Customer Reviews

Solar Gardening: Growing Vegetables Year-Round the American Intensive Way (Real Goods Independent Living Book)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book has awesome information for anyone wanting to grow all their own food and become self sufficient.

Also lots of tips for extending the season even if you only grow a few favorites.

Includes growing information on different vegetables, organized into short and long season heat-loving or cold-hardy. Also building instructions for their solar appliances and even the difficulties and learning from their decades of experience growing all their own food.

One of the best gardening books I have ever read! Excellent information on solar gardening & instructions on how to construct the garden cones, frames & pods. They provide practical information in an easy to understand format. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in gardening.

This was a very informative book with lots of illustrations and advice. It is very specific for the US, but does have some universally applicable advice. It also is not very scalable from a compact kitchen garden, to a larger setup, which was what I was looking for.

The book also pumps you up for Organic foods and gets the ideas flowing. These people have passion, no doubt!! They also give some good tips on season extending, which I will probably try at the end of winter this year.

This is a good addition to any library on gardening, or home care!

My primary interest was for the solar pod design for winter growing. I was very disappointed.

I expected the designer/consultant to have tested his designs with some temperature measurements of air and soil, inside and out for some months. With that data I could extrapolate for my climate. The authors provide only max-min air temperature data for two days in mid March. I expected comparison data to a conventional cold frame, perhaps with a night time cover, but there is none. I also expected some seasonal performance data for the solar cones, say compared to cheaper wall-o-water devices or paper cloches, but again there is no testing, only vague glowing self appraisal mixed with 70's style solar philosophy.

While the curved pods are attractive looking, they have some serious solar design issues for winter use (glazing angle vs sun angle), and thus despite the book cover, the pods are only spring/fall extenders. The book says they started seeds on Feb. 20th, the two days in March shown with 48/22F and 40/10F max/mins. The insulated pod had lows of 36 and 34; could likely result in dormant growing conditions unless soil conditions are much better. Soil temperature is very important, but no data was given, not even for these two days. These two days of max-min air temperatures for the pod (with and without the angel hair insulation) was the only performance data I could find in the whole book.

The pods are not cheap. It's currently $265 for just the glazing for one 4x8 unit! I think most people would be better served with a plastic film design, perhaps with properly sloped south side, insulated north. Since you're outside and it's just a cold frame, the usual green house problem of stench of hot plastic would not be an issue.

The barrel used inside the pod for water-thermal storage is only shown once in a prototype but never discussed. We must assume it did not work (?) Again, it seems collecting some temperature data is too much trouble.

The angel hair insulation is original and very interesting, but there is zero information on it's light transmission except for aforementioned two days in March which shows a significant reduction of the high temperature- good for warm sunny days, bad for cloudy colder ones. The pods also lack any sort of automated cooling; which on a suddenly warm fall or spring afternoon can result in serious crop loss in just a few hours. Unless you want to be a slave to your cold frames, some sort of automated cooling scheme is essential. If you just lift the whole pod, you lose any protection from rabbits/rodents/squirrels, and then must resort to murder and mayhem.

The "American Intensive" method promoted just means saving space for walk ways around beds, in exchange for having to tend the garden perched on planks over the bed boxes. Perhaps this makes sense for young limber folks with good balance and with no space. Put another 10 years on the authors and they'll "invent" raised beds.

There is some good general gardening info, if that's what you were after. The writing style is enjoyable.

The book is very well edited and is professionally published. It is being professionally promoted as something it is not ("Growing Vegetables Year-Round" is the misleading subtitle), and it is sorely lacking in good solar design information and performance data.

I had checked it out from the library after reading it I bought it. This book appears to be based off of one couples life long experience in a colder northern clime. They have information for three basic USA climates that could be applied to probably anywhere in the world.

The solar appliances they suggest and show how to build are very expensive. The pods they recommend and show how to build are the most usable "applicance". I have read very little about these pods other than in this book. I like the basic idea, it is a shame that the material costs so much. Solar Cones of a different manufacture are available on-line and through ebay at this time. I have to wonder if a 5 gallon bucket could be used in place of the cone in some applications.

Many of the materials can be found here [...] the authors see it as an investment and I suppose I could as well.

They provide good detail on each plant that they are familiar with. When to plant it and or transplant it and even a bit on how to save seeds in the back of the book.

For more examples of similar season extending concepts check out.

[...]

Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long


If you want more info on saving seeds see.

Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners
Or

Saving Seeds: The Gardener's Guide to Growing and Storing Vegetable and Flower Seeds (A Down-to-Earth Gardening Book)

Both are good references on the subject of saving your own seeds.

FOLLOWUP:
Also check out high tunnels.. Here are some plans, simply google "usu high tunnel" and the first link should be the plans they seem to be the next great way to extend your seasons harvest.

I checked this book out from my local library and when I needed to return it I realized that it was such a great reference that I needed my own copy

I bought this for my husband because he checked it out from the library and was extremely reluctant to return it. I told him he was not allowed to steal from the library and bought it for him here (haha). He calls it "The Bible".