Rainy days and cold nights are a perfect time for cozying up with a good gardening book for fresh inspiration. Lately we’ve had a few interesting releases come across our inboxes. Urban farming, seed saving and garden crafting are among the topics covered in some of the new titles. So, take a look, pick a favorite and kick back for a good read.
In this indispensable guide, Farm City author Novella Carpenter and Willow Rosenthal share their experience as successful urban farmers and provide practical blueprints-complete with rich visual material-for novice and experienced growers looking to bring the principles of ethical food to the city streets. The Essential Urban Farmer guides readers from day one to market day, advising on how to find the perfect site, design a landscape, and cultivate crops. For anyone who has ever grown herbs on windowsills, or tomatoes on fire escapes, this is an invaluable volume with the potential to change our menus, our health, and our cities forever.
Many gardeners fear chickens will peck away at their landscape, and chicken lovers often shy away from gardening for the same reason. But you can keep chickens and have a beautiful garden, too! Fresh eggs aren't the only benefit — chickens can actually help your garden grow and thrive, even as your garden does the same for your chickens.
In this essential handbook, award-winning garden designer Jessi Bloom covers everything a gardener needs to know, including chicken-keeping basics, simple garden plans to get you started, tips on attractive fencing options, the best plants and plants to avoid, and step-by-step instructions for getting your chicken garden up and running.
For anyone who wants a fabulous garden where colorful chickens happily roam, Free-Range Chicken Gardens is the guide that will bring the dream home to roost.
Diane Ott Whealy takes the reader gently by the hand and retraces a journey that began when her great-grandparents emigrated from Deuschendorf, Germany, and settled outside the tiny immigrant enclave of St. Lucas, in northeast Iowa. Two seeds that they carried with them on that journey became the motivation for a life’s work in preserving and protecting heirloom seed varieties.
This is the story about Seed Savers Exchange, the nation's premier nonprofit seed-saving organization, that began humbly as a simple exchange of seeds among passionate gardeners and how the membership has grown from a small coterie to more than thirteen thousand. The story captures what is best in the American spirit: the ability to dream and through hard work and perseverance inspire others to join the effort.
Check out one of these local book signings this weekend:
Strybing Arobretum
Class & Book Signing
Saturday, January 28
10:00 - 12:30
Common Ground
Class & Book Signing
Saturday, January 28
2:30 – 4:30
As surely as gardens change with the seasons, gardening is ever changing. New plants, techniques, materials, and lifestyles are constantly broadening the choices you have and reshaping the way you garden in the West. In response to this natural evolution, the editors of Sunset-the West's most trusted source of gardening information for more than 80 years-have completely redesigned and updated The Western Garden Book in this new 2012 Ninth Edition. Following the best-selling success of the previous editions of The Western Garden Book, this edition includes a fresh new look, thousands of color photographs, fresh illustrations, and an easy-to-follow format. Written by experts for gardeners in the West, this book is an indispensable reference for beginning and expert gardeners alike.
To celebrate its release, Sunset is giving away 50 copies in a contest that runs through February 12th. Tell Sunset in 75 words or less what you believe makes a great Western garden—and what distinguishes Western gardens from great gardens in other parts of the world. For contest rules, go to sunset.com/wgb-rules.
You can transform your garden into a handmade, personality-infused oasis. Author Lorene Edwards Forkner — part eco-friendly non-traditionalist, part crafty creative — will show you how.
Projects run the gamut from eye-catching structures, like a pergola made from plumbing pipes, to imaginative details, like a tree-hung chandelier for nighttime ambiance. You'll also find helpful plant guides to accompany projects: delectable herbs to fill a stacking container tower, stellar succulents for a vertical gutter garden, glorious flowering vines to climb a bamboo obelisk, and so much more.
Ready to get started? All you need are refreshingly simple, inexpensive materials — hardware store basics, salvaged goods, repurposed castoffs from cluttered basements — along with a little do-it-yourself spirit. With clear instructions and inspiring variations on every theme, this book is easy to follow and easy to love. Your journey to a made-from-scratch outdoor space starts here.
Thanks for the post and great tips… even I also think that hard work is the most important aspect of getting success.
ReplyDeletegreat list, i need some books to read....keep it up!!
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