Essential tools for successful vegetable growers.
Often overlooked by both home and market gardeners, the right farm and garden tools are essential for cultivating success. Vegetable Garden Tools: A Grower's Guide will help you select the appropriate equipment for your unique situation, drawing on 'The Market Gardener Method'. This method, developed by Jean-Martin Fortier, is a proven formula for successful, small-scale, high-yield microfarming.
This highly accessible, succinct, and beautifully illustrated full-colour handbook features:
- Recommendations for garden tools and implements for every stage of cultivation from soil preparation and sowing to planting, crop maintenance, and harvesting.
- A focus on 'low-tech' hand tools that are inexpensive, sustainable, and allow for working the soil while respecting biodiversity. These tools increase productivity and efficiency, and improve ergonomics.
- Detailed information on the function, benefits, and operation of each piece of equipment, accompanied by over 100 explanatory drawings.
- Specific advice and tips to get the most out of your garden tools and farm equipment, whether you are using them in a family garden or on a diversified market farm.
Vegetable Garden Tools: A Grower's Guide is a keystone title in the Grower's Guides from the Market Gardener series. This curated collection of practical handbooks is designed to provide everyone from novice gardeners to seasoned horticulturalists and farmers with the information they need to grow better using Jean-Martin Fortier's principles of biointensive, regenerative agriculture at a human scale.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
A Few Words about My Background
What is the Fortier Method?
A Note about My Market Gardening "Toolbox"
Chapter 1: Preparing the Soil
Hand tools
Motorized tools
Tarps
Chapter 2: Planting Crops
Equipment for Seeding Under Shelter
Tools for Seeding Outside
Planting Equipment
Irrigation equipment
Crop Protection Tools
Chapter 3: Crop Maintenance and Harvest
Weeding Tools
Other Tools
Harvest Tools
Acknowledgments
About the Author :
Jean-Martin Fortier, a distinguished farmer, author, and educator, has been spearheading a movement in ecological agriculture for over twenty years. Since 2004, he and his wife have been operating Les Jardins de la Grelinette, an efficient and productive 2-acre microfarm. This farm is often referred to as a blueprint for effective human-scale organic farming.
In 2015, Jean-Martin established La Ferme des Quatre-Temps, a research farm dedicated to training apprentices and developing new strategies for market gardening, including year-round production. His pioneering methods are taught worldwide through the Market Gardener Institute, which is present in more than 90 countries.
Jean-Martin is the author of The Winter Market Gardener and The Market Gardener, which have sold over a quarter of a million copies in nine languages. His contributions to organic farming and regenerative agriculture have earned him the Meritorious Service Cross from the Governor General of Canada. He farms and lives in Quebec, Canada.
Pierre Nessmann was born to a family of Strasbourg market gardeners and holds a degree from the cole d'Horticulture de Geneve, in Switzerland. He has worked as a landscape gardener and a journalist for over 40 years. He is the assistant editor of the popular French gardening magazines Rustica Pratique and Rustica Weekly, covers gardening and DIY stories for the French television Network TF1, and currently hosts a gardening segment on the show Nous Voil Bien, on the French radio station RTL. He is the author of several books about vegetable growing, gardening, and landscaping. Pierre lives in Paris, France.
Flore Avram is a freelance artist and graphic designer specialising in scientific and botanical illustration. She has collaborated extensively with the French language children's publisher KiloWatt Editions, and with Inserm Magazine, a quarterly journal which explores health and biomedical research. Flore has earned several professional certifications in graphic design and scientific illustration from L'Ecole Estienne, the Municipal Graduate School of the Arts and Printing Industry. She also works as a Mediatrice en botanique at Jardin des Serres d'Auteuil, a unique French natural heritage site and eco-garden. She is based in Paris, France.
Review :
Jean-Martin Fortier's tomato guide is full of tips that will save new growers years of wasted effort. Mastering tomatoes—with this book—is a great place to start your farming career.
—Ben Hartman, author, The Lean Farm and The Lean Micro Farm
The contents of this book belie its small size; the book is packed with solid information, which, along with the layout and illustrations, make for an engaging and very pleasant read. This Grower's Guide has something for everyone, from seasoned gardeners and small farmers to newbies. Read it. Enjoy it. Learn from it.
— Lee Reich, PhD, scientist, farmdener (farmer/gardener hybrid), and author, Growing Figs in Cold Climates
Everything you need to know to grow amazing tomatoes.
— David R. Montgomery, co-author, What Your Food Ate and The Hidden Half of Nature
I was thrilled with this book. Tomatoes are so varied and there's much folklore about them. I love the illustrations and pored over them. The techniques and strategies are useful and appropriate. The information is well organised and the language is clear. It is such a useful addition to home gardeners and commercial growers.
—Rowe Morrow, Blue Mountains Permaculture Institute, author, Earth Restorer's Guide to Permaculture
Market gardening innovator Jean-Martin Fortier draws on his decades of experience in a difficult climate to share his strategies and techniques for producing high yields of sweet, juicy tomatoes.
—Darrell E. Frey, author, Bioshelter Market Garden, and co-author, The Food Forest Handbook
It's always fun and informative to read a seasoned grower's tips and tricks for any crop, and tomatoes are an important crop for market growers, with lots of steps to getting from seed to market. I know Jean-Martin has spent a lot of time working with tomato production, so it's great to see his methods laid down in this little guide book.
—Josh Volk, Slow Hand Farm, author, Compact Farms and Build Your Own Farm Tools
Praise for the Grower's Guides from the Market Gardener series
Jean-Martin Fortier has done it again! Incredibly beautiful, this series of pragmatic and professional instructional manuals makes it easy for anyone to start market gardening at a professional and regenerative level with a tailored focus on each aspect.
—Matt Powers, author, Regenerative Soil and Regenerative Soil Microscopy
Applying a market gardening mindset to your home garden will improve your yields and greatly reduce the amount of work involved. To do this, look no further than this series from Jean-Martin Fortier who is a pioneer in regenerative, biointensive, and organic market gardening.
—Rob and Michelle Avis, Verge Permaculture / 5th World, co-authors, Building Your Permaculture Property
