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How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine

john jeavons

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A classic in the field of sustainable gardening, HOW TO GROW MORE VEGETABLES shows how to produce a beautiful organic garden with minimal watering and care, whether it's just a few tomatoes in a tiny backyard or enough food to feed a family of four on less than half an acre. Updated with the latest biointensive tips and techniques, this is an essential reference for gardeners of all skill levels seeking to grow some or all of their own food.

159 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1979

This edition

Format
159 pages, Paperback
Published
October 1, 1982 by Ten Speed Press
ISBN
9780898150735
ASIN
0898150736
Language
English

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About the author

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john jeavons

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Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 100 votes)
5 stars
31(31%)
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100 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
AshKirk2100
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Great book if you are interested in an intro to some sort of organic gardening! This one got me started, and I still refer to it very regularly. It is very labor intensive, but also doesn't require any mechanization of any sort. He even provides very detailed plans for starting out. The claims on amount of labor are exaggerated, but the other claims such as 66% reduction in watering and 2-4 times yields per unit of area I have found to be very true. He doesn't address the weed management problem in a very realistic manner, just from a bit of idealism and prevention, but I've seen a huge reduction in pests and weeds simply by using the growing patterns, spacing, and companion planting that he suggests. The overall his technique is very refreshing... and it takes the generalized approach of inviting in beneficial biology into your growing areas.

The layout of the book leaves a little to be desired, and the information isn't uniformly presented particularly with the charts. This makes its use as a reference a bit awkward. I wish he had spreadsheets available online with this information.
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flameon122
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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What a strange, dated little book. And yet I did not hate it. I have decided that all gardening book circa 1975-1982 are touting some "patented" method. I don't want to buy your special gardening files, Linda. I want you to tell me how to grow 47 carrots in 1 sq ft.

I picked up this book because I'm very interested in experimenting with more intensive bed planting and it was recommended on a blog I respect. I get it and there is some good information here around companion planting and composting, but the author expects that you will be growing not only ALL your food, but also everything you plan to compost (which includes your own solid waste). Every chapter has doomsday warnings about all the bad things that are going to happen by 2021. Well. It's 2023 and while I do have concerns about soil health, it's not quite the dustbowl 2.0 yet. The "small space" garden the tout are 4000+ sq feet PER PERSON with 10% devoted to vegetables. That's 16000+ sq feet (over a third of an acre) minimum. This is not small space, John. It's just not. That is bigger than my entire lot at my last house where I grew almost every bit of produce we consumed for a year. Now I have some land, but it's in the desert and I am growing for a family of 4 in containers and less than 200 sq feet of fertile in ground space. Granted I'm not growing my own wheat, oats, barley, and "compost".

The author seems to have serious beef with...well beef...as well. He mentions over and over again how destructive meat production is without ever citing small homestead animals like chickens, rabbits, or quail which work in a symbiotic relationship with the soil.

Overall I'm giving it a 3. There's some good information here but a lot of "take the meat leave the bones" which I could never recommend to anyone other than a very seasoned gardener who can sift through the constant "BIOINTENSIVE MERCH SOLD HERE" trope and questionable information.
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feito26
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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The copious pages of reference tables for virtually any food item you want to grow are so useful.

You can read a lot of books these days about how important it is to focus on your soil, and lots of proponents of no-till gardening or agriculture. But for someone like me that gardened for 7 years in amazing soil because of nothing I did and then moved to a house with atrocious clay that would not even grow weeds in many places, the author's methodology makes so much sense to me. He advocates "double digging" or loosening the soil and incorporating compost down to 24 inches *until the soil structure improves* and thereafter cultivating only the top few inches. Because some soil has to be tilled or literally nothing will grow. My last frustrated 3 years are proof of that.
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Ph0esz
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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It's an interesting read. I think other techniques have a lot more promise than the ones they recommend, but I still learned some interesting things (like transplanting brassicas with the cotyledons no higher than the soil surface to avoid a floppy stem).

Will probably eventually buy, just to take advantage of the incredibly detailed plant charts as reference material.
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LostInMyMind
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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The textbook for a gardening class I recently took, which centered on sustainable home gardening. The narrative parts aren't that interesting to read, but the instructional content is great. Lots of advice on particular crops and making a nutrient cycling system that will eventually require few inputs. I'll forgive the woo bits like the moon cycle gardening as long as I get some robust and tasty produce on the other end.
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YatoraYaguchi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Great book for those with interests in annual gardening.

Very useful "master tables" that include info on spacing, time until harvest, yield estimates, nutrition estimates, and more (separate tables cover annual vegetables, calorie crops, biomass crops, and perennial crops).

Some of the techniques can be labor intensive (transplanting bunching onions started according to the spacing in this book was quite the eye opener) but most importantly it got me out there experimenting with new methods.

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LollipopXXX
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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This is the mother of all intensive gardening books. If you're looking to take your gardening from a hobby you spend little time on to a serious attempt to feed yourself, this is the book you need. Get it at the library and you'll find that you'll want to buy a copy to keep around for reference.
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