HELP SAVE THE PLANET BY TAKING AN ORGANIC GARDENING APPROACH. 2.6 trillion pounds of garbage goes into landfills annually, organic matter (food waste) being half of that. This book focuses on wellness for yourself and for the planet, providing practical permaculture-based no-waste organic gardening tips on how to reuse and recycle in your garden to save money while being environmentally friendly—with the bonus of friendship and community building! By creating a more natural, harmonious organic garden you're promoting wellness for all the critters that adventure into your garden whether they be pollinators, guardian allies, or microbes. Likewise, by being greener and sharing your bounty with friends and neighbors, you set a strong example for others by teaching the joys of organic stewardship.

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A few topics to look forward to:

♥ Tips on how to create a no-till garden and why you should. Mulch! Compost! Groundcover! Crop rotation! Winter root rot! By keeping the soil covered with green and brown mulching techniques, you're keeping the beneficial nutrients in the soil near your growing plants where they belong. There's also a very clever layout provided for diversifying and thus enriching your soil through an annual, rotating layering process for optimal soil health throughout the years. Another great book on learning about creating the optimal environment for soil is 'Grow Your Soil!: Harness the Power of the Soil Food Web to Create Your Best Garden Ever'
by Diane Miessler and Elaine R. Ingham, a gardening resource I highly recommend.

♥ How to harvest and save seeds, create a seedling nursery, care for and sprout your seeds, and herd (or wean) them out of the nursery and into your garden, as well as info on how to soak and plant flowering bulbs.

♥ Reducing water usage! How to harvest rainwater to use in your garden (check your local laws, this method is illegal in some locations), and how to build self-watering plant containers. Plus, the benefits of using GREYWATER, which is essentially all the nutrient-filled water left over from cooking or steaming veggies in the kitchen.

♥ ORGANIC WATER-RETENTIVE SOIL MIX (page 15) FORMULA! I absolutely love this formula, which you could put the aforementioned tips into practice to mix some up, for creating soil that's a water-retentive superstar allowing water to more easily stick to the roots of your plants. There's a whole page dedicated to improving water retention in your soil on page 16.

♥ A variety of composting techniques using leaf mold which is rather simply a pile of aged leaves (a 1-2 year time investment—brown compost) and freshly aired-out grass clippings (a few days time investment—green compost). I really love the section about green and brown mulch, how they differ, and how you use them in your garden on pages 26-27, as well as the section on using coffee grounds as a replacement for peat moss (which is endangered) as a compost ingredient. There are also instructions on how to build and manage your own composting station.

Pssst! Did you know newspapers are now printed with soy ink? If you've had any reservations about using newspaper in your compost for fear of polluting with ink, rest easy and get your mulch on.

♥ USES FOR WORM CASTINGS. I love, love, loveee the uses for worms in gardening. This section goes into the why's (one being, worm castings help fix heavy metals in organic waste!) and how's of using worm castings in your compost, ground planting, container planting, and as a worm tea.

♥ Manure tea! A similar concept to worm tea, manure tea uses composted animal waste steeped in water as an economical fertilizer for your garden, aiding your plants in producing larger yields. "Do not drink this tea!"--This made me cackle, I'm dying here. There's brief mention of sprinkling this on the leaves as well as on the soil because plants absorb water and nutrients through the leaf system as well as through the root system, and I feel that this information is often overlooked so I appreciated seeing it! (Personal tip: Lightly rinse or mist the dust off of your plants when you water them so that they can absorb more water, nutrients, and carbon dioxide!)

♥ Planting to attract pollinators, how it makes a HUGE difference in the health and productivity of your garden, and the importance of having a balance of annuals as well as perennials to support pollinators long term. Also included is a plethora of helpful information on building a habitat that supports bees! This includes having a 'bee station' where you provide a fresh water source where they won't drown, and building a garden that attracts and supports bees who in return pollinate the heck out of your plants. There's a few charts of bee-attracting plants included.

♥ How to grow edibles along with shade-tolerant edibles and flowering edibles, and effective ways of watering and using cover crops to create an efficient, drought-tolerant garden that does more growing with less work. It also goes over how to regrow some foods from kitchen scraps, since some vegetables can be regrown again and again from the same root!

♥ How to mix a batch of chemical-free soap-based insecticide for when pest prevention isn't effective, as the fatty acid from the soap MELTS SOFT-BODIED BUGS who love to eat your plants, while remaining mild and kind towards your insect allies so they can continue to chill in your garden doing their thing. There are also pest-control tips for common garden invaders such as the dreaded earwigs, slugs, and wasps.

♥ Several innovative landscaping, decorating, and tool-storage ideas to really make your garden unique to you and feel like your own personal sanctuary.

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This is a beautiful book filled with a variety of glossy photographs, and while I wouldn't consider this resource to be 'complete' (it's not very science-packed nor in-depth as most subtopics only span 1 to 2 pages) it provides some unique information along with so many useful tips on the basics of how to get started with organic gardening. I also just loved how the author is inspired by their wartime era grandmothers, who are experts at no-waste efficiency (upcycling is king), and the illustrations help to visually showcase this inspiration by being adorable and 'vintage-y' yet modern.

Overall this is a pretty wonderful book that I recommend to beginner gardeners with an interest in growing organic, who are ready to get their feet wet, or rather dirty in the garden.

The quotes provided were taken from an eARC and are subject to change upon publication.

Thank you to Cool Springs Press for providing me with this eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review!