This book explains the GROW BIOINTENSIVE method, which in my opinion is not as good as the permaculture method, but a reasonable second best. There is some attempt at working with nature and the methods are sustainable and organic, but there is much more labour required than for permaculture.

Extensive digging is required, and seedlings are to be grown in a flat bed, transplanted to a second flat bed and finally planted out in accordance with precise measurements. On the other hand, permaculture methods avoid digging, emphasise the use of perennials rather than annuals, and allow nature to be random.

The book claims that using the GROW BIOINTENSIVE method, you can grow all the food for a person's diet in the least possible space and using the least possible water. I'd be interested to see a comparison with permaculture methods.

Unless you enjoy lots of digging, I recommend having a look at Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway before trying this method.

A great resource for organic gardening. It provides a ton of information about starts, digging methods, planting with the cycles of the moon, temperatures at which certain things need to be planted, lomg-range planning models, etc. The system they use (GROW BIOINTENSIVE) has been a work in progress for 35 years and has proven to produce significant crop yields in minimal space. Check it out.

Skimmed borrowed book from DC Library.

Loaded with information. Most of the book is the planting charts. I found it overwhelming.

I was very entranced by the title of this book, and I've enjoyed reading it. Nothing is particularly new to me, perhaps since I've read lots of similar books, but perhaps also the ideas have become more common since the book was originally published. The book constantly refers to the "Grow Biointensive" method, but I've had a hard time determining exactly what makes up this method.

I received this book, for free, in exchange for an honest review.

As a background, I have been gardening for roughly 5 years and consider myself a beginner even though I've read dozens of gardening books.
Perhaps I'm better qualified as intermediate, but the gap between me and someone like Will Bonsall is so huge that I consider myself a beginner and one who still has plenty of systems knowledge to pick up.

Despite the fact that I have much to learn, I did not find much in this book that jumped out at me as something I'd like to implement. That might be due to the book's organization, the verbose nature of the writing, or my tendency to get antsy and skip around.

I found this book through reading Alice Waters. As a gardener, I was grabbed by the subtitle. Almost every vegetable gardener dreams of a healthy and beautiful garden that produces plentiful harvests. This book was interesting. It has a lot of standard garden advice, but then a few unusual suggestions. Its advice falls into several different categories for me: things that I already do, things that I will probably try, things that I am unlikely to try and things that I will never do. In that sense, it isn't so different from a lot of self help books and books about how to do different practices or live in a particular way.

I have always paid a lot of attention to improving my soil, but though it is recommended by nearly every gardening book, I have never double dug. It always seemed like too much work and too hard to get around roots and pipes. But now I think that I really have to try it. If I get a flat-bladed shovel and a spading fork that will help. And then there is composting. I have never been hugely successful at home composting, not paying attention to the layers and composition of the pile, not watering it or turning it enough, and then I had to give it up entirely because in my neighborhood the compost pile was a rat magnet. I guess I could try composting in a closed drum. That would also help me with the turning. Composting is the most essential single part of the method described in this book. Mr. Jeavons wants all farming to be self sustaining, to be done in way where the only fertilizer and soil amendment required is the compost produced by the garden itself. He opposes even organic fertilizers, arguing that any commercially purchased organic fertilizer comes from robbing some other place of its essential nutrients. That makes sense to me, but I'm afraid that I will probably continue to fail on this score unless perhaps I move to a place with a bit more space and less rats. At least I can stay away from chemical fertilizers and poisons and look for organic products that are produced with as little envrionmental damage as possible.

There is a lot of discussion about companion plants - those that grow well together and those that don't. I have never given this much thought in my own gardens. I only ever devote a few square feet to any single kind of plant, and I do think a bit about planting in a way that will not rob neighbors of sun or moisture, but it goes deeper than that, and I have read enough about how plants' root systems interact with each other and with fungi and animals in the soil to believe that this deserves more consideration.

The one place where Mr. Jeavons lost me was his advocacy of planting by the phases of the moon. I suppose it can't hurt and certainly many farmers and gardners swear by it, but, I'm sorry, I'm not a believer, and I feel a little foolish even thinking about trying it.

More gardening knowledge.

Excellent resource! I'm going to have to add this one to my library - then maybe I'll be able to set up a garden that is actually productive. I love the step by step instructions (with illustrations) for everything from preparing your beds to preserving the harvest. They also provide outlines for different levels of expertise and space restrictions. A lovely, lovely book!

Good info on companion planting and phase of the moon planting. Also learned I had been planting seedlings wrong - should plant deeper, past their first set of leaves in the soil to make their stems stronger and less leggy.

I'm trying to grow a few new things this year, so I checked this out from the library again. It had some ideas that worked great last year, so hopefully it will work just as good with the new veggies.

Essential Gardening reference book.

Despite everything Steve Solomon said in Gardening when it counts (and what I said in my review of it), this is a great book. It explains to the beginner from start to finish how to make a great organic garden. Even if you already know everything about plant and ecology, you'll still want this book simply for the charts that have been compiled by Ecology Action. They tell you not just how far apart to plant your seeds or transplants (using the biointensive method), they give estimated yields year-by-year, estimated seed required, etc. And since all the figures are based on the biointensive 100-square-foot raised bed, it makes for easy calculations, even when planning a garden using other methods (with a bit of adjustment). It's an invaluable gardening reference.