Now that growing your own food is back in fashion — for health, financial, and environmental reasons — Mariano Bueno gives full practical details on how to grow vegetables alongside fruit trees and a variety of aromatic, medicinal and ornamental plants and herbs. He gives the individual requirements of common garden vegetables and popular fruit trees and provides a calendar that describes how to care for the kitchen garden through the gardening year. Explaining how to meet the particular challenges of growing edible plants in a hot, dry climate, with advice on matters such as irrigation, the book will be useful for those who live in a Mediterranean area or find themselves gardening in ever-hotter, dry climates. But it is also abundant in expertise on gardening in other climatic conditions, too, and is available here to an English-speaking audience for the first time.

When the Spanish began colonizing the Americas in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they brought with them the plants and foods of their homeland—wheat, melons, grapes, vegetables, and every kind of Mediterranean fruit. Missionaries and colonists introduced these plants to the native peoples of Mexico and the American Southwest, where they became staple crops alongside the corn, beans, and squash that had traditionally sustained the original Americans. This intermingling of Old and New World plants and foods was one of the most significant fusions in the history of international cuisine and gave rise to many of the foods that we so enjoy today. Gardens of New Spain tells the fascinating story of the diffusion of plants, gardens, agriculture, and cuisine from late medieval Spain to the colonial frontier of Hispanic America. Beginning in the Old World, William Dunmire describes how Spain came to adopt plants and their foods from the Fertile Crescent, Asia, and Africa. Crossing the Atlantic, he first examines the agricultural scene of Pre-Columbian Mexico and the Southwest. Then he traces the spread of plants and foods introduced from the Mediterranean to Spain’s settlements in Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California. In lively prose, Dunmire tells stories of the settlers, missionaries, and natives who blended their growing and eating practices into regional plantways and cuisines that live on today in every corner of America.

Mediterranean gardening offers a way of living in harmony with the earth without contrived effects or heavy spending. Born of long human experience on the land, it is frugal and fruitful, serves many purposes and gives many pleasures, year-round. Today, it adapts easily to our growing ecological awareness, to individual creativity and community sharing. Above all, it perpetuates a long-standing partnership between human beings and their environment, tested in Mediterranean countries for millennia. Mediterranean cooking grew from peasant roots but has become fashionable today all over the world without loss of local diversity. More than a mere trend, it has been widely adopted because of its underlying, enduring practices: it is seasonal, local, healthy and flavourful, economical but capable of great refinement. Mediterranean gardening has much the same base and similar benefits. Like the cuisine, Mediterranean gardening offers an approach that can be adapted to all climates and budgets, for better, sustainable living in harmony with the environment.

One of the best books for beginning and experienced vegetable gardeners, this clear, straightforward, easy-to-read gardening bestseller (over 500,000 copies sold) uses organic, biodynamic methods to produce large amounts of vegetables in very small spaces. To accommodate today's lifestyles, a garden needs to fit easily into a very small plot, take as little time as possible to maintain, require a minimum amount of water, and still produce prolifically. That's exactly what a postage stamp garden does. Postage stamp gardens are as little as 4 by 4 feet, and, after the initial soil preparation, they require very little extra work to produce a tremendous amount of vegetables--for instance, a 5-by-5-foot bed will produce a minimum of 200 pounds of vegetables. When first published 40 years ago, the postage stamp techniques, including closely planted beds rather than rows, vines and trailing plants grown vertically to free up space, and intercropping, were groundbreaking. Revised for an all new generation of gardeners, this edition includes brand new information on the variety of heirloom vegetables available today and how to grow them the postage stamp way. Now, in an ever busier world, the postage stamp intensive gardening method continues to be invaluable for gardeners who wish to weed, water, and work a whole lot less yet produce so much more.

Eat the Mediterranean way for life with recipes that nourish your appetite for fresh foods and endless excitement in the kitchen. In this follow-up to the bestselling The Complete Mediterranean Cookbook, America's Test Kitchen opens the Mediterranean pantry wide open. Anyone will love the broad range of ingredients from around the world (think: avocado, sweet potatoes, and tempeh) used in vibrant dishes with inspiring combinations. Take Spanish meatballs in a vegetarian direction with Quinoa Albóndigas and prepare dishes in surprising ways, like substituting the sweetness in a caprese salad by using sliced juicy persimmon to contrast the creamy cheese rather than tomatoes. The book is organized to emphasize the joy of the Mediterranean diet as a nourishing, sustainable lifestyle. Build your plate around both small- and entrée-size recipes in chapters covering Mostly Plants; Mainly Grains and Beans; and Meat, Fish, Eggs, and More. An impressive Whole Romanesco with Berbere and Tahini Sauce is a brilliant vegetable dinner. A Spiced Chickpea Gyro (with heat from Asian chili-garlic sauce and pepperoncini) wows fans of the Greek meat-filled sandwich. Carrot Salad with Rose Harissa is a beautiful accompaniment to a number of meals, from Lentils with Roasted Broccoli and Lemony Bread Crumbs to Tofu Kebabs. Fish and meat mingle with lively accompaniments in restaurant-quality dishes like Pan Seared Swordfish with Persimmon-Ginger Chutney and Grilled Short Ribs with Preserved Lemon-Almond Sauce. Along the way, build on the repertoire in The Complete Mediterranean Cookbook, going on a more in-depth tour of the eastern and southern Mediterranean through recipes like Chorba Frik, a savory Algerian freekeh soup, and Palestinian Maftoul, an aromatic couscous, chickpea, and chicken dish. Open your pantry and mind to eat with health, enjoyment, and abundance, for life.

The acclaimed cookbook author guides you from your garden to your dining table in this volume of Mediterranean recipes, organic gardening advice, and more. Patricia Moore-Pastides, author of Greek Revival: Cooking for Life, heads to the garden, offering guidance on how to cultivate a healthy diet from the ground up. An accomplished cook and public-health professional, Moore-Pastides presents all new recipes focused on bringing the bounty of the garden to the table in easy and accessible ways. The growing section provides all the information necessary for growing an exciting array of fruits and vegetables in containers, raised beds, or yard gardens. Topics include preparing the soil, composting to create organic fertilizer, watering, working with basic tools, and dealing with common pests and problems. Greek Revival from the Garden then invites the reader into the kitchen. This section assumes little prior cooking experience and includes kitchen safety, common equipment, and cooking methods. Moore-Pastides also shares fifty mouth-watering recipes featuring your harvest of homegrown vegetables, including garden gazpacho, curried butternut squash and apple soup, and nut crusted creamy almond fruit tart.

Author and herbalist Brittany Wood Nickerson understands that food is our most powerful medicine. In Recipes from the Herbalist’s Kitchen she reveals how the kitchen can be a place of true awakening for the senses and spirit, as well as deep nourishment for the body. With in-depth profiles of favorite culinary herbs such as dill, sage, basil, and mint, Nickerson offers fascinating insights into the healing properties of each herb and then shares 110 original recipes for scrumptious snacks, entrées, drinks, and desserts that are specially designed to meet the body’s needs for comfort, nourishment, energy, and support through seasonal changes. Foreword INDIES Gold Award Winner IACP Cookbook Awards Finalist