This book arrived in my mailbox, as a promotional copy, while editing the interview with Michael Judd was underway. I found this book compliments Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist rather well. Michael's provides permaculture, edible landscaping, and projects you can explore, while Niki's adds to the different techniques you can use while also having gardens that look good and are functional. Within the cover are numerous different styles of gardens that you can explore in any and all environments. Though largely geared towards North America, you can use your knowledge of permaculture to adapt them to your local needs. If you are new to permaculture and interested in gardening, pick up this book along with Michael's to supplement your introductory reading, and so you can start to get your hands in the soil sooner. If you're an experienced permaculture practitioner, this book provides a number of designs that you can use as short-cuts to let you focus on the trickier parts of permaculture design. Wherever you are in your personal exploration of permaculture, I think this book is a good addition to a gardening, or permaculture, library.

Have you read this book? Want to let me know what you think? Leave a comment below. 

Neal from New Jersey wrote me a few days ago with the following questions.  I already had a chance to respond to him via email, so he could start working on this immediately, but this takes that response and expands on it a bit. 1) Is it bad to buy non-organic plants for your home garden? I know this isn't ideal, but since I wanted to get a few more veggies into the garden, I just bought a few from the local Agway. Now I'm wondering if that was a bad thing to do. 2) Should I get my soil tested to see how I can improve it 3) I understand there are a lot of things we can add to improve the soil such as manure (I can easily obtain horse manure where I live), veggie scraps, coffee grinds, etc. However, is it good to use these if we don't know if they're organic or not 4)Any tips on making/obtaining supplies to build a raised bed?

This is an article that mentions two of my favorite things: permaculture and Steve Solomon.  I was a bit skeptical about the author's supposition that the NPK of compost was around 1:1:1, but some further research on the web (Google), revealed it to appear to be accurate as a Back of the Envelope calculation.

You can read this article here:

https://www.vancouversun.com/health/Meal+time+your+garden/4969377/story.html

For a long debate on the NPK of Compost, here is a thread from the Garden Web forum:

https://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/soil/msg062204286359.html?71

And my favorite compost:

Dig My Earth