A book for beginners

I'm thinking of writing a book for beginner gardeners - helping them work through failure and with nature. Do you think that books still have a place in a revenue stream?

One of the things that would have helped me with beginning gardening would be a plan.  For most of my life I grew tomatoes, because that's what my parents did and I knew how to can/process/cook with them.  I often planted without a plan for the reaping and would be caught with too many melon or a bunch of onion I couldn't store more than a couple weeks.  

As for the residual income question, I'd think so.  Hoping to write some myself.  I'd love to hear about your process and experiences if you do.

At the moment I'm thinking of writing the book that I wish I had read when I started out. Telling me to chill a bit and let plants be plants; that you don't have to follow the rules as they were probably written for a different gardening style anyway; that shit happens and gardens are allowed to be less than perfect. Pointing in the direction of deeper enquiry and helpfulness, whilst giving hopefully useful botany and soil advice but not going too deep. I'm quite enjoying putting together a skeleton, but really have no idea what I am doing! Essay writing was never my thing.

That approach sounds spot on honestly. The books I found most useful when starting out were the ones that said "look, most of this will go wrong and that's fine" rather than the ones with perfect month-by-month schedules that made me feel like I was failing every time something didn't follow the plan. The planning side Mac mentioned is a good one too, knowing what to actually do with the harvest before you're drowning in courgettes is something nobody tells you upfront.

Sometimes you write a book to change the world for the better (BWB).  And sometimes you write a book with the idea that almost nobody will read it, but you just gotta say your piece (thorns).  

I feel like it will be five years until i have completed the experiments for the automatic backyard food pump.  The core of it is a lot like what you are about to write:  growing food can be 100x easier than the public believes.  And 100x cheaper too.  And there is a soul building element when food just grows everywhere even if you neglect it.  Contrary to the whole gardening thing where you need phenomenal human discipline, observation, timing ...  plus the perfect fertilizers and irrigation.

And a huge twist of "grow what you ACTUALLY eat!"  Which translates to people growing stuff for supermarket shelf life, or foods they eat because they have a 90% subsidy, therefore they are cheap.  

And winter storage!  People are desperately trying to preserve a harvest so that they will have food in the winter.  I would like to see that transformed into preserving a harvest is a nice-to-have rather than a desperate-to-have.   The ability to harvest food all winter solves so much.  

paul wheaton wrote:
And a huge twist of "grow what you ACTUALLY eat!"  Which translates to people growing stuff for supermarket shelf life, or foods they eat because they have a 90% subsidy, therefore they are cheap.

 
I don't understand that translation. Is it that you believe people are trying to grow a duplication of what they can buy in the store? I grow food because it is lots better and lots cheaper than what the store has. We do actually grow a lot of what we actually eat.

paul wheaton wrote:And winter storage!  People are desperately trying to preserve a harvest so that they will have food in the winter.  I would like to see that transformed into preserving a harvest is a nice-to-have rather than a desperate-to-have.   The ability to harvest food all winter solves so much.  

Harvesting food in winter can be a nice little perk of gardening if you know what you are doing but I'd be hard pressed to get through a winter with only that.  I'm more comfortable with a pantry full of canned green beans and tomatoes along with a big bag of dry cowpeas, a bin full of sweet potatoes and few five-gallon buckets full of pecans, anything harvested fresh in January is icing on the cake but just the icing.  

"grow what you eat" v "eat what you grow"

I saw a beautiful video that was under 60 seconds.  They were putting up food for the winter.  Enough to feed a family of six.  There were things about the video where I felt snotty, but the worst was "we only grow food that we actually eat, not weird stuff."  

If you take away the subsidies, I think people would not buy bread at $50 per loaf. Nor any grain that is 10x the current price.  

So are they growing wheat, corn and soy?  After all, that's probably about 80% of what they eat.  

Further, they could cut their storage efforts by 80% if they grew foods that could be harvested in winter.  

About an hour ago I filled a bucket with sunchokes, walking onions and some dandelion greens.  The first two have been available all winter.  I barely touched them.  

Of course, the "grow what you eat" people would never grow weird stuff like sunchokes and walking onions.

I'd be hard pressed to get through a winter with only that.

Did somebody say "only that"?  I didn't say "only that".  

To be clear:  I advocate for foods that are prolific, need zero care, and can be harvested in winter.  ***AND*** "preserving a harvest is a nice-to-have rather than a desperate-to-have."  In other words, a bit of canning, dehydrating, etc.

Nancy Reading wrote:At the moment I'm thinking of writing the book that I wish I had read when I started out. Telling me to chill a bit and let plants be plants; that you don't have to follow the rules as they were probably written for a different gardening style anyway; that shit happens and gardens are allowed to be less than perfect. Pointing in the direction of deeper enquiry and helpfulness, whilst giving hopefully useful botany and soil advice but not going too deep. I'm quite enjoying putting together a skeleton, but really have no idea what I am doing! Essay writing was never my thing.

I like your thinking....broad encouragement rather than too detailed, exact guidelines....attitude, philosophy even?
How to observe and adapt.

As mentioned in another thread, One Straw Revolution was mostly an inspiration rather than a 'how to'.

What do you feel is missing from most books on how to garden?

What is the best advice you received when stating out gardening?

I like Eat what you grow, grow what you eat ...

Judith Browning wrote:How to observe and adapt.

Ooh yes, a strong dose of permaculture design in the garden. Probably fewer tools and more thinking.

As mentioned in another thread, One Straw Revolution was mostly an inspiration rather than a 'how to'.

Well I wouldn't mention my efforts in the same sentence as that shining light! When I started off I thought I needed a tool kit, but actually the philosophy of one straw was one thing that really did help me loads, but the thought of 'philosophy' turned me off actually reading that book for decades. So mine would be disguised as a gardening book .  One Straw Revolution would be one of the books to point people to for further reading, along with Joseph's Landrace gardening book and some others.

Anne Miller wrote:What do you feel is missing from most books on how to garden?

I actually think there is too much included in most books on how to garden. How to make your compost, how to space your seeds and when to sow them, and what to sow. Every garden (and gardener) is different, and I want people to be free to experiment to find what works for them, and not feel like they are failing, as Joao says above, because they don't follow the plan laid out.