City Sprouts Winter Reading List

Gathered by: Megan Belongia, Conservation Education Program Coordinator

Edited by: Emily Ramelb, Communications + Development Manager

It’s wintertime again and, for those of us in the urban growing community, that means shorter (and colder!) days, a little less sunlight and, ultimately, daydreams of Springtime.

Kick the winter blues and dive into a new adventure in the comfort of your own home with City Sprouts’ winter reading list!

New(ish) Books

Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming

By: Liz Carlisle

Description: In Healing Grounds, Liz Carlisle tells the stories of Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and Asian American farmers who are reviving their ancestors’ methods of growing food—techniques long suppressed by the industrial food system. These farmers are restoring native prairies, nurturing beneficial fungi, and enriching soil health.

What Your Food Ate

By: David Montgomery & Anne Biklé

Description: David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé take us far beyond the well-worn adage to deliver a new truth: the roots of good health start on farms. What Your Food Ate marshals evidence from recent and forgotten science to illustrate how the health of the soil ripples through to that of crops, livestock, and ultimately us.

For the Love of Soil

By: Nicole Masters

Description: 'For the Love of Soil' is a land manager’s roadmap to healthy soil, revitalized food systems in challenging times. This book equips producers with knowledge, skills and insights to regenerate ecosystem health and grow farm profits.

We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy

By Natalie Baszile

Description: In this impressive anthology, Natalie Baszile brings together essays, poems, photographs, quotes, conversations, and first-person stories to examine black people’s connection to the American land from Emancipation to today.

Practical No-Till Farming: A Quick and Dirty Guide to Organic Vegetable and Flower Growing

By: Andrew Mefferd

Description: Andrew Mefferd, veteran farmer, author of The Organic No-Till Farming Revolution, and editor of Growing for Market magazine, brings you the ultimate guide to getting started with no-till farming.

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, & Shape our Futures

By: Merlin Sheldrake

Description: The book looks at fungi from a number of angles, including decomposition, fermentation, nutrient distribution, psilocybin production, the evolutionary role fungi play in plants, and the ways in which humans relate to the fungal kingdom.

Grow Your Soil!: Harness the Power of the Soil Food Web to Create Your Best Garden Ever

By: Diane Miessler

Description: Growing awareness of the importance of soil health means that microbes are on the minds of even the most casual gardeners.

Perennial Classics

Water: A Natural History

By: Alice Outwater

Description: An environmental engineer turned ecology writer relates the history of our waterways and her own growing understanding of why our waterways continue to be polluted—and what needs to be done to save this essential natural resource.

One-Straw Revolution

By: Masanobu Fukuoka

Description: Call it “Zen and the Art of Farming” or a “Little Green Book,” Masanobu Fukuoka’s manifesto about farming, eating, and the limits of human knowledge presents a radical challenge to the global systems we rely on for our food.

How to Grow More Vegetables* (and fruit, nuts, berries, grains, and other crops): *Than you ever thought possible on less land with Less Water Than You Can Imagine

By: John Jeavons

Description: Decades before the terms “eco-friendly” and “sustainable growing” entered the vernacular, How to Grow More Vegetables demonstrated that small-scale, high-yield, all-organic gardening methods could yield bountiful crops over multiple growing cycles using minimal resources in a suburban environment.