Books: Gardening & Vegetable Garden

Manual for the artisanal breeding of broiler chickens, laying hens and dairy goats.

In 2008, Dominic Lamontagne and his partner Amélie decided to settle in Sainte-Lucie-des-Laurentides with their two children, motivated by a desire to escape urban life, get away from it all, and learn to feed themselves. To their great surprise, the project encountered numerous regulatory obstacles. Despite these constraints, they managed to build a subsistence farm on less than one hectare of cleared land, consisting of a small number of dairy goats, laying hens, and broiler chickens.

Step by step, taking into account the legislative framework and current environmental standards, this practical guide, featuring over 250 illustrations by the author, teaches you how to:

• raising laying hens, broiler chickens and dairy goats on a plot of land of less than one hectare;
• favour seasonal livestock farming over grazing;
• construct a mobile cage for raising broiler chickens and a mobile chicken coop for raising laying hens, a table for milking goats and a small poultry slaughter station, with illustrations to support;
• produce, process and cook your own eggs, poultry and dairy products;
• prepare fresh cheese and make soap from goat's milk;
• create a self-sustaining ecosystem to ensure your subsistence.

Whether you're interested in small-scale farming or dream of owning a small farm and practicing diversified, non-mechanized, and ecological subsistence agriculture, L'Artisan fermier is an unparalleled source of information. Let's eat freely!

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Foreword by Marc Séguin and Claude Lamontagne

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Author: Dominic Lamontagne
Publisher: Ecosociété (Montreal)
Publication date: 2019
ISBN: 9782897195229

Is your yard neglected? Would you like to turn it into a garden, but don't know where to start? Are you unsure if you have a green thumb? Here's THE guide you need!

More than 80 projects to complete.

Is your yard neglected? Would you like to turn it into a garden, but don't know where to start? Are you unsure if you have a green thumb? Here's THE guide you need!

With supporting photos, this book will show you how to grow grass, plant a hedge, prune a rosebush, care for a climbing plant, repot a shrub, sow a vegetable garden, and dozens of projects that will transform your environment.

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Author: Collective
Publication date: February 2019
Publisher: Multimonde
Subject: Gardening and vegetable garden
ISBN: 9782897731304

As the transition to sustainable and organic agriculture accelerates, it was necessary to bring together theoretical concepts and account for the practices integrated into the overall approach that characterizes organic vegetable cultivation.

In these times, when a growing awareness of the links between human health and environmental health is driving the rapid increase in the consumption of organic products, this book fills the gap in training and reference manuals on their cultivation. As the transition to sustainable and organic agriculture accelerates, it was essential to bring together the theoretical concepts and describe the practices integrated into the holistic approach that characterizes organic vegetable farming.

This second edition is an unprecedented compendium of knowledge and field experience, as the author's travels have taken him to every region of Quebec and to the four corners of the world. A pioneer in organic and local agriculture, he develops techniques and offers various services to farmers and stakeholders. He also works particularly hard to internationalize training (study trips, courses and internships abroad, conferences with experts from various countries).

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Author: Denis La France
Publisher: Berger
Collection: Agricultural Science
Category: Environment and Ecology
Publication date: 2010-11
Pages: 525 pages
ISBN: 9782921416863
Language: French

Yes, growing vegetables can be easy and fruitful!
All you have to do is follow the rhythm of the seasons…

Black soap, a miracle and eco-friendly product for cleaning the whole house!

In this book you will find many tips and common-sense recipes for household products made with black soap.

In this book you will find many tips as well as common-sense recipes for household products made with black soap.

For cleaning indoors, outdoors, and even treating plants, black soap is an indispensable ally in our homes. It alone replaces more than a dozen everyday household cleaning products, while being natural, ecological, biodegradable, and very economical.

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Author: Isabelle Louet
Publisher: Massin Editions
Publication date: 2015
Pages: 79
ISBN: 978-2-7072-0906-1

Here is a manual of high-level applied permaculture agricultural techniques and design to create and cultivate a human-scale farm that is profitable but above all resilient (robust, adaptive, autonomous) and productive.

** New book with slight wear due to shipping.

Being able to be self-reliant in the face of life's challenges is a constant concern for Ben Falk, and it's one of the reasons for his current renown. Another reason stems from his methods and results in regenerating the previously damaged soils of his farm.

Directly applicable to the colder temperate regions of the globe, such as France or Canada, Ben Falk's farm has already garnered attention across the United States. Located in Vermont, it serves as a productive and functional model, proving that it is possible to live a modern, resilient, and regenerative rural life on just 4 hectares. Situated on a terraced slope that conventional farmers in the area consider worthless, Ben Falk's farm is teeming with life, including fruit trees, vegetables, mushrooms, ducks, sheep, hedgerows for firewood, eco-friendly buildings, ponds, and productive rice paddies. And yes, rice is possible thanks to Ben Falk's innovations!

This book will provide you with the many strategies tested by Ben Falk and his team at the Whole Systems Research Farm, as well as experiences from sites designed and developed by Ben Falk's design office. Illustrated with numerous color photographs and detailed design diagrams, this book will shed light on:

• site selection and the design process
• adapting to changes
• gravity-fed water management systems
• the use of compost made from urine, “human manure” and biochar
• the production and storage of firewood
• human health and strategies for producing nutrient-rich foods
• the integration of perennial crops and herbivorous animals

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Author: Ben Falk
Edition: Imagine a Hummingbird
Size: 21 cm x 29.7 cm
Pages: 290 color pages
Publication date: 03/2017
ISBN: 979-10-95250-02-9

It's the queen of our vegetable gardens! The favorite plant of gardeners, amateur or experienced.

The tomato!

It's the queen of our vegetable gardens! The favorite plant of gardeners, amateur or experienced! Red, yellow, green, and even black, or small, fleshy, round, oval, and juicy, tomatoes come in more than 15,000 varieties. And each one offers different flavors and aromas.

While paying tribute to this fruit-vegetable so beneficial to health, Lili Michaud tells us which varieties are best suited to our soils and climates. She offers us a vegetable gardening adventure that begins the moment the seeds are sown in pots and continues all the way to the table. The book includes valuable advice for:

• choose the varieties that best suit our tastes using a unique chart displaying more than 200 varieties;
• starting a crop, in pots or in the ground, and knowing how to maintain it;
• protect plants from diseases and harmful insects;
• recognize the right time to harvest;
• consider the best ways to cook our tomatoes;
• knowing how to preserve, dehydrate or freeze them.

The most daring gardeners will even find tricks to successfully graft and create their own new and exclusive variety.

As a bonus, around twenty healthy and delicious recipes.

For the enjoyment of gardeners, cooks and gourmets!

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Author: Lili Michaud
Publisher: MultiMondes Publishing
Dimensions: x cm (x in)
Page: 291, color
Publication date: April 2018
ISBN: 9782897730819
Language: French

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Key method of the permaculture vegetable garden

Raised bed gardening is an innovative method. Permaculture specialist Richard Wallner guides you step by step in creating, planting, and maintaining your raised beds, using detailed planting diagrams. Raised bed gardening offers numerous advantages: no tilling, no pesticides, no herbicides, no fertilizers, no back pain... and delicious, healthy, organic vegetables. Choose the vegetable garden of the future: sustainable, organic, and easy to maintain! Developed through a permaculture approach, a holistic and ecological method, raised bed gardening is also a solution for those who wish to implement sustainable development in their daily lives.

Author: Richard Wallner
Publisher: Rustica European Book
Publication date: 2019/06/26
Number of pages: 224
ISBN : 9782815314121

How to kill several birds with one stone while gardening?
This bible offers a guide to how to have an abundant garden that requires less physical and financial investment!

This book unveils a gardening approach called "The Respect Nature Approach," which allows you to live in perfect harmony with your environment. Just as everything in nature is interconnected, the Respect Nature Approach enables zero-waste gardening by intelligently using the resources of our environment to meet our gardening needs.
When properly understood and applied, everyone can garden as they please and have beautiful harvests of healthy fruits and vegetables without having to buy any expensive products, without any cost, with less effort, while managing at the source the organic matter available at home and around their home.
This book reveals at least eight eco-friendly ways, other than traditional composting, to make the most of organic matter. Kitchen scraps, tree leaves, grass clippings, crop residues, old foliage, weeds, aquatic plants, wood chips, ramial chipped wood (RCW), and more are all materials that can be easily used in your garden. While composting isn't suitable for everyone, the other methods of managing these materials revealed in this book will surprise you with their simplicity, their logical approach, and how much they will improve your gardening!

You can read an excerpt by clicking here: Excerpt from Vegetable Garden: doing more with less .

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Author: Serge Fortier
Publisher: PRATICO-PRATIQUES EDITIONS
Dimensions: 20 x 25.5 cm (8 x 10 in)
Page: 192, color
Publication date: February 2023
ISBN: 9782896588435

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Eight natural principles for effortless gardening

If you still need to buy compost, fertilizers, pesticides, topsoil or any other product to grow your plants, this little guide will interest you!

In nature, plants germinate, grow, flower, and produce fruit or wood to serve us, without us having to add anything to them. Why shouldn't it be the same in our flowerbeds?

The principles you will discover in this short guide prove to be the answer, even the truth, because they work. Failing to comply with them inevitably leads to consequences, consequences that cost us dearly in time, money, dissatisfaction, and environmental impact through product consumption and the resulting waste.

Are you ready to see the plant world with a different, but advantageously beneficial, perception?

Effortless gardening, yes, it's possible; if you let nature do the work for you! And rejoice, it does it for free for those who don't abuse it!

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Author: Serge Fortier
Edition: From the summit
Dimensions: 13 x 20 cm (5 x 8 in)
Page: 125, color
Publication date: March 2013
ISBN: 9782896960309

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This book is aimed at a wide audience of enthusiasts of both heirloom and modern vegetables, gourmets, as well as botanists, biologists, cooks, phytotherapists, agronomists, and more—whether beginners or experienced professionals. Amaranth, silverweed, burdock, cardoon, sow thistle, alexanders, rutabaga, Jerusalem artichoke, and wild thyme are just some of the "vegetables of yesterday and today" presented in this comprehensive and richly illustrated work. More than 150 plants are described in fact sheets that include botanical, historical, and etymological explanations, as well as medicinal and culinary information. Gardeners will also find information on the cultivation, harvesting, diseases, and pests of each vegetable. This reference work is complemented by a glossary of medicinal and culinary uses, and a botanical glossary lavishly illustrated with original watercolors.

Marie-Pierre Arvy, Doctor of Science, is a lecturer at the François-Rabelais University of Tours where she directs the Master of Science and Technology course "Taste and its Environment".

François Gallouin is a professor at the National Agronomic Institute Paris-Grignon. He holds a Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine, a Doctorate in Human Biology, a Doctorate in Science, a Doctorate in History and Philosophy of Science, and a vocational certificate in cooking. He also teaches at the Faculty of Sciences in Tours.

The perfect book for balconies and terraces.

The perfect book for balconies and terraces.

Experience micro-gardening! Planting, sowing, and growing vegetables, herbs, or edible flowers in containers has never been easier or more accessible. You can place them anywhere: on your balcony, your terrace, or even your roof!

The Container Garden provides relevant, original, and highly useful information on plant selection, planting, maintenance, pest control, harvesting, and preservation. For each type of edible plant you choose to grow, whether it's arugula, basil, or daylilies, the book specifies, for example, the minimum diameter and depth of the pot to use, as well as the volume of potting soil. It offers a wealth of advice to help you successfully grow your crops and enjoy the unparalleled taste of fresh, healthy food.

This practical guide invites you to unleash your inspiration and creativity. It promises great horticultural and… gastronomic pleasures.

You can read an excerpt by clicking here: Excerpt from the book The Potted Vegetable Garden

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Author: Bertrand Dumond
Publisher: MultiMondes Publishing
Dimensions: x cm (x in)
Page: 271, color
Publication date: March 2019
ISBN: 9782897731281
Language: French

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Edible gardening for all spaces.

You dream of growing your own fruits, vegetables, and herbs. But without a large plot of land, how can you do it? The new vegetable garden answers this question.

Contrary to popular belief, most vegetable plants thrive when grown in pots, containers, and other growing mediums. Even better: with the guidance of a master gardener, they flourish!

In this unique book, Albert Mondor offers ingenious solutions for growing a variety of edible plants on balconies, terraces, rooftops, or even walls. The numerous DIY projects, illustrated step by step, will allow novice and experienced gardeners alike to have a highly productive vegetable garden, regardless of the constraints of their space.

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Author: Albert Mondor
Publisher: Les Éditions du Journal
Page: 240
Publication date: April 2018
ISBN: 9782897610517

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Get involved without further delay in a viable, sustainable and rewarding approach to food self-sufficiency!

Surprisingly, the first place to stock up on seeds or tubers is your kitchen. Expired foods, such as sprouted potatoes or dried peas, can easily be used to produce new crops.

In this book, the author shares his experience and all the practical advice you'll need to plant, care for, and harvest your own organic fruits and vegetables. He guides you through a year-long process of creating a self-sufficient and economical vegetable garden: commercial composters are beyond your budget? Build your own! Don't have enough space at home to grow your own vegetables and fruits? Join a community garden and exchange information, tips, and tools with people in your neighborhood!

Whether you are a novice or experienced gardener, don't hesitate to get your hands dirty!

Author: Huw Richards
Publisher: MultiMondes (Quebec, Canada)
Publication date: 2020
Pages: 224
ISBN: 9782897732448
Language: French

The primary quality of an ecological garden is its biodiversity. Drawing on 30 years of research and experimentation in the field, the author answers the questions that arise when getting your hands dirty.

On sunny summer mornings, the number of insects that swarm there surprises anyone who strolls around: hoverflies and wasps forage on buckwheat flowers by the thousands; multicolored butterflies drink the nectar of echinaceas, cornflowers and liatris; bumblebees by the hundreds explore the flowers of cucurbits while bees load their baskets with pollen from the white clover established as ground cover between the vegetables; ladybugs devour all the aphids and mites they flush out; on the strongly veined cabbage leaves, lacewings with bright green wings tirelessly hunt bugs; cicadas hidden in the tall grass around the perimeter of the garden chirp without interruption.

A pair of mockingcats court each other, taking turns singing joyful serenades, while a flock of jays pierce the air with their shrill cries. Toads croak their throats. Rooted in the crumbly, living soil, countless plants unfurl their leaves of infinite shapes and colors to make the most of the sunlight.

Author: Yves Gagnon
Publication date: March 2013
Publisher: Colloïdales
Subject: Gardening
ISBN: 9782981027405

Now considered a reference in organic farming, this practical guide provides cultivation notes on more than 25 vegetables.

New edition

Building on the international success of the first edition of *The Market Gardener*, Jean-Martin Fortier continued to refine his diversified market gardening techniques and test tools to optimize his organic crops on small plots. In this revised and expanded edition, he generously shares his expertise once again to help those who dream of starting an organic farm and market gardeners who want to improve their cultivation practices. Yes, it is possible to grow organic vegetables intensively on less than one hectare, feed hundreds of people through short supply chains, and make your micro-farm profitable!

Now considered a benchmark in organic farming, this practical guide provides cultivation notes on more than 25 vegetables and teaches you, step by step, how to:

• choosing the location of a site by drawing inspiration from permaculture
• minimize investments at the start of your business
• use alternative machinery to the tractor
• cultivating in permanent beds with a minimal soil tillage approach
• fertilize your crops organically
• to effectively combat diseases and harmful insects
• weeding with the best tools
• extend the season by "forcing" its crops
• develop a cultural calendar
• to do good financial planning

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Preface by Laure Waridel
Illustrations by Marie Bilodeau

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Author: Jean-Martin Fortier
Publisher: Ecosociété (Montreal)
Publication date: 2015
Pages: 223
ISBN: 9782897192044

Discover how to make the most of your gardening space; learn how to plant vertically; know how to use hanging pots and raised beds; get an introduction to combining and alternating crops to obtain a rich variety of harvests throughout the seasons.

Do you have a balcony? A terrace? A small courtyard? You're in luck!

Discover how to make the most of your gardening space; learn how to plant vertically; know how to use hanging pots and raised beds; get an introduction to combining and alternating crops to obtain a rich variety of harvests throughout the seasons.

This book is brimming with tips and suggestions to help you easily create a bountiful mini-garden in just 1m². It presents a series of ingenious and simple projects, as well as a directory of the most advantageous plants to grow.

Enjoy the pleasure of growing and then savoring your favorite vegetables and berries!

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Author: By Collective
Publisher: MultiMondes (Quebec, Canada)
Publication date: March 23, 2017
Dimensions: 19 x 23 cm (7.5 x 9.1 in)
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9782897730253
Language: French

In this exciting new edition of Improved Square Foot Gardening, Mel Bartholomew reveals all his secrets and explains all his techniques.

Square foot gardening works; over two million gardeners will attest to that. That's the number of people who have tried Mel Bartholomew's innovative square foot method over the years, always with the same result: harvesting more in less space and requiring less work.

In this exciting new edition of Improved Square Foot Gardening, Mel Bartholomew reveals all his secrets and explains all his techniques. You'll be amazed at how simple it is: mix the ideal soil in a raised bed and carefully space your plants in 1-square-foot squares. There's no need to weed. Simply water, and you'll be rewarded with double to triple the harvest you'd get from a traditional row garden. In your yard, driveway, on a balcony, or on a rooftop, your square foot garden can be set up virtually anywhere. This splendid new edition also offers new information on popular topics like gardening with children and pest control.

Based on the simple principle of cultivating in squares rather than rows, author Mel Bartholomew's square foot gardening system has been adopted by two generations of enthusiastic gardeners who are looking for something very simple: a higher yield in a smaller space.

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Author: Mel Bartholomew
Publisher: Broquet
Publication date: 2014
Pages: 272
ISBN: 9782896544110

For fresh eggs every day

Do you have a little space in your backyard or garden and dream of having fresh eggs every day? Whether you live in the city or the suburbs, this dream isn't so far-fetched. At a time when we are increasingly concerned about the environment and want to prioritize healthy, locally sourced food, setting up a chicken coop in an urban setting is definitely part of the urban realities of today and tomorrow.

Thanks to the author's experience with laying hens and her extensive research on the subject, those unsure where to begin will find in this practical guide all the information and know-how needed to live harmoniously with chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus). In addition to familiarizing you with their anatomy and behavior, this owner's manual will teach you, among other things, how to:

• respect animal welfare;
• plan your project;
• choose healthy laying hens;
• build or buy a suitable chicken coop for 3 to 5 hens;
• taking care of your chickens in winter;
• respect their nutritional needs;
• reduce the risk of disease through prevention and biosecurity;
• to understand the formation of an egg and the principles of egg laying.

You will also learn how to approach elected officials and representatives in your municipality to collaborate on the implementation of urban chicken coop projects, community projects, or therapeutic projects with seniors. This manual provides you with all the tools and best practical advice to successfully complete your project. Since chickens are possibly among the best representatives of the "eat local" movement, " Chickens in My Backyard" is an invitation to integrate them into the broader landscape of urban agriculture and permaculture principles.

Without a solid structure—like the ones you'll find in this book—few communities will survive for long. Whether you put this knowledge to use or not, know that creating and living in a community is worth every bit of effort. […] This way of life is for political activists who want to live their solutions. To survive as a species, we must come together: we must surrender to the exhilarating life that community brings.

- Guillaume Tremblay, Mayor of Mascouche

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Author: Louise Arbour
Edition: ecosociety
Publication date: May 2020
Pages: 288
ISBN: 9782897194475
Language: French

Technical advice for growing organic vegetables during the winter.

A Market Gardener in Winter is a treasure trove of valuable and practical information for anyone wishing to grow a variety of organic vegetables in the middle of winter. Eliot Coleman explains his innovative and original techniques in detail.

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Author: Eliot Coleman
Publisher: ACTES SUD
Publication date: 2014
Pages: 216
ISBN: 9782330023584
Language: French