Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre by Brett L. Markham

Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre by Brett L. Markham  



I give this book 8 out of 10 acorns.

This book is near and dear to my heart, as it was my first gardening book, and it really is a good one. I've read it two, if not three times. Since it was the first gardening book I read, it's the one I reference the most, simply because I remember where the information about mineral deficiencies, processing chickens, double digging, growing fruit trees, etc. is. This isn't a permaculture book, per se, as it focuses more on organic "square foot" style gardening. But intensive gardening like that does often have a place in a zone 1 garden. Markham does point out, however, that you'll get the most "bang for your buck" growing perennials like berries and fruit. It also also has plans for automatic chicken plucker. There's a lot of good information packed into this book, especially for beginner gardeners!

I really liked this book too. It has quite a good appraisal of other gardening methods and how they apply to small garden self-sufficiency- comparing Biodynamics and Square foot gardening and some other methods. I found this was really useful- I'd tried following various methods but this really made me think about what my requirements were.