The Mittleider Gardening Course

The most educationally-sound Mittleider gardening book available anywhere.

Grow 5-10 Times More Food from Your Garden with Less Space, Less Work, Less Cost, Less Water and No Weeds!

With The Mittleider Gardening Course, yields are incredibly higher than hydroponic gardening, bucket gardening, lasagna gardening, and back to eden gardening.

The purpose of The Mittleider Gardening Course is to help you take advantage of Dr. Jacob R. Mittleider’s 55 years of gardening experience so you can be a successful gardener – a garden genius in your own right. Dr. Mittleider strongly believes the best way to become an expert gardener is by doing. So this Mittleider gardening book is designed to help you do just that.

The Mittleider Gardening Course. Edited, revised and updated by James B. Kennard, with many revisions, updates, and improvements incorporated right into the pages, and new appendices including illustrations of an inexpensive and effective in-the-garden greenhouse.

We believe this this Mittleider gardening book is the best gardening course on the planet!  The first printing was a collaboration between several BYU Educators and Dr. Mittleider, and this edition has the benefit of an additional 15 years’ experience and wisdom.

This Mittleider gardening book provides simple straight-forward instruction and illustrations on every element of the Mittleider System of growing.  Teaches all the basic topics plus 15 advanced topics, such as cold-weather gardening, pruning for maximum yields, growing plants vertically, solutions to common gardening problems such as controlling bugs and diseases, understanding fertilizers, home seedling production, building an inexpensive greenhouse and more.

Is the Mittleider Method for me?

Ask yourself the following questions to decide if the Mittleider Method is for you:

Do you want to:

• produce a large quanitity of food in a small area of land?
• minimize gardening time and effort?
• garden with only simple gardening tools (so I won’t need to invest in expensive equipment)?
• conserve water?
• achieve uniform plant growth and raise healthy, attractive plants?
• minimize weeding time?
• make sure my plants are getting the nutrients they need for optimum growth (no matter what my soil is like)?
• harvest two or three crops each year?
• grow any vegetable, in any climate, with minimal water and effort per unit of produce?

If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, the Mittleider Method is for you.

Read a Chapter

Download Chapter 16: Automated Watering (PDF, 356 KB) and learn how to install a simple PVC Mittleider Watering System.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: Soil-Bed Basics

1. Planning
2. Preparing
3. Planting
4. Watering
5. Fertilizing
6. Weeding
7. Harvesting

Part 3: Grow-Box Basics

1. Planning
2. Preparing
3. Planting
4. Watering
5. Fertilizing
6. Weeding
7. Harvesting

Part 4: Mittleider Advanced Topics

1. Caring for Climbing Plants
2. Automated Watering
3. Understanding Fertilizers
4. Nutritional Deficiencies
5. Problem Soils
6. Destructive Insects
7. Common Plant Diseases
8. Seedling Production
9. Cold-Weather Gardening

Appendix A: Soil-Bed Garden Genius Planning Forms

Appendix B: Grow-Box Garden Genius Planning Forms

Appendix C: Reference Tables for Planning Your Garden

Appendix D: Constructing a Seedhouse

Appendix E: Learn More References

Appendix F: Updates and Improvements – Too large to include on the page

Appendix G: How to Build & Use T-Frames, 4′-Wide Grow-Boxes, And In-The-Garden Greenhouse