Resilience Gardens

It started as a rewrite of the USDA's 1943 Victory Gardens bulletin. The core advice held up: grow a few productive staples, plant shallow, water deep, harvest young and waste nothing. The fertilizer, tillage, pest-spray and canning advice did not, so this guide replaces them with soil testing, no-dig beds, integrated pest management and current safe preserving rules.

What's inside

1. Why grow food now
2. Permaculture principles in brief
3. Siting and design: zones, sectors, sun and slope
4. Building soil without digging
5. What to grow: annual staples and perennials
6. Three garden plans, from kitchen beds to homestead
7. Planting: bed spacing and soil temperature
8. Water: mulch, roof catchment, swales and drip
9. Pests and diseases, the IPM way
10. Tools
11. Harvest, curing, storage and seed saving
12. Safe preservation: canning, freezing, drying, fermenting
13. Resources

Download the PDF

© 2026 Steve Spence. Shared under CC BY-NC 4.0: copy, share and adapt it for non-commercial use with credit to Steve Spence and a link to kk4hfj.com. Please don't sell it.