The vegetable garden: Self-sufficiency and no tillage

Acting daily according to one's convictions? This is the choice Marie-Thérèse Thévard (Marie-Thé, to her friends) made about thirty years ago by successfully developing her food self-sufficiency by no-till farming in Saguenay, her adopted region of Quebec. The Food Garden is the story of her practices, convictions, and research to embody an ecological lifestyle based on independence from fossil fuels, resilience, healthy eating, permaculture, agroecology, and community living. Developed to follow month by month all the steps to achieve a thriving organic vegetable garden, this manual details the principles and techniques for growing vegetables, fruits, legumes, and even grains. One guiding principle guides her approach: no-till farming. Faced with the depletion of soils that is the lot of industrial agriculture, Marie-Thé defends "the genius of the soil," by avoiding plowing it while enriching it with mulch. All this in a boreal climate, in a context considered difficult for market gardening.

Marie-Thé's many years of experience will teach you:

The principles of permaculture, agroecology and no-till;
Crop associations to create a living and resilient ecosystem;
Techniques for protecting crops against cold;
Biological ways to get rid of major pests;
A toolbox to organize your garden (storage, tools, sowing, planting and harvesting calendars);
Vegetable preservation methods and seasonal recipes;
The essentials you need to know about poultry farming.

Written by Marie-Thé's daughter, The Food Garden is the essential manual for successfully growing a no-till food garden and gradually achieving food self-sufficiency. Richly illustrated with diagrams and photos, this book is a must-have for ecological gardening.