Living with the Earth, Volume 2 Food Crops and Forest Gardens

“This remarkable book is not just a manual for market gardeners; it’s a masterpiece.”—Huw Richards, Youtuber, author, and gardener

A highly detailed and beautifully illustrated guide to growing nutritious herbs, flowers, fruit and vegetables, ideal for the home grower and market gardener.

In 2006, Perrine and Charles Hervé-Gruyer set out on a mission to discover a new form of agriculture that provides organic crops and creates meaningful employment in the local community. Using a combination of biointensive methods and permaculture design, with they have named ‘ecoculture’, and backed by scientific research, resulted in their farm producing abundantly, sequestering carbon and freeing up land for Nature.

Perrine and Charles Hervé-Gruyer designed a farm in Normandy that is so productive it provides a living for five people whilst only cultivating just a small percentage of the land, leaving the rest for Nature. In Living with the Earth, Volume 1, they described the overarching principles and influences of ecology and permaculture and share how they work with Nature to create highly productive systems.

Living with the Earth, Volume 2 of this comprehensive series dives deep into the details. Subjects include:
• Growing methods
• Seeding & soil preparation
• Plant densities and replicable crop associations
• Tools, irrigation and harvesting
• Growing year-round
• Vegetables, fruits, microgreens, flowers, mushrooms, tree crops and forest gardens

Beautifully designed and full of useful, descriptive photographs, diagrams and charts, this manual provides a wealth of research and practical experience. These volumes are ground-breaking, with principles and practices that can be used on any scale. They are, however, of particular interest to small- to medium-scale farmers, horticulturalists, forest gardeners, agronomists, and market gardeners.