Book Review: Growing Food in the Southwest Mountains

Title: Growing Food in the Southwest Mountains, 3rd ed
Author: Lisa Rayner
Illustrator: Zackery Zdinak
ISBN: 0-971-9565-02
Publisher: Lifeweaver
Paperback: 113 plus appendices, 128 pages total
Price: approximately $12.95

As a newbie to permaculture and mountain gardening, this book has become my go-to source in my quest to turn our rocky mountain in southern New Mexico into a small homestead. We have 5 acres, most of it tilted, with dense clay soil and an acre of gravel right around the house. Good for a fire break,which we need, but ugly and pretty sterile. I have a big collection of books for gardening in the south, but they just don’t work here. However, when I found this little book, Growing Food in the Southwest Mountains, I started in an entirely new direction with gardening.

The author, Lisa Rayner, gardens in Flagstaff, which is a climate very similar to ours. That is what prompted me to buy the book in the first place-it was for a niche that I could certainly identify with. The book is written specifically for gardening above 6,500 feet in Arizona, New Mexico, Southern Colorado, and Southern Utah, using permaculture techniques. This region is challenging for a variety of reasons--soils low in organic matter, semi-arid dry land with 25 inches or less of rainfall, strong sunlight, large day-night temperature changes, frequent high winds, and a collection of garden devouring varmints like you would not believe. I think they must be ravenous for succulent greens because it is so dry, with humidity often less than 10%. We had deer and rabbits in Texas, but they never descended on my garden like these four-legged swarms of locusts. We also have a real monsoon season, which you have to make the best of because the rest of the year can be pretty dry and water is precious. 

I think Lisa does a good job of addressing specific issues like high altitude sunlight, planting time tables, cold climate gardening, water conservation, building healthy soil and sheltering from wind. The appendices includes a glossary of lesser known food crops and a comprehensive list of resources for southwestern gardeners and for permaculture. Other permaculture books give much more detail about homestead permaculture methods, but do not address the specific challenges of gardening above 6,500 feet. I like this book because it addresses my particular niche very specifically. Well worth the money if you live in the mountains of the southwest, in my humble opinion.

I have no connection to the editor or the publisher and was not paid in any way for this review. It is my personal opinion, good, bad or indifferent.