Rodale’s All-New Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening: The Indispensable Resource for Every Gardener edited

This is a very inspiring, practical, well illustrated, “how-I-did-it” book written by Anna Edey, who developed her own version of “bio-benign living design” and in the late 1970’s built a solar home and solar greenhouse on a cold, cloudy New England island (Martha’s Vineyard) where people said it couldn’t be done. Not only did she do it, both structures performed better than she had imagined in every way, from requiring no more heat in the greenhouse (even when it was -4F outside!) than was provided by the limited winter sun plus one hundred chickens and thirty angora rabbits, to creating a lush semi tropical interior living space, to providing an abundance of superior quality vegetables and garden greens year round. This produce provided Anna with an outstanding organic diet plus a generous income earned through selling her exceptional produce to upscale Bostonian and Martha’s Vineyard restaurants. As a green builder, I found her flush toilet composting system quite interesting, since some of my off-grid friends have stated that composting toilets are the least favored appliances in their green homes. Our current “modern” sewage treatment practice using septic systems in suburban areas causes high volumes of nitrates to leach into public waters and aquifers, polluting drinking waters and disrupting ecosystems. Anna’s alternate systems (utilized in other commercial structures in addition to her farm and home) capture these pollutants and remove them from her waste water, utilizing them instead as natural fertilizers for her bountiful gardens.