What many people buy
A countertop smart garden
$80–180 to start
plus about $30–120 a year in seed pods
- Clean and simple, right on the counter
- Mostly herbs and small greens, 6 to 12 at a time
- Needs an outlet, counter space and pods you keep buying
Mottainai: the old Japanese art of wasting nothing.
Fresh food from your windowsill, every week.
Free Food for Life is the whole garden, in order: 46 plants, from herbs and salad greens to tomatoes, potatoes, strawberries and a fruit tree in a pot. Make your own soil, save your own seed for next year, and fix what goes wrong. Your first harvest in about a week.
Three ways people start growing their own. Only one keeps going.
The one that keeps going
The whole garden, in order
Free Food for Life
$59$39
34% off
about 85 cents a plant
opens on your phone in 30 seconds
- 46 plants, from the windowsill to a fruit tree in a pot
- Starts with what's already in your kitchen
- Make your own soil, save your own seed for next year
- The honest list: which tricks work and which don't
- 30-day money-back guarantee
What most people watch
Free “regrow” videos
$0
and a lot of evenings
- Good for picking up one trick
- One trick at a time, never in order
- Many promise what never grows, like a whole lettuce from a stump
- Rarely say what to do when it goes wrong
Prices are typical 2026 retail ranges for popular countertop systems and their seed-pod refills.
What's inside
The whole garden, part by part.
65 chapters in seven parts, 486 pages, with large, clear type made for a phone. Every plant chapter shows where it fits, when to start, how long until you eat and what to do when it goes wrong. Pick the plants that fit your window and your yard: you don't have to grow all 46.
Start here — 3 chapters
From an empty windowsill to your first five pots.
- 01Imagine one year
- 02Your space, your sun and what fits it
- 03Soil and your first pots
Part I · The Kitchen — 3 chapters
The food that's already in your house.
- 04What grows again from scraps
- 05Seeds hiding in the pantry
- 06What the kitchen feeds back to the soil
Part II · The Curb — 2 chapters
Free soil, and free food for it.
- 07Soil from fallen leaves
- 08Feeding your pots without the store
Part III · The Plant Itself — 4 chapters
One plant that keeps making the next.
- 09Seeds or young plants: which to start with
- 10One plant makes the next
- 11Saving your own seed
- 12Keeping the harvest
Part IV · Each Other — 1 chapter
Gardening with the people around you.
- 13Give, trade, share: neighbors and seed libraries
Part V · When Something Goes Wrong — 4 chapters
Save the harvest before it's lost.
- 14Reading the signs
- 15Pests
- 16Diseases
- 17Critters and pets
Part VI · The Plants — 46 chapters
One chapter for every plant: where it fits, sun, season, harvest, what goes wrong and how to keep it going free.
Herbs Ch. 18–27
Mint, basil, chives, parsley, cilantro, shiso, rosemary, thyme, oregano, sage
Leafy greens Ch. 28–39
Pea shoots, celery, lettuce, arugula, spinach, collards, bok choy, mustard greens, kale, Swiss chard, cabbage, broccoli
Roots and bulbs Ch. 40–49
Green onions, ginger, radishes, garlic, carrots, beets, daikon, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes
Fruiting vegetables Ch. 50–55
Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, zucchini, winter squash
Beans and peas Ch. 56–58
Peas, beans, edamame
Fruits Ch. 59–63
Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, melons, fruit trees in pots
Part VII · The Circle — 2 chapters
A garden for the years ahead.
- 64Closing the season, your garden notebook
- 65A last word
Plus, at the back of the book
Everything you'll look up again.
- +More than 40 recipes, with a recipe index
- +A symptom index for the bad weeks
- +4 step-by-step drawings
- +A plain-English glossary
It starts with what's already in your kitchen.
Twelve of the 46 plants and methods in the book.
From the cutting boardCh. 40
Green Onion Roots
Cut it again in about a week: your first harvest, from the end you used to throw out.
From one store bunchCh. 19
Basil Stems
One store bunch, rooted in water, becomes a summer of plants.
From the vegetable binCh. 49
Sweet Potato Slips
One potato, a jar and a dozen new plants.
From the vegetable binCh. 41
Ginger
A small harvest at four months, all of it by ten.
From the recycling binCh. 9
The Milk Jug
Becomes a small greenhouse for sowing in late winter.
From the recycling binCh. 9
Paper Tubes
Pots that go into the ground with the seedling.
From the coffee filterCh. 6
Coffee Grounds
A good compost ingredient, and why not to tip them on the bed.
From the recycling binCh. 50
The Tomato in a Bottle
A micro-dwarf tomato on the balcony, the Japanese way.
From the pantryCh. 28
Pea Shoots
A cup of dried peas, a tray of greens in two to three weeks.
From the curbCh. 7
Leaf Mold
The free soil builder your street puts out at the curb.
From the kitchen scrapsCh. 6
Bokashi
Kitchen scraps fermented with bran, even meat and cooked food.
From the fireplaceCh. 8
Wood Ash
The dose, and the plants that must never get it.
The real pages
Nothing here is a mock-up. These are pages from the book, exactly as they open on your phone.
What the first readers did with it.
★★★★★
Finally, a gardening book that doesn’t lie to you
I’ve watched too many videos promising a whole head of lettuce from a stump. This book tells you straight out that it won’t happen, and then tells you what actually works. My green onions have been regrowing in a glass on the kitchen sill for three weeks now. Small thing, but it made my morning every day.
★★★★★
Written for people whose knees aren’t what they used to be
I had a bad back and assumed my gardening days were over. The chapter on the body changed my mind. Fill the bucket where it’s going to stay, put it on wheels, work standing at a table. I’ve now got basil, a cherry tomato and lettuce on my patio, all at waist height. My wife says I’m happier than I’ve been in years.
★★★★★
Thoughtful about health, which I appreciated
I’m on a blood thinner, and I was surprised and grateful that the book flags it on the kale and collard pages. Most gardening books never think about who’s actually reading them. It also says to cook pea shoots for older adults, which I didn’t know. It feels like it was written by someone who cares.
★★★★★
My grandson and I grew pea shoots from a bag of soup peas
Two weeks, a baking tray and a cup of dried peas from the back of the cupboard. He couldn’t believe they came from “the soup bag.” We’re doing beans next. The writing is calm and easy to follow, and the print is large enough that I don’t need my reading glasses for most of it.
Just imagine next July.
You go out with your coffee, push a finger into each pot and pick what's ready: basil from the railing, a handful of cherry tomatoes, lettuce that grows back after every cut. In the refrigerator there's a jar of envelopes, your own seed, labeled with the year. Next spring's garden is already in it.
Get the book
One book, 486 pages, for phone, tablet or computer. It opens the moment you check out.
Everything in one book
The whole garden, in order
Free Food for Life
$59$39
34% off
about 85 cents a plant
opens on your phone in 30 seconds
- 46 plants, one chapter each: where it fits, sun, season, harvest, what goes wrong and how to keep it going free
- Your first harvest in about a week, the 5 forgiving pots and the first 30 days, a week at a time
- Make your own soil and save your own seed for next year
- More than 40 recipes, 4 step drawings and a symptom index for the bad weeks
- 30-day money-back guarantee
30-day money-back guarantee, because if it doesn't earn its place in your kitchen, you shouldn't pay for it.
- You pay securely through Gumroad.
- The book opens on the next screen, ready to read.
- A copy goes to your email, to keep forever. No account, nothing ships.
From Masao Kobayashi. The reason I wrote this book: the most useful things in a garden are the ones people throw away, and nobody had put them in order, step by step. Watch the channel
Questions
I already watch the videos. What's in the book?
The videos give you one trick at a time. The book puts all 46 plants in order, from your first glass of water to your second year, with what to do when something goes wrong, so you can keep it open by the window while you work.
I kill every plant I touch. Is this for me?
Yes. It starts with the five plants that forgive every mistake, and your first harvest is a glass of green onions on the windowsill, which is very hard to get wrong.
Do I need a yard?
No. Every plant shows where it fits: windowsill, pot, big container or yard. A sunny windowsill alone grows green onions, pea shoots, mint, chives, parsley and lettuce.
My back and knees aren't what they were.
The book shows how to garden standing up: pots on a bench, a waist-high bed, fewer and bigger pots that need less watering, and tools that are easy on stiff hands.
What format is it?
A PDF that opens right after checkout, with large, clear type for a phone. It also reads on a tablet or computer, and you can print any page. Nothing to install, nothing ships.
What if it isn't for me?
Worst case, write to contactmasaokobayashi@gmail.com within 30 days and get every cent back. Fair enough?
