Gardening Resource Guide
Please enjoy this selection of my favorite gardening resources! Resources with an asterisk (*) are recommended for beginning gardeners. Click a topic to jump to that section, or scroll through to see them all.
Soil Science & Growing Healthy Soil
- “Introduction to Soil Series,” Santa Cruz Permaculture (articles) *
- “Soil Cultivation: Fundamental Concepts & Goals,” UCSC CASFS (article) *
- “Making Quality Compost,” UCSC CASFS (article)
- “Choosing and Using Cover Crops in the Home Garden and Orchard,” UCSC CASFS (article) *
- “Cover Cropping Talk and Q&A,” UCSC CASFS (video)
- “Preparing Garden Beds with Double Digging,” UCSC CASFS (video) *
- “Farm and Garden Bed Preparation with Orin Martin and Sky Demuro,” UCSC CASFS (video) *
- Teaming with Microbes by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis (book) *
Seeds & Propagation
- “Thumbing through Seed Catalogs with Orin Martin,” UCSC CASFS (video) *
- “Beginning Seed Starting,” UCSC CASFS (video). I highly recommend this webinar recording. *
- “Introduction to Seedling Containers,” UCSC CASFS (video) *
- “Introduction to filling seeding flats,” UCSC CASFS (video)
- “Introduction to sowing seeds in a flat,” UCSC CASFS (video)
- “Introduction to sowing into a ‘speedling’ tray,” UCSC CASFS (video)
- “Introduction to ‘pricking out’ starts,” UCSC CASFS (video)
- “Let’s Talk About Potting Up,” UCSC CASFS (video) *
- “Introduction to plant progression and hardening off,” UCSC CASFS (video) *
- “Organic Seedling Production for Small Farms,” UCSC CASFS (video)
- “Saving Seeds, Sustaining Our Communities,” UCSC CASFS (video)
Irrigation & Water
- “Irrigation Systems Overview,” UCSC Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems (video) *
- “Introduction to Watering in Starts and Seeds,” UCSC CASFS (video) *
- “Rainwater Harvesting Series,” Santa Cruz Permaculture (articles)
- Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Brad Lancaster (website, books)
Annual Vegetables, Flowers & Fruits
- “Guides for Beginning Specialty Crop Growers,” UCSC CASFS (PDF guides), including organic seedling production, fresh and dry beans, cut flowers, dry-farmed tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, winter squash, and more. Many of these guides are written for Central Coast of CA farmers, but much is applicable in other climates, as well.
- “Choosing, Growing, and Harvesting Cut Flowers,” UCSC CASFS (article) *
- “Organic Pepper Production: Soil Preparation to Harvest,” UCSC CASFS (video)
- “Organic Weed Management,” UCSC CASFS (video)
Perennial Fruits, Trees & Flowers
- “Blueberry Pruning Overview and Demonstration,” UCSC CASFS (video)
- “For the Fruit Grower,” UCSC CASFS (articles), numerous articles on backyard/small-scale orchard topics *
- The UCSC CASFS YouTube channel has numerous videos about fruit tree planting, care, pruning, and training with Chadwick Garden Manager Orin Martin. *
- “Rose Planting with Orin Martin,” UCSC CASFS (video) *
- Rose Primer: An Organic Approach to Rose Selection and Care by Orin Martin, UCSC CASFS (free e-book) *
- Fruit Trees for Every Garden by Orin Martin, UCSC CASFS (book) *
Medicinal & Culinary Herbs
Marketing Farm, Garden, and Value-Added Products
- Teaching Direct Marketing and Small Farm Viability, UCSC CASFS (book). I refer to the crop planning section in the CSA chapter annually.
- Raising Dough: The Complete Guide to Financing a Socially Responsible Food Business by Elizabeth Ü (book)
Indigenous Land Reparations & Regenerative Horticulture
- Native Land: learn whose ancestral land you’re on in North America
- LandBack: “putting Indigneous Lands back in Indigenous hands”
- “We Belong Here: Regenerative Horticulture” with Julie Cordero-Lamb, botanist, ethnobotanist, and traditional herbalist and practitioner of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) (video). I highly recommend this webinar recording. Inspiring, educational, and moving!
- “Podcast: Decolonization & Sudden Oak Life,” Santa Cruz Permaculture & The Archive of Interconnectedness (podcast)
- “Whitewashed Hope: A Message from 10+ Indigenous Leaders and Organizations”
- Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources by Kat Anderson (book)
- “Tending the Wild,” KCET (film series)
- Winona LaDuke’s Hemp & Heritage Farm
- Gather (film)
Black Land Reparations & Farming
Online Learning Communities
Folks to Follow for Education & Inspiration
- Coming soon!
Online Sources for Garden Supplies & Seeds
- Coming soon!
Resources for Santa Cruz, CA
- Coming soon!
Miscellaneous Gardening Resources
- “Introduction to hand-scale tools used at the UCSC Farm and Garden,” UCSC CASFS (video) *
- “For the Gardener publications,” UCSC CASFS (articles), which cover a wide range of topics. Some of these are articles are also listed above.
- Teaching Organic Farming & Gardening, UCSC CASFS (book)
- How to Grow More Vegetables than you ever thought possible on less land than you can imagine by John Jeavons *
- The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower’s Handbook for Small-Scale Organic Farming by J.M. Fortier (book)
I will continue to update this page as I come across new resources. Am I missing a resource or topic that you’d like to learn more about? Please let me know.