Fresh Food From Small Spaces: The Square Inch Gardener's Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting, and Sprouting by R. J. Ruppenthal Chelsea Green Publishing, 2009. ISBN 978-1-6035-8028-1.

Beware. This is a dangerous book. Once you have read it, you will not be able to say: "I don't have enough space (or light, or the right climate, or soil) to grow any food." You'll have to find some other excuse.

Faced with the recognition of climate change, energy depletion, and biofuel competition, even urban dwellers, says R.J. Ruppenthal, may have to "relearn basic food production skills in a hurry, if we are to survive and thrive in this new world" (p. x). Fresh Food From Small Spaces gives you a mini-course in urban food production and encourages you to practice many of the basic gardening techniques we normally associate with large suburban lots and small farms.

What can you grow and where can you grow it? According to Ruppenthal, you can grow most of the usual vegetables (potatoes, beans, carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, etc.) and many fruits and berries in containers on balconies, on windowsills, in tiny patio spaces, and in small city backyards. His list of grow-your-own food also includes other strategies you might not have thought of as "gardening," but are equally valuable: growing sprouts (more nutritious than some grains), making fermented foods such as yogurt and kefir (as well as sauerkraut and kimchi), and raising mushrooms. And then there are chickens and bees, and oh, yes, worms and compost. As I said, once you've read and considered Ruppenthal's suggestions, you have no excuse. If you're willing to put in the effort, he says, there's no such thing as "not enough" of whatever it takes to produce up to twenty percent of your own food and enable you to eat homegrown food (as his family does) 365 days a year.

But why bother? Why go to the trouble, when every urban dweller is within a stone's throw of a supermarket? Because, Ruppenthal says, our food supply is not as secure as we think, and in these uncertain times, it is prudent to prepare for short- and long-term disruptions in the food supply. The author says he's not a survivalist, but the strategies and methods he outlines in the final chapter may help urban and suburban residents function in the event of a major disruption, or in a time when cheap resources (oil and gas) are dwindling. And in the meantime, he suggests (and I agree) that we can all move closer to "sustainability living," even when resources are abundant. We need to take charge of our food, he says, and stop trusting industrial agriculture to feed us. (It can't, not forever.) We need to change the world, and we can only do it from the ground up.

An index might have made this passionate, highly readable book a little easier to use, but there are helpful notes and references, an excellent resource list, and most of the information you need to start on a path to square-inch gardening.

Go for it. You have no excuse.