CONTENTS

Acknowledgments xi
Introduction

xiii

1. Honoring the Land

Gardening in Natures ImageBut Which Nature and

Which Image? | Has Nature Thought of Everything? | On Being
a Member of a Keystone Species. | Organic and Beyond.

2. Honoring the Essential Nature of the Plants

11

Sun, Earth, Air, Water, Warmth. | What Can We Grow? |

Expected First and Last Frost Dates. | Sun and Shade Tolerance. |
Some Like It Hot; Some Like It Cold. | When to Plant
Everything. | Planting Guide.

3. Honoring Your Own Essential Nature

21

Discovering Your Inner Gardener. | Planning Versus

Spontaneity. | Structure, Labor, and Freedom.

4. Flexibility

27

Choosing Gardening Styles and Methods. | Getting the Most

from the Small Garden. | Volunteers. | How to Eat a Weed
Dandelions, Lambsquarters, Purslane. | The Preppers Garden.

5. Balance

43

Grand Versus Prosaic. | How Much Garden? | Limiting Factors.

| Too Much Tilling. | Too Much Watering. | Too Much
Fertilizer. | Too Many Pests. | Knowing When to Stop.

6. Non-Doing

59

Daring to Not Do. | On Not Tilling, Digging, Mowing, or Tending

Absolutely Everything. | Twenty-Four Good Places Not to Plant a Tree.
| Seven Reasons Not to Chop Down a Tree. | Thirty-Seven Reasons
for Not Planting Various Vegetables. | On Not Planting Purple Flowers
in Front of an Orange Brick House. | Flower-Patterned Shirts Attract
Bees. | A Weed by Any Other Name Is Usually Still a Weed.

7. BeginningTomatoes

71

Begin with Something You Really Love. | Tomato Kinds and Colors.
| Flavor Favorites. | Thirty Interesting Open-Pollinated Tomato
Varieties. | Starting Tomatoes from SeedGrowing Transplants.
| Potting Soil for Germinating Seeds and Starting Transplants. |
Preparing the Ground. | Hardening Off and Planting Transplants. |
Do Carrots Really Love Tomatoes?Garden Woman Adventures. |
Polycultures. | Supporting and Nurturing. | Watering and Mulching.
| Why It Will Soon Be Impossible to Grow Our Current Generation
of Heirloom Tomatoes and What to Do About ItLate Blight 101.
| Dealing with Late Blight. | Late Blight Resistant Hybrid Tomato
Varieties. | Late Blight Resistant Heirloom and Open-Pollinated
Varieties. | Why the Best-Flavored Tomato May Not Be the One
That Is Picked Vine-Ripe. | Using Green Tomatoes.

8. NurturingWeeding

111

Avoid, Delay, Remove. | Garden Woman Meets Pigweed with

Attitude. | The American Square Hoe. | Buying, Using, and
Sharpening the Peasant Hoe. | Buying, Using, and Sharpening the
Coleman Hoe. | Stirrup Hoes. | Wheel Hoes. | Electric Wheel
Hoe and Electric Tiller.

9. Non-KnowingSquash

127

Adventures in Ignorance. | The Perfect PolycultureSquash and

Overwintering Kale. | Candystick Dessert Delicata Squash. |
Lofthouse Landrace Moschata Squash. | Apologizing to a Squash. |
Butternut Squash Cookery. | Planting by the Moon. | Talking to Your
Plants. | True Understanding.

10. Effortless EffortThe Eat-All Greens Garden

151

The No-Labor GardenJust Sow and Harvest. | The Nutritionally

Most Important Home Garden Crop. | Leaves Versus Heads or
Stems. | The Essential Role of Cooking. | Using Greens in Soups
and Stews. | The Mess o Greens. | Harvesting and Handling Eat-All
Greens. | Freezing Eat-All Greens. | Dried Greens and Herbal Teas.
| Lactofermenting Greens. | Growing Eat-All Greens. | Eleven Great
Eat-All Greens Varieties.

11. Peas and Beans

181

Nitrogen Fixing and Legumes. | Dry Seeds Versus Edible Pods

Versus Green Seeds. | Pea Vine Types and Support. | Shelling Peas.
| Edible-Podded Peas. | Growing Peas. | Presoaking Legume Seed
Without Suffocating It. | Keep Peas and Beans Picked. | Harvesting
and Using Edible-Podded Peas. | Kinds of Bean VarietiesGreen,
Dry, Shelly. | Pole Versus Bush Green Beans. | Seed Color and Green
Bean Flavor. | Supporting Pole Beans. | Growing Beans. | Growing
Pole Beans on Corn. | Harvesting and Using Green Beans.

12. Joy

201

Jumping for Joy. | On Carrying Vegetables. | Weeding Meditation.

| Noticing. | Simple Pleasures. | Sunset.

13. CompletionSeeds

209

Cycles and Circles. | The Do-It-Yourself Seed Bank. | You Will

Not Fall Off the Edge of the Earth If You Dont Save All Your Own
Seed. | Preparing Seed for Long-Term Storage. | Containers for
Storing Seed. | Eight Seed-Saving Myths. | Creating Your Own
Modern Landraces. | Rejuvenating Heirloom Varieties. | Breeding
Crops for Organic Systems. | Dehybridizing HybridsDiseaseResistant Tomatoes. | Tomato Genes and Genetics. | Breeding the
Heirloom Tomatoes of Tomorrow.

Appendix. Seed Companies and Sources

245

Index

249

INTRODUCTION
believe the eat-all greens garden has the potential
to completely transform the growing of greens
in small or urban gardens. It also has commercial potential. I envision a frozen food industry of
the future that offers a dozen different delicious
frozen greens at prices considerably lower than
anything currently possible.
With the eat-all greens garden approach I also
finally achieve what has long been my dream
crops and methods that allow a gardener to do
nothing whatsoever after sowing the seed until it
is time to come back and harvest.
Almost every gardener loves and grows
tomatoes, and there is nothing that beats the
spectacular variety and intensity of flavor of
heirloom tomatoes. However, all our current
much-beloved heirloom tomato varieties are
now threatened by the spread of new and more
virulent lines of late blight, the same disease
that was the scourge of Ireland in the Great
Potato Famine. In parts of Europe it has already
become impossible to grow tomatoes outdoors
unless they have serious genetic blight resistance; likewise it is becoming difficult in some
years to grow tomatoes in some gardens on the
East Coast of the United States. It is likely that,
within the next decade, it will become impossible to grow most heirloom tomato varieties.
Few have the level of blight resistance that will
be needed to remain a workable crop in the
times that are coming. So in the tomato chapter
of this book, in addition to all the information
needed to choose and grow the most flavorful
varieties, I include a comprehensive section on
managing late blight in the organic garden as

The word tao includes the concepts of way,

path, method, subject, art, science, force, Spirit,
God, power, and essence. The Tao of Vegetable
Gardening is about the practical methods as well
as the deeper essence of gardening. In this book I
focus on growing food, especially tomatoes, green
beans, peas, and leafy greens, and I illustrate the
principles and practice of gardening primarily
in the context of these vegetables. This allows
me to discuss these crops in more depth than is
common in gardening books that cover a little bit
of everything. In my previous book, The Resilient
Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in
Uncertain Times, I covered the major staple garden
and homestead cropspotatoes, corn, dry beans,
squash, and eggs. That book also has major chapters on managing soil fertility and watering; those
topics are not repeated here.
For the beginning gardener I cover how to start,
grow, and plant transplants in the tomato chapter.
The same methods apply to all other transplants.
I cover how to direct-seed big and small seeds in
the chapters on peas and beans and on greens,
respectively. With the methods in those chapters
plus the general chapters in this book you can
plant and grow just about everything.
In this book I introduce the eat-all greens
garden approach to raising greens. I discovered
the approach almost by accident and have been
exploring and developing it further for more than
two decades. It is by far the easiest, most spacesaving and labor-efficient way of growing greens.
With this method a family can raise all their
summer greens as well as freeze and dry enough
greens for winter with even a tiny garden. I

xiii

The Tao of Vegetable Gardening

The Tao of Vegetable Gardening is largely organized

by important Taoist principles. The passages in
italics at the beginning of most chapters are from
Tao Te Ching, the twenty-five-hundred-year-old
classic of philosophical Taoism that is the most
translated book in the world other than the Bible.
These versions of the passages are from my own
translation Tao Te Ching: A Window to the Tao
through the Words of Lao Tzu. The Taoist stories
in The Tao of Vegetable Gardening, also my own
renditions of Taoist classics, are from my anthology Taoist Stories: A Window to the Tao through the
Tales of Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu.
The Tao of Vegetable Gardening is a presentation
of gardening through Taoism and an illustration
of Tao through gardening.

well as a comprehensive list of all known late

blight resistant tomato varieties. I also issue a
call to arms to all lovers of heirloom tomato
flavor to save these wonderful flavors by breeding new late blight resistant heirloom-style varieties of our ownthat is, to create the heirloom
tomatoes of tomorrow. And I provide all the
information about tomato genetics and breeding necessary to facilitate this effort.
The final chapter of the book focuses on seeds,
and includes sections on the Do-It-Yourself Seed
Bank, on preparing seed for long-term storage,
on dehybridizing hybrids, on creating your own
modern landraces, on genetically rejuvenating
heirloom varieties, and on breeding crops for
organic systems.

xiv