The New Natural Food Garden A Comprehensive Guide to Growing a Bountiful Harvest with Less Work, in Partnership with Nature

by Bogwalker, Natalie; Lieberman, Chloe; George-Warren, De-Lesslin Roo

• ISBN13: 9781635869408
• ISBN10: 1635869404
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781635869415
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2026-03-24
• Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
• More Book Details

Summary

Grow an abundance of food with less work and more joywith this comprehensive, practical guide—whether you're a first-time gardener tending a few raised beds or a seasoned grower managing a large field.

Learn to observe, adapt, and make confident choices for your garden, climate, and lifestyle from organic gardening teachers with decades of experience. Featuring a warm, inviting writing style, easy-to-use charts and tables, and full-color photography. Inside, you’ll discover:

• Detailed step-by-step instructions that cover every step in the gardening process, from planning to harvesting. 
• 30+ vegetable profiles and growing guides for everything from tomatoes to winter squash, including pest management strategies and variety recommendations.
• Quick-reference tools including tables and charts for when to plant what, crop spacing, common cover crops, natural pest control methods, monthly tasks by region, and more.
• No-till techniques for nurturing healthy soil without digging, including over-cropping, solarization and tarping, sheet mulching, and more.
• Permaculture techniques for increasing yields, including mulching, companion planting, crop rotation, raised beds, container gardening, and agroecology.
• The "why" behind every technique so you can understand the principles and adapt them to your unique conditions, not just follow formulas.
• Real experience from real gardens, with honest assessments of different approaches based on trials across multiple climate zones.

Written by the founders of Growing Wise, the popular online gardening school, this book feels like learning from friends who've been exactly where you are.

Author Biography

Natalie Bogwalker is the founder of Wild Abundance, a school for permaculture, carpentry, and rewilding located near Asheville, North Carolina, teaching skills to thousands of students each year, both in person and online. Bogwalker and Wild Abundance have been featured in a wide variety of outlets, from The Washington Post and Better Homes and Gardens to the Permaculture Podcast. 

Chloe Lieberman is co-director of the Wild Abundance Online Gardening School. She has been passionate about food and farming for more than 20 years, with a special love for the interactions between human communities and their food systems. She studied Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at UC Santa Cruz, and has learned and practiced gardening in five countries. 

Table of Contents

Preface: From Catawba tribal citizen, Delessin George Warren

Part 1: Planning and Growing Your Garden

Chapter 1: Three Gardeners Walk into a Bar
• The Farce of the “One Right Way”
• Why Gardening Matters
• Who we are and Where we are Coming From
• Introduction to Permaculture and Vegetable Gardening
• Permaculture Principles Applied to Annual Vegetable Gardening
• Regional Appropriateness of This Book
• How to Use This Material: Getting Started

Chapter 2: Designing and Planning your Garden
• Holistic Inquiry Exercise: Why Do You Really Want to Garden
• The Distinction Between Garden Planning and Garden Design
• What a Garden Needs
• Garden Location and Layout
• Beds vs. Rows
• Styles of Garden Beds: Flat, Raised, Sunken
• Raised Bed Options
• Terraces and Terracing
• Container Gardening
• What Vegetables to Plant
• Step-by-Step Guide: How Much to Plant and Where

Chapter 3: Tools and How to Use Them
• Tool Quality, Maintenance, and Care
• Bare Bones Tools
• Tools to Tend the Gardener
• Small Hand Tools
• Tools for Moving Things Around
• The Magical World of Hoes
• Big Digging Tools

Chapter 4: Starting a Garden From Grass
• Different Ways to Transform Grass into a Growing Space
• Plop Down a Raised Bed or Container Garden with All Imported Materials
• Double Digging (and Single Digging Option)
• Tilling with Tractor or Tiller
• Sheet Mulching/ Lasagna Gardening
• Solarization and Occultation - Basic
• Solarizing and Occultation - Supreme
• Solarization and Occultation - Supreme into Raised Beds
• Bogwalker’s Badass Topsoil Technique
• Getting Soil Ready for Seeds and Plants

Chapter 5: Soil, Fertility, and Compost
• Soil 101
• How to Take a Soil Test and Why
• Fertility Overview
• Vegetable Fertility Needs
• Managing Fertility - What and When to Add?
• Compost and Worm Castings
• Manure
• Biochar
• Wood Ash
• Using Urine as a Fertilizer
• Store Bought Fertilizers and Amendments
• Cover Crops
• Making Compost
• Growing Mediums for Containers

Chapter 6: How to Plant a Seed and Get it to Grow
• The Magic of Seeds
• Germination and Seed Viability
• Ordering Seeds and How to Organize Them
• Overview of Planting Methods
• Setting Up a System for Growing Transplants
• Growing your Own Transplants
• Transplanting Baby Plants Into Bigger Pots and Into a Garden
• How to Buy Strong Transplants if You Don’t Want to or Can’t Grow Them Yourself
• Direct Sowing
• What Crops Do Well with Direct Sowing?
• Advantages of Direct Sowing
• Challenges of Direct Sowing
• Steps of direct sowing

Chapter 7: Caring for Plants When They are Growing
• Water and Irrigation
• Thinning
• Weeds and Weeding
• Mulch
• Trellises and Trellising
• Holistic Overview of Pests and Disease and How to Keep Plants Healthy
• Organic Pesticides and How to Use Them
• Feeding Growing Plants

Chapter 8: Harvesting and the End of the Growing Season
• Harvesting Overview
• Harvesting Methods: Leafs, Fruits, Roots, Seeds
• Post Harvest Processing
• Annual Vegetables Have a Lifespan

Part 2: The Vegetables
Arugula
Basil
Beans
Beets and Chard
Broccoli and Cauliflower
Cabbage
Carrots
Cilantro
Corn
Cucumbers
Daikon and Radishes
Dill
Eggplant
Garlic
Kale & Collards
Lettuce
Melons
Okra
Onions
Parsnips
Peas
Peppers and Chilis
Potatoes
Spinach
Sweet Potatoes
Tomatoes
Turnips and Rutabagas
Winter Squash and Pumpkins
Zucchini and Summer Squash
 
Appendix
• Soil Temperature Germination and Planting Chart
• Plant and Seed Spacing Chart
• Average Yields of Common Vegetables
• Our Favorite Varieties for Homestead Use
• Sources for Tools and Supplies
• Our Favorite Books and Other Resources
• List of Small Bioregional Seed Companies