Gardening from the couch: Grocery Gardening
Talk about a collaborative effort.
Grocery Gardening, a new book that takes you from the seed packets to the canning jars, was written by four women who have only ever met on Twitter.
But they pooled their knowledge of gardening and cooking and, in 60 days, pulled together this remarkably complete book - from pest control to preserving.
They used their own social networks - blogs, tweets and Facebook pages - to gather the best information from others and now, presumeably, they will be able to sell the book to their combined 50,000 tweets, followers and friends!
Not only can you buy this book, you can interact with its authors, too.
Jean Ann Van Krevelen was the brains behind this project. She is a social media queen among garden and food writers, and she talked the publishers at Cool Springs Press into the idea.
She enlisted the help of Amanda Thomsen, Robin Ripley (from Calvert County in Maryland) and Teresa O'Connor, who in turn reached out to others in the growing network of gardeners and foodies.
The book covers 25 herbs, fruits and vegetables and there are growing instructions, common pests and diseases, nutritional information, recipes and preserving information - plus fun facts, including the fact that rhubarb is so acidic that it reacts with baking soda in recipes, making the results that much more light and fluffy.
To complete the whole social network loop, Grocery Gardening has its own Web site, where you can see whose recipes made the final cut and read more about the process. You can also find the blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter names of the authors.
And what is really cool? I, like, hang with these guys on Twitter and Facebook. We, um, you know, chat and I feel like I know they are, like, my buds!
Garden Variety readers! I have seen the future of publishing, and this is it!
Comments
Susan, you're right -- this is the future of publishing. It's exciting and haphazard at the same time. With blogs, tweets, etc., there's no need for fact-checking or proof-reading. Just wondering how much editing occurs when the same content moves to that ancient medium, print.
Yeah, Molly. And then columnists make stupid mistakes like I did this morning, and there is no net for us!!!! -- Susan
Posted by: Molly Glassman | January 31, 2010 9:28 AM
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Lucy
Posted by: Susan | February 10, 2010 11:17 PM