Gift Certificates & Books

From the author of An Illustrated Guide to Growing Food On Your Balcony, comes a new illustrated book featuring one hundred and one edible and medicinal crops for containers, rooftops and small spaces. This new guide is just as accessible, practical and unpretentious as its predecessor.

Each intracately hand drawn plant illustration is accompanied by condensed yet thorough instructions for successful growing, making it easy and user-friendly for new gardeners. I am quite literally drawing from my experience as a gardener, spending the last eight years producing food on a rooftop with soil only seven inches deep. The focus is on productive and adaptable plants that are easy growing in various conditions. I am committed to publishing recommendations and that I can say from experience are reliable.

With the idea of being inclusive of Toronto's gardeners, I don't miss a number of culturally - specific plants that I don't commonly find in vegetable gardening books. These include vegetables such as jute leaves, long beans, cow peas, cress, fava beans, purslane, fenugreek, and okra, and herbs such as epazote, rau ram, and shiso. I have also included nutritious and medicinal "plants which grow themselves" such as dandelion, lambsquarters, chickweed, motherwort and red clover. The profile page about each plant explains everything from the required growing conditions, propagation method, planting calendar, and container size, to plant origin, troubleshooting, storage method, benefits and uses.

The book is tailored Southern Ontario growing conditions, though information is also transferable to urban areas elsewhere.

Publishing this book is part of a larger project of engaging people locally in growing their own food. The history of the first book speaks to the potential for this model to once again flourish. In the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) food in increasingly expensive (especially organics) and access to garden space is very limited. My new book will promote food growing as a tool for increased nutrition and gardening not as a hobby but as a path to self-sufficiency.