In today’s post, we are going to look at a couple of awesome online resources for free gardening books. As the copyright for books expires, several websites take the time to scan the books into the public domain. Many of these books are quite old; some are several hundred years old and others are more recent. And it’s not just free gardening books. You can find entire volumes of works by authors like Martin Luther and William Shakespeare. There are literally thousands of books available at the click of a mouse. Two fantastic resources are:

Project Gutenberg – here you can find titles such as:

Organic Gardener’s Composting by Steve Solomon Making a Rock Garden by H.S. Adams Wildflowers Worth Knowing by Neltje Blanchan Gardening Indoors and Under Glass by F.F. Rockwell Botanical Magazine, Volume 3 by William Curtis Wood and Garden by Gertrude Jekyll

The other resource, Soil and Health Library, is dedicated more to sustainable agriculture and holistic health. Some of the books available here include:

Soil Fertility and Animal Health by William Albrecht Biodynamics Journal The Natural Way of Farming: The Theory and Practice of Green Philosophy by M. Fukuoka The Organic Front by J. Rodale Grass Tetany by Andre Voisin Sustainable Soil Management: Soil System Guide by Preston Sullivan

It is so exciting to me that all of this knowledge is just waiting at our fingertips. I love the internet and all of the information that it has to offer but there is something special about books that were written before synthetic fertilizers and harmful chemicals were introduced to the world. Many of these authors worked the land when soil was the most important element of gardening. I hope that we can glean some of their wisdom and realize that humanity existed for thousands of years without the addition of Miracle-Gro and Roundup.

So, what will you download first? For me, I downloaded Soil Fertility and Animal Health. I’ve started reading it but keep getting pulled away by life’s demands. Let me know what free gardening book you’ll start with. Leave me a comment below or e-mail me. If you enjoy being part of the Mid-Atlantic Gardening community, join our e-mail list (upper right hand corner of this page), become a fan on Facebook and follow me at Twitter. Have a wonderful and blessed Easter weekend! Happy gardening!