in ourselves.
Review
"If you want to read the complete, deepest-down lowdown on how to grow organic vegetables successfully, this is the book. It also stands as a guide to the most genuine, independent lifestyle possible, relying only on nature and the author's awesomely detailed knowledge of plant life to achieve successful food production and a contented way of life. The reader learns not only how to grow and cook vegetables, but how to breed new varieties and save the seed. And while you read her book, you are also charmed with the Tao philosophy of living -- something I have come to believe is a sure path to tranquility."
Gene Logsdon, author, Gene Everlasting and The Contrary Farmer
Review
"The Tao of Vegetable Gardening is another absolutely brilliant book from Carol Deppe. It's smart, ultimately sensible, refreshing in the way old assumptions get questioned, vastly informative about gardening -- plus it's a really good read. I mean, how many gardening books make you laugh out loud and get you to pick up the phone and order a tool from a place called Red Pig? I'm so grateful for this book -- I will have it memorized by the time the soil is ready to work."
Deborah Madison, author, Vegetable Literacy
About the Author
Oregon plant breeder Carol Deppe, author of The Tao of Vegetable Gardening, holds a PhD in biology from Harvard University and specializes in developing public-domain crops for organic growing conditions, sustainable agriculture, and human survival for the next thousand years. Carol is author of The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times (Chelsea Green, 2010), Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties, 2nd ed. (Chelsea Green, 2000), Tao Te Ching: A Window to the Tao through the Words of Lao Tzu (Fertile Valley Publishing, 2010), and Taoist Stories (Fertile Valley Publishing, 2014). Visit www.caroldeppe.com for articles and further adventures.