My strictly regional focus combined with the reality that the climate west of the Cascades is radically different than the rest of the United States has made this vegetable gardening text virtually unknown to American gardeners east of the Cascades. It has been praised as the best regional garden book ever written. Its analysis of soil management, and critique of Rodale's version of the organic gardening and farming philosophy are also unique. I founded and ran Territorial Seed Company, a major, mail-order vegetable garden seed business; no other garden book has ever encompassed my experience with seeds and the seed world.
_Waterwise Gardening. _Seattle, Sasquatch Books, 1992.
How to grow vegetables without dependence on irrigation. Make your vegetables able to survive long periods of drought and still be very productive. My approach is extensive, old fashioned and contrarian, the opposite of today's intensive, modern, trendy postage-stamp living.
Turner, Frank Newman. Fertility, Pastures and Cover Crops Based on Nature's Own Balanced Organic Pasture Feeds. reprinted from: Faber and Faber, 1955. ed., San Diego: Rateaver, 1975.
An encouragement to farm using long rotations and green manuring systems from a follower of Albert Howard. Turner offered a remarkably sensible definition for soil fertility, in essence, "if my livestock stay healthy, live long, breed well, and continue doing so for at least four generations, then my soil was fertile."
Voisin, Andre. _Better Grassland Sward. _London: Crosby Lockwood and
Sons, Ltd., 1960.
The first half is an amazing survey of the role of the earthworm in soil fertility. The rest is just Voisin continuing on at his amazing best. No one interested in soil and health should remain unfamiliar with Voisin's intelligence. See also: Grass Tetany, Grass Productivity, and Soil, Grass and Cancer.