Reddit mentions of The Urban Homestead (Expanded & Revised Edition): Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City (Process Self-reliance Series)

I am relatively new to this subject and these books have been useful for me:

The Urban Homestead A good introductory book that touches on a lot of relevant topics.

Gaia's Garden This is not specifically a homesteading book but it is a very useful book for growing food and learning about small scale permacultural design.

Four Season Harvest Another useful book for growing, especially for those of us in cold climates.

Country Wisdom & Know How A fun reference for many homestead topics.

Other how to books of an anarchistic nature:

• Making Stuff and Doing Things
  
  
• Recipes for Disaster
  
  There are a whole ton of books and military surplus gear out there, a lot of which can be found with a simple amazon or google search.
  
  I personally like this series of books because they are not bug out only. There is a lot out there that is more prepper/survivalist oriented. For a more rural perspective the Foxfire books a long with the Country Wisdom books and Mother Earth News
  
  In addition there is stuff like the Open Source Village Construction Set and quite a few other online resources like make and instructables that are the same deal just in a different format.
  
  A piece of advice would be not to get caught up in the cultural presentation of information there is a lot of great post-collapse, survivalist, whatever, information out there that is not presented as such.

https://extension.umd.edu/hgic

Consider signing up for gardening classes, lectures, and seminars. Try your local extension service, garden clubs, botanical gardens, and plant nurseries. Youtube has a wealth of information, but it may not apply to where you are. There's a regional aspect to growing.

Start gardening where you are right now. Skip trying to start things from seeds (it's July), and just see if you can keep some herbs alive in pots for now, like basil or mint. Learn to cook from scratch and how to can/preserve/ferment your food. Reddit, youtube, and the internet in general is full of countless resources on this and other related topics, everything from r/gifrecipes to r/cooking to /r/EatCheapAndHealthy/ to r/baking to r/homebrewing - and of course there's tons of garden-related subreddits.

Buying your actual piece of land is step #4209 of homesteading, not #1. Without experience, you'll have no way of evaluating whether the land actually fits what you want to do or not.

Here's two books to consider, to help you learn how to garden where you are currently -

https://www.amazon.com/Grow-Great-Grub-Organic-Food-from-Small-Spaces/dp/0307452018/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/The-Urban-Homestead-Expanded-Revised-Edition-Your-Guide-to-Self-Sufficient-Living-in-the-Heart-of-the-City-Process-Self-reliance-Series/dp/1934170100/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8

Great thanks! Is this it? - http://www.amazon.com/Urban-Homestead-Expanded-Revised-Edition/dp/1934170100/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373064286&sr=8-1&keywords=urban+homestead

Jiggery-pokery

The Urban Homestead is great. Check out their blog as well. http://urbanhomestead.org/

For comparable quality produce from the local farmer's market (or Whole-Paycheck Foods), yes, IF you eat it all. For regular old produce, probably not. It's pretty cheap for a HOBBY and it's a wonderfully practical skill to develop that you can't really but a price on - but if you don't love doing it, it's probably not worth the work...

I really liked the book The Urban Homestead for sustainable (aka, cheap) ways to grow food.

Here's what I'm doing (Caveat: I'm only just now finishing my first 'serious' garden season, but I've read a lot about this subject.):

• I get free mulch from my city (lucked out on this)
  
  
• Built my garden from salvaged materials (pulled out an old deck ramp, and re-did my front retaining wall)
  
  
• Buy all my soil and compost at the end of the season for $1.50/bag instead of $3 (I cannot deal with a truckload, and anyway it's not all that much cheaper from what I can find...).
  
  
• Started growing heirloom plants so I can save their seeds (pre-started plants get pretty expensive)
  
  
• Started homemade compost tumblers in round, locking top black cans (don't buy a commercial tumbler, they suck and break)
  
  
• Started a worm bin for fertilizer (fertilizer tea is the shit!) but I have yet to see if that one's panning out...looks good though!
  
  
• Next year I'm replanting my front with edible perennials/self seeders, that should hopefully manage themselves and keep me in noms with minimal effort for years.

Urban Homesteading!

• http://www.amazon.com/Urban-Homestead-Expanded-Revised-Edition/dp/1934170100/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=undefined&sr=8-1&keywords=your+urban+homestead
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-Place-Affordable-Sustainable/dp/0978866568/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410454876&sr=8-1&keywords=make+your+place
  
  Keep some chickens, grow a kitchen garden!
  
  This all would be my dream.