The Holistic Orchard
Today, I'll take a brief
break from our forest gardening lunchtime series to plug our upcoming
book club. We'll start discussing the first chapter of The
Holistic Orchard
during our regular Wednesday lunch post next week, so I thought I'd try
to drum up interest by singing the praises of the author and book.
Michael Phillips is one
of the few gardening authors I've read who combines decades of hands-on
experience with a thorough understanding of ecology and permaculture
from the scientific and popular literature. His first book, The Apple
Grower, is so good
that I'm starting to feel the need to re-read it --- I felt like many
parts of the book went over my head on the first perusal and would help
me now that I've moved from being a beginner to an intermediate
fruit-grower. For comparison's sake, the only other gardening
authors I've wanted to reread lately are Paul
Stamets and Dave
Jacke and Eric Toensmeier.
I've only flipped
through The
Holistic Orchard
and read about ten pages so far, but I can already tell that this
second book is going to be as good as, if not better than, Phillips'
first. And it also feels like a dense (but readable) book that
could benefit from being bounced around a group. If you have any
interest in growing fruit trees or bushes, I highly recommend you join
the club in October and read along --- chances are The
Holistic Orchard
will open your eyes to a whole permaculture world you didn't even know
existed.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Thats so wild! Today I made a 5 hour round trip to a nursery that sells heirloom fruit trees, to buy my first apple trees. Guess what book the owner brought out and recommended for me to read? Small world, I guess! I couldn't purchase it today, but have it on my wish list. This nursery practices what Phillips writes about. Knowing that my apples have been grown in harmony with nature, plus the fact that they are grown at the same high elevation as my house (8000 feet) makes me feel very happy about my little trees. I can wait to plant them tomorrow!