Epic Homesteading: Your Guide to Self-Sufficiency on a Modern, High-Tech, Backyard Homestead

This modestly helpful guide by gardener Espiritu (Grow Bag Gardening) offers advice on how readers can be more self-sufficient by growing their own food, harvesting solar power, and reusing water. Dedicating most of the volume to gardening, Espiritu encourages readers to consider their region’s average annual rainfall and the dates of the first and last frost when choosing crops for an outdoor plot, though the lack of guidance on what kinds of plants thrive in which climates feels like an oversight. Explaining various setups for growing plants indoors, he notes that such microgreens as wheatgrass and arugula can be planted in seed trays while strawberries and bush beans are well suited to space-efficient “grow towers” (soil basins designed to be stacked on top of each other). He provides a thorough overview of how to install a graywater system, which diverts drainage from a shower or washing machine to irrigate one’s garden. By contrast, his rundown of what to consider when buying a solar power system is mostly superficial, as when he warns that “if you don’t regularly see the sun, you won’t generate as much energy.” Though Espiritu is sometimes short on specifics, readers will find some good suggestions on what to consider when going green. It’s a competent introduction to living off the land. (Jan.)