Growing Good Food: A Citizen's Guide to Backyard Farming

by Acadia Tucker, Joe Wirtheim (Illustrator)

Overview

Recipient of the GardenComm Emergent Communicator Award for 2023: Acadia Tucker

Growing Good Food is a beginner’s guide to growing your own herbs, fruits, and vegetables using organic and sustainable practices. It’s for home gardeners who want to raise food on their own patch of soil—all while cultivating a microbe-rich, carbon-sucking, regenerative foodscape.

Acadia Tucker, a regenerative farmer, gardener, and climate activist, invites us to think of gardening as civic action. By building organically-rich soil, even in a backyard, we can capture greenhouse gases in the very place we’re growing nutritious food.

To help us get started, Tucker drafts plans for gardeners who have a little ground or a lot of it. She offers advice on how to prep and clear land, cultivate healthy soil, plant food from seeds or starts, fend off pests and disease, and grow 21 popular perennials and annuals, including fruit trees, herbs, strawberries, peppers, tomatoes, cabbage, carrots, garlic, beans, peas, and potatoes.

Tucker also describes the climate changes taking place in our own backyards, and the various steps we can take to boost a garden’s resilience.

Growing Good Food includes calls to action and insights from leaders in the regenerative growing movement, including David Montgomery, Anne Biklé, Gabe Brown, Wendell Berry and Mary Berry, and Tim LaSalle. By the end of this book, you'll know how to grow some really good food, and build a healthier world, too.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780998862330
Publisher:	Stone Pier Press
Publication date:	10/31/2019
Pages:	168
Sales rank:	1,087,041
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Acadia Tucker is a regenerative farmer, climate activist, and author. Her books are a call to action to citizen gardeners everywhere, and lay the groundwork for planting an organic, regenerative garden. For her, this is gardening as if our future depends on it.

Before becoming an author, Acadia started a four-season organic market garden in Washington State inspired by farming pioneers Eliot Coleman and Jean-Martin Fortier. While managing the farm, Acadia grew 200 different food crops before heading back to school at the University of British Columbia to complete a Masters in Land and Water Systems.

She lives in Maine and New Hampshire with her farm dog, Nimbus, and grows hops to support locally sourced craft beer in New England, when she isn't growing food in her backyard, or in her dining room. Acadia is an Ambassador for regenerative agriculture for The Rodale Institute.

Table of Contents

Citizen Gardeners Unite 1

The Climate Crisis in Your Backyard

Northeast 15

Southeast 17

Midwest 19

Southern Great Plains 21

Northern Great Plains 23

Northwest 25

Southwest 27

Our Good Earth

How soil and plants draw down Co2 33

Cultivate good soil 35

Take measure of your soil 37

Clear your plot 38

Build your plant bed 39

Questions

How do I Know whether I have healthy soil? 43

I have contaminated soil. Can I still grow food in it? 43

How do I make compost to use in my garden? 45

What can I use for mulch? 50

What potting soil is best-suited to container gardening? 50

Plant Your Climate Victory Garden

Map your site 57

Choose resilient plants 58

Time your planting 62

Start your plants 64

Questions

How can I find plants that grow well where I live? 69

I have a tiny garden. How do I maximize my space? 70

Can I practice backyard carbon farming if I only have pots to plant in? 70

Plants For Backyard Carbon Farmers

Starter Perennials

Blackberry 77

Currant 80

Fruit trees 83

Herbs 87

Rhubarb 89

Strawberry 91

Walking Onion 93

Tender Perennials

Pepper 95

Tomato 97

Helping tender perennials survive winter 100

Favorite Garden Annuals

Beans 101

Cabbage 103

Carrot 105

Cucumber 107

Garlic 110

Kale 112

Lettuce 114

Peas 116

Potato 118

Radish 121

Spinach 123

Squash 125

Keep It Going

Spring: Feed the soil 130

Summer: Tend your garden 131

Fail: Prepare for winter 138

Questions

Do I need to use fertilizer in addition to compost? 141

My plants seem prone to disease. How do I save them? 145

My soil is too acidic or too basic. Haw do I balance it? 146

Tools for Backyard Carbon Farmers 148

Notes 153

Charts & Guides

Signs you have good soil 44

Compost materials 46

Choose your mulch 51

Perennial plant characteristics 60

Annual plant characteristics 62

Organic pest solutions 134

Seasonal checklist 140

Common diseases and organic controls 144

Contributors

Tim LaSalle 9

David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé 29

Mary Berry 53

Gabe Brown 73

Michael Weaver 127

Editorial Reviews

Acadia Tucker's books are both beautiful and practical. With the approachable but extensive blueprint that she provides, you can't help but be immediately empowered and inspired to join the carbon gardening movement.”—Annie Martin, Kiss the Ground

“Acadia's books are wonderful, timely, and elucidate the simple and the complex beautifully. I especially love the call to action of the climate victory garden. We are at a time in human history where we all must get involved to reclaim our food supply and halt climate chaos, and these guides are an inviting how-to. Brava!”—Ave Lambert, Director of Education, CUESA

An important read for any backyard grower who wants to make a positive impact on the climate in their own patch of dirt.”—Robyn Rosenfeldt, Pip Permaculture Magazine

“Tucker has a unique perspective on the climate crisis. Working as a farmer from Washington State to New Hampshire, she has seen radical, unpredicted shifts in climate which decimated sensitive annual crops but spared perennials. She has also seen the difference it makes to those crops when soil contains an abundance of organic material vs traditionally farmed soil which doesn’t. It’s fascinating to read.”—Todd Heft, author

“I’m obsessed with this book already, I might sell everything and buy a farm.”—Brittany Yu, Branch On Bowen Bookstore

"I love this book. Growing Good Food is great for beginning gardeners who care about the climate."—Lucy Biggers, Now This Media

"In this well-informed and educational call to action, Acadia Tucker set out to simplify regenerative gardening so that anyone can do it. She succeeded! With step-by-step instructions and chapters dedicated to your favorite veggies, readers will be inspired to grow food and save the planet, all from the comfort of your backyard."—Jes Walton, Food Campaigns Manager at Green America

 

"I would recommend Acadia’s new book to every gardener to learn how a person can impact the environment through one’s own garden.”—pegplant.com

"Acadia Tucker’s new book shows what it takes for beginners to throw themselves into regenerative agriculture."–Modern Farmer

"Growing Good Food is about working where we are, on a small scale, to improve the health of the land. Acadia Tucker tells us that what we do matters and if we have access to any piece of ground we can start addressing climate change. My father, Wendell Berry, says that this kind of work is radical now, when public attention is focused on global solutions. This work is what people are for."–Mary Berry

"Add this gardening book to your library. If we don’t get together and take care of the soil, our atmosphere is toast."–Tim LaSalle, Cofounder The Regenerative Agriculture Initiative, Chico State

From the Publisher