My top favorite books for homesteading, gardening and medicinal herbs
When it comes to homestead or gardening books, I’m often asked what are my favorite or go-to garden resource books. Today I’m going to share with you my favorites that have been very helpful to me in my journey to seeking healthier choices, self-sufficiency, and making what I use from home. Also will include some herb books that will help with identifying and how to use them! I hope this will be as helpful to you as its been for me.
I hope our website provides you with ample amount of garden information and inspiration in the meantime. Yet I absolutely understand that there is something special about holding and reading a physical book. I love to learn and am constantly drawing inspiration from different resources. Plus, gardening books are not only great to have in your own personal library, but they make great gifts too! So please enjoy this list of books I have and will reference time and time again!
for herbs
- I like the Lost Book of Herbal Remedies as a very basic and detailed book to learn what’s growing in your own yard and around you. This book makes it easy to understand and even shows you the ways to use each herb, how to identify and store! I reference this book ALL THE TIME! You can buy it here.
2. I also like Rosemary Gladstars HERBAL RECIPES for Vibrant Health and reference this a lot for all kinds of how to medicinal applications of herbs from infused oils, shampoos, tea blends and even tinctures! She is a wealth of knowledge and is a substantial icon in the herbal medicine world! You can buy it here!
for gardening
- The New Self-Sufficient Gardener has an extensive gardening guide that includes planning, growing, storing and preserving your own garden product! It includes illustrations to go along with every plant, concept and project! Tucked toward the end of the book, there are also instructions for beekeeping, making cider and other preserves, and raising rabbits or chickens. You can buy it here.
2. Another one I absolutely LOVE is Mini Farming: Self Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre! This one has everything from animal husbandry, to growing food and medicine to different infrastructures on the land and what they’re used for to preserving the harvest in multiple ways! You can buy it here!
3. Teaming with Microbes is another one of my old favorites. I picked this up when I first got started with herbal medicine school as it was one a classmate recommended to really understand the concept of organic gardening and the importance of soil health. It will make you look at soil in a whole new and important perspective! This book is divided into two parts. Part one focuses on the science behind the the soil food web: how nutrients, worms, microbes, fungi and other microorganisms work together to sustain soil and plant life. It’s detailed-oriented, but fascinating and easy to follow. Part two of the book digs into how you can nourish the soil food web and maintain your yard or garden without harsh chemicals, relying on practices such as mulch, compost, and a no-till approach. If you’ve read my gardening section here on Seed and Sparrow these ideas should already sound familiar to you! You can grab it here!
4. Gaia’s Garden. If you’re interested in the concept of permaculture, this is the gardening book for you. Toby Hemenway’s best-selling ‘Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture” provides an in-depth but approachable look into sustainable permaculture design. The primary goal is to show the readers’ how to work with nature rather than against it, and harness the power of natural ecosystems to make gardening easy. Where everything is multi-functional and everything benefits everything. For instance, implementing bioswales, laundry-to-landscape to other grey-water systems, and encouraging beneficial insects, wildlife, native plants, and edible food forests to work in harmony and create balanced abundance. With over 1000 reviews , this gardening book has a 4.8 star rating on Amazon. You can buy it here.
5. Field Guide to Urban Gardening. This gardening book is ideal for folks who are working with a small garden space. Yet it provides tips, tools and information that are easily applied to any size garden space! Kevin Espiritu’s ‘Field Guide to Urban Gardening’ is jam-packed with useful ideas for container gardening, vertical gardening, and other compact garden styles. It’s perfect for any patio, balcony, or even indoor situation. He also includes a section on hydroponics, if that strikes your interest! Kevin is the creator behind Epic Gardening, and has a popular You Tube gardening channel and instagram as well. You can buy this book here.
6. Rodale Book of Composting. This gardening book is the ultimate resource to everything you need to know about compost. And if you’re not yet composting at home, it’s time to dive in and divert all your food scraps out of the landfill and into the garden! Any and everyone can and should compost! With compost you’re able to create free nutrient-rich fertilizer for your garden. The Rodale Book of Composting has tips for every level and type of composting, from small scale worm bins to large windrow piles of compost inputs, including what materials should or should not be composted and what nutrients they provide. At nearly 300 pages, it’s a fairly hefty book loaded with information. So I approach it more as a reference guide than one I would sit down to read cover-to-cover. It contains many helpful charts and diagrams. You can purchase here!
7. Vegetables Love Flowers. For those that want to combine the beauty of beautiful cut flowers with their food and learn the benefits of companion planting with tons of pictures to draw inspiration from, this book is the perfect source to learn more about that! My grandmother bought me this book a few years ago and it taught me a lot about companion planting with pollinator flowers and food and how you can have both! You can grab it here!
Natural household cleaning
1. The Natural Cleaning Handbook. I have LOVED this book and use it often for my own household needs! Actually a few recipes on my website comes from this book! My grandmother gifted me this book with the one above for Christmas and I cherish these book because they’re useful! You can purchase here! It includes homemade hand sanitizers, disinfectants, air purifiers and so much more!
preserving the garden harvest
1. BALL Complete Book of Home Preserving. I ordered this book last year for this upcoming canning season to go by after a homesteader I follow suggested this and it has everything you need to know to can safely! It is the gold standard to safe canning practices and will have you confidently preserving food for your family in no time! You can buy it here.
sourdough
1. Artisian Sourdough Made Simple. This has been so helpful to me and many other bread bakers as it gets down to the nitty gritty science of sourdough. You can purchase it here. Also, I’ve updated my extensive sourdough section here on the website as well to hopefully be a help to you on your sourdough journey!
animals
1. Raising Pastured Rabbits for Meat on a Small Scale. This book has been an eye opener for me in so many ways and has got me started on choosing my meat breeds and goes over everything in detail to housing options and the best breeds of meat, when to breed, why rabbits are a superior choice to chickens and allllllll the good stuff! You need this book, if even it just sits on your shelf at least you will have it when you want to decide on what meat you will raise on your homestead! You can get it here!
And there you have it! I hope this list was helpful to you and a few of these caught your eye! As a last bit of advice to new gardeners: go easy on yourself. There is SO much to learn, and I realize it is easy to feel overwhelmed. Just take it one day, plant, lesson, book or page at a time! I have already decided I am a student of life. And the beauty is in the journey, not the destination.