The food garden - Self-sufficiency and no tillage

Acting on your convictions every day? That's the choice Marie-Thérèse Thévard (Marie-Thé, to her friends) made some thirty years ago, when she successfully developed her food self-sufficiency by not tilling the soil in the Saguenay, her adopted region of Quebec. Le jardin vivrier is the story of his practices, convictions and quest to embody an ecological way of life based on independence from fossil fuels, resilience, healthy eating, permaculture, agroecology and community living. Organized in such a way as to take you month by month through all the steps required to create a thriving organic vegetable garden, this manual details the principles and techniques for growing vegetables, fruit, legumes and even cereals. The guiding principle of this approach is non-tillage. Faced with the soil depletion that is the lot of industrial agriculture, Marie-Thé defends "soil engineering", avoiding ploughing while enriching it with mulch. All this in a boreal climate, in a context considered difficult for market gardening.

Marie-Thé's many years of experience will teach you:

• The principles of permaculture, agroecology and non-tillage;
• Crop associations to create a living, resilient ecosystem;
• Techniques for protecting crops from the cold;
• Biological ways to get rid of major pests;
• A toolbox for organizing your garden (storage, tools, sowing, planting and harvesting schedules);
• What you need to know about raising poultry. Written by Marie-Thé's daughter, Le jardin vivrier is the essential manual for making a success of your no-till food garden and gradually achieving food self-sufficiency. Richly illustrated with diagrams and photos, this book is a must-have for ecological gardening.

Marie Thévard - Éditions Écosociété - 384 pages