Hide 

More and more home gardeners are discovering the rewards of growing their own vegetables. But along with the pleasures of homegrown produce come a host of problems: bugs, diseases, and mysterious ailments that don't have an obvious cause. What's a gardener to do?

Don't panic — help is at hand. What's Wrong With My Vegetable Garden? teaches you how to keep your vegetables healthy so they're less susceptible to attack, and when problems do occur, it shows you how to recognize the problem and find the right organic solution.

Among the book's highlights are:

• Clear information about how to team with nature to create the best growing conditions for your vegetables.
• Detailed portraits of the most commonly grown vegetables, including growth habit; information on the plant's season; temperature, soil, light, and water requirements; and best garden uses and planting techniques.
• Illustrated problem-solving guides that enable you to identify at a glance what's ailing your plant.
• Discussions of the most effective organic solutions, ranging from how to modify the growing conditions in your garden to how to cope with and eliminate specific pests and diseases.

Hide 

Find a hundred great ideas for any garden with Mother Earth News Guide to Organic Gardening, Third Edition. The third edition of Guide to Organic Gardening is packed with great advice, tips and photos to help you have the most bountiful garden yet.

This 100-page guide has everything you need to create the garden of your dreams. Everything from natural insect control to tomato cage plans, from fertilizer to growing berries is covered in this colorful, helpful guide. The editors of Mother Earth News have compiled the best gardening-related articles and put them all in this glossy-paged guide. Articles such as:

• Grow Cover Crops for the Best Garden Soil
• The 10 Worst Garden Weeds
• Free, Homemade Liquid Fertilizers
• Worms! Soil-Building Workhorses
• Grow Superb Strawberries
• Crunchy, Colorful Carrots
• And more!

Hide 

Take your pick: apples, pears, peaches, blueberries? For health- and money-conscious consumers, homegrown edibles are the way to go. While vegetable gardening has been the hot trend, fruit growing is now taking a bite out of the market. This timely and comprehensive book from gardening expert Lee Reich shows the way to successfully grow fruits that are delicious and nutritious, with information on more than 30 fruits and how to reap the most of their bounty.

Covering all topics from planning and planting to pruning and harvesting, this essential reference also discusses natural pest-control and fertilization methods, pollination, irrigation, and special techniques such as espalier and growing fruit in containers. A handy, encyclopedic listing of fruits provides in-depth information on individual fruit needs, care, and varieties, with a focus on all-natural growing techniques. With 150 photos and more than 50 illustrations, this highly visual guide is the book to pick up to keep your fruit crops thriving.

Want to read more? Preview this book: Planning a Fruit Garden.

Hide 

Grocery Gardening includes garden planning, planting, preparing, preserving and nutritional information for each of the more than twenty selected edibles. In addition to tips on when to harvest home grown vegetables, the authors offer advice on how to select the freshest produce at the local market, and select complementary ingredients to combine with your home-grown edibles. Jean Ann Van Krevelen, together with her team of food and gardening experts and their community of readers, encourage gardeners and non-gardeners alike to plan meals based on what is in season. Whether you buy local or grow your own, the recipes will delight your family with seasonal freshness. Also included is a chapter on preserving your harvest, with tips for freezing, drying, canning and preserving.

Hide 

Best-selling author and gardening columnist Marjorie Harris offers a timely and entertaining guide for gardeners at every stage of life. Whether you’re moving into your first apartment or condo, upgrading to a house, or downsizing to smaller digs, Harris shares the best tips on how to create a beautiful garden for any space — all on a budget.

The highly anticipated sequel to her popular book Thrifty: Living the Frugal Life with Style, Thrifty Gardening marries Harris’s passion for gardening with her thrifty lifestyle savvy so that everyone can create a natural oasis whatever their living situation is — and without breaking the bank.

Hide 

Millions of people now are gardening in America today. And the good news is that the "tipping point" for organic gardening is here to stay. Green is the new black. Grow Organic is an easy-to-read book that includes eight chapters on everything from soil management, to companion planting, to beneficial bugs for flowers and veggies. Each chapter contains quick tips for beginning gardeners and advanced quick tips in every chapter for experienced gardeners more than 250 in all. Co-authors Doug Oster and Jessica Walliser have nearly 50 years of gardening experience between them. Each chapter also includes "Tell-All" sections that share special methods they ve learned in their own gardens 'been there, done that' lessons.

Hide 

Swap the annuals for edibles, creating attractive beds and containers that both beautify the yard and provide a bounty of fresh produce. As a trained chef-turned-professional kitchen garden designer, Marta Teegen knows what a difference freshly harvested vegetables can make to a meal—and how easy it is to ensure seasonal vegetables are always available when you need them. She touts the joys of creating front yard–friendly raised beds and container gardens that take up only a small amount of space and look beautiful to boot, and shares ideas for tucking productive gardens in other small nooks and corners.

Teegen's unique cuisine-based planting methods mean herbs, vegetables, and edible flowers grow next to each other in commingled plots—quickly, reliably, and efficiently. You'll find more than 40 top picks for small-space vegetables that yield big and are trouble-free, plus a variety of menus and 50 recipes for fresh and delicious summer dishes. With food prices on the rise and concern over pesticide residues on produce ever present, the number of homeowners growing vegetables nearly doubled in the last year. Homegrown shows that even urban and suburban dwellers can grow their own vegetables in easy-to-tend plots and spaces.

Hide 

A classic among practical gardening guides, this reference has been thoroughly revised and updated, with almost twice as much text and nearly three times as many plants as are found in the celebrated first edition. Practical, how-to methods of creative plant propagation are displayed in an easy-to-follow format. Line drawings, charts, and lists help explain the basic principles for propagating your own plants at home. This handy text will show you how to enjoy the benefits and rewards of making more plants.

Hide 

Do you ever lament that you’d love to be able to garden more, but just don’t have the time? The demanding pace of modern life leaves little space for the pleasures of gardening. On the other hand, gardening itself could be the culprit: elaborate, traditional perennial borders; water-hungry or disease-prone plants; needy lawns; and high-maintenance plants that require staking or clipping all suck up precious hours.

Simply put, we need to start gardening in a whole new way. In this inspiring book, Val Easton shows exactly how to have a low-maintenance garden that doesn't sacrifice style. You won't have to give up your favorite plants or settle for expanses of ugly bark nuggets. You just have to unlearn some bad old habits and pick up some good new ones.

So, how do you go about making a "new" low-maintenance garden? First, design your garden with maintenance in mind—good-looking hardscape will both save weeding time and showcase your favorite plants. Second, simplify your garden routines—learn the most efficient planting and maintenance techniques and don't get stressed if everything isn't letter-perfect. Third, learn how to work with nature rather than against it. And finally, embrace home-grown fruits, herbs, and vegetables; well planted containers; and thoughtfully chosen plants.

The New Low-Maintenance Garden doesn't just tell you how to garden in a whole new way—it shows you, through profiles and beautiful photographs of real gardens that embody low-maintenance techniques.

The pressures of life are not likely to ease up anytime soon, but the lessons of this timely book will help you banish guilt over undone garden chores and revel in your garden successes.

Hide 

The urban landscape has swallowed vast swaths of prime farmland across North America. Imagine how much more self-reliant our communities would be if 30 million acres of lawns were made productive again. Permaculture is a practical way to apply ecological design principles to food, housing, and energy systems; making growing fruits, vegetables and livestock easier and more sustainable.

The Permaculture Handbook is a step-by-step, beautifully illustrated guide to creating resilient and prosperous households and neighborhoods, complemented by extensive case studies of three successful farmsteads and market gardens. This comprehensive manual casts garden farming as both an economic opportunity and a strategy for living well with less money. It shows how, by mimicking the intelligence of nature and applying appropriate technologies such as solar and environmental design, permaculture can:

• Create an abundance of fresh, nourishing local produce
• Reduce dependence on expensive, polluting fossil fuels
• Drought-proof our cities and countryside
• Convert waste into wealth