Life Sculpting Book

I was getting ready to make my first post about the topic of gardening. I felt compelled to post about McMahon's American Gardener. Personally, I cannot begin to even think about gardening without this book coming to my mind. It is the most selected book on my shelf. Let me tell you a little bit about it and why it is so dear to my experience here on this homestead. It ranks as a Life Sculpting Book on my homestead, perhaps it belongs on yours!
McMahon’s American Gardner by Bernard McMahon

I was initially intrigued by the fact that this book was written before the tractor, electricity, and petrochemicals. At the time we enjoyed historical re-creation as our main family hobby. Any tips and pointers into the “Old Ways” were much welcomed by me.

Originally published in 1806, Bernard McMahon describes his turn of the 19th-century gardening system. The book is first divided by month, then garden, then crop. McMahon writes about which plants or tasks need attention in the various areas around the gardens and lands. He not only speaks of when to do them but tells you the details of how and why. Here is the brief description from the title page.

Once I invested the time reading it, I fell in love with the content of this book. McMahon seems to be a kindred spirit of mine, but much before my time. This book took me beyond the gardens of my youth. He has challenged me to see my role in the garden in a different way.

I have created a tradition of sorts in January of cracking open this book and enjoying the reading of it until my hands get too busy outside in the spring and it falls to the side.

This book has sparked many an idea around my hobby farm and now more importantly on my homestead. I am an ”Oooh... lets experiment!” style gardener, often looking into the bigger geeky picture of things.

This book brings my head back down to the basics, it keeps me focused on some of the details I can be working ahead on, including ways I can use the material passing through my hands.

It has been invaluable in planning my homestead and all of the various garden bits I wish to put into place and production. I have already begun a cut flower garden, bulb beds, kitchen perennial garden, a fruit garden. Major leaps will be made in the veggie garden, orchard area and in what will become my garden of healing this year.

I endeavor to create a working record similar to this for my own land. A manual of the basics needed to thrive here upon my mountaintop and the woods rolling down from it.

This was a gem of a thrift store finds perhaps 20 years ago. I suspect that this printing was due to the high number of folks getting back to the land in the 1970’s as this edition is dated 1976.

A quick Google search shows a more current printing is also available.
https://books.google.com/books/about/AMER_GARDENERS_CAL_ADAPTED_TO.html?id=ZVRZvgAACAAJ

I was very tickled to find it listed on the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/americangardcal00mmahrich

I hope I have piqued your interest. This book gets my double thumbs up.

~All photos and text in this post are my own work unless otherwise noted or linked to original content~