Here are some books of interest to people who want to produce healthy, plentiful food:
Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times
by Steve Solomon
This book, from the Mother Earth News Wiser Living
Series, is about how to grow an edible yard without major
skills or major outlays of effort or money - just what we're
talking about here, in other words.
Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and
Your Neighborhood into a Community
by Heather C. Flores
How (and why) to turn your lawn into a food garden.
Also includes a lot of information about how to help and
encourage your neighbors to do the same, with the
objective of creating a sustainable community around you.
All New Square Foot Gardening
by Mel Bartholomew
"Square foot gardening" is a way to get the maximum yield out
of small areas of land - such as a yard.
It tells you in detail how to build and raise crops is "raised
beds," areas (4'x4' and 4'x8' are the most common) built of
wood or cinder blocks and filled with a mix of compost, peat
moss, and filler such as vermiculite.
[I have to note that just plain dirt, properly fertilized and
checked for contaminants such as lead, works fine, too.]
How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits (and Fruits, Nuts,
Berries, Grains, and Other Crops) Than You Ever Thought
Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine
by John Jeavons
This book covers the same general way of gardening as
Square Foot Gardening (above), called biointensive
gardening. The
Ecology Action
web site has a PDF summary of it you can download, the
Farmer's Mini-Handbook.
Note: this group is in California, and is not
Ecology Action of Austin.
Texas Organic Vegetable Gardening
by J. Howard Garrett and C. Malcolm Beck
This is a guide to raising organic crops in Texas - and,
despite the title, it includes fruits as well as vegetables.
It also talks about Texas weather (what you can plant in what
parts of the state), Texas soil (what you may have to do in
order to make things grow), and Texas garden pests (how to
get rid of them without introducing poisons into your land).
The Organic Gardener's Handbook of Natural Insect and
Disease Control
edited by Barbara W. Ellis and Fern Marshall Bradley
You don't have to put poisons - herbicides and pesticides -
on your land to grow strong, healthy crops.
This book tells gardeners not only how to avoid getting
diseases and undesirable pests in their gardens, but how
to get rid of them safely.
Organic Gardening For Dummies
by The National Gardening Association
All right; I have to include this one, title notwithstanding.
It's an all-over introduction to gardening from an organic
perspective, including the newest and safest natural
fertilizers and pest control methods, composting, cultivation
without chemicals, and how to battle plant diseases.