Back to Gardening - Chapter 1

This is the first installment of my book: "Back to Gardening". In this section I talk about why I'm writing this book, and why everyone who wants a garden and has access to land should give it a try.

Hey folks - just a quick note to explain why I’m releasing my book “serial style” here on Substack. The short version is that I figured I would never get it done unless I made a set of inescapable deadlines, so since I’ve been able to stick to the discipline of writing something every week for this newsletter for close to a year now, it made sense to simply work the book into that rotation. Each instalment might not be a full chapter, since some chapters are larger than others, but the goal is to pump out a meaningful installment on the first Tuesday of each month until it’s done. Since you are a paid subscriber, you get the book with your subscription! Please let me know what you think.

Back to Gardening: Growing Food The Easy Way With Organic Mulch

Introduction

I have chosen to write this book with the goal of providing a thorough guide for those relatively new to gardening on how to get started and be successful as backyard (or community plot) food gardeners. I am writing this book for a number of reasons:

a) I think that the practice of backyard food gardening has been largely lost among "modern" homeowners. We have lost our connection to the land and have forgotten that we can use it to produce food for ourselves.

b) It makes sense at this point in history – with rising food costs due to various macro-economic factors, to re-invigorate people's interest in growing their own food.

c) Walking through any retail garden center, it's clear that the majority of consumer activity is focused on ornamental gardening. Likewise, a good deal of gardening content available through mainstream media seems to have a similar concentration. In fact, it seems to me that over the last few decades, the shared social definition of “gardening” has been transformed - from the practice of subsistence that it had been since the Neolithic revolution thousands of years ago - to being generally viewed as a a practice of leisure and distraction. I want to change that shared definition back to something more resemblant of gardening’s pragmatic roots. Gardening is much more than a hobby - it is about humans, connecting with nature, to grow food.

d) Finally, I want to inspire people to learn about the organic mulch approach to gardening, because it is arguably the most cost effective, efficient, low-maintenance, sustainable, and ecologically responsible approach to gardening - and it is available to all home and community plot gardeners. Anyone who has access to land, and wants a source of inexpensive organic produce, will benefit from growing their own food in a garden that employs a organic mulch approach.