A firm favourite with viewers, Monty's infectious enthusiasm for plants, attention to the finer details of gardening technique and easy charm have seen the ratings soar. Here Monty invites us into the garden at Longmeadow, to show us how he created this beautiful garden, and how we can do the same in our own.Following the cycle of the seasons, Gardening at Longmeadow will introduce readers to the garden from the earliest snowdrops of January through the first splashes of colour in the Spring Garden, the electric summer displays of the Jewel Garden, the autumn harvest in the orchard, and on to a Christmas feast sourced from the vegetable gardens. Describing the magic of each area at different times of the year, Monty will explain the basics of what to do when and how to get the most from each plant. He'll talk through the essential techniques and more complex processes, accompanied by easy-to-follow, step-by-step photography.Longmeadow is a gardeners' garden, but this will be a book for gardening enthusiasts of all skill levels who have been inspired by what they've seen, and who would like to achieve something similar for themselves.

    “A new generation discovers grow-it-yourself dyes,” says the New York Times. And you don’t have to have a degree in chemistry to create your own natural dyes. It just takes a garden plot and a kitchen. A Garden to Dye For shows how super-simple it is to plant and grow a dyer’s garden and create beautiful dyes. Many of these plants may already be in our cutting, cottage or food gardens, ready for double duty. These special plants can fit right in with traditional garden themes. A Garden to Dye For features 40-plus plants that the gardener-crafter can grow for an all-natural, customized color palette. A dyer’s garden can be a mosaic of flowers, herbs, roots and fruits that lend us their pigments to beautify other areas of our lives. The richly photographed book is divided between the garden and the dye process, with garden layouts, plant profiles, dye extraction and uses, step-by-step recipes and original, engaging DIY projects. This is the book that bridges the topic of plant dyes to mainstream gardeners, the folks who enjoy growing the plants as much as using them in craft projects. www.agardentodyefor; and on Facebook: A Garden to Dye For

    Andrea Bellamy shares all the knowledge she’s gained from years of gardening small. You’ll learn how to find and assess a space, how to plan and build a garden, and how to sow, grow, and harvest the 60 best edible plants. This hardworking and enthusiastic guide will help you take advantage of the space you have—whether it’s a balcony, a patio, a plot in a community garden, or even a small yard—to create the food garden of your dreams.

    Drawing on insights gained from years of growing vegetables in Nova Scotia, Niki Jabbour shares her simple techniques for gardening throughout the year. Learn how to select the best varieties for each season, the art of succession planting, and how to build inexpensive structures to protect your crops from the elements. No matter where you live, you’ll soon enjoy a thriving vegetable garden year-round.

    But conventional beekeeping requires a significant investment and has a steep learning curve. The alternative? Consider beekeeping outside the box.The Thinking Beekeeper is the definitive do-it-yourself guide to natural beekeeping in top bar hives. Based on the concept of understanding and working with bees' natural systems as opposed to trying to subvert them, the advantages of this approach include:Simplicity, sustainability, and cost-effectivenessIncreased safety due to less heavy lifting and hive manipulationChemical-free colonies and healthy hivesTop bar hives can be located anywhere bees have access to forage, and they make ideal urban hives due to their small footprint.Emphasizing the intimate connection between our food systems, bees, and the well-being of the planet, The Thinking Beekeeper will appeal to the new breed of beekeeper who is less focused on maximizing honey yield, and more on ensuring the viability of the bee population now and in the coming years.Christy Hemenway is the owner and founder of Gold Star Honeybees, a complete resource for all things related to beekeeping in top-bar hives. A passionate bee-vangelist and advocate for natural, chemical-free beekeeping, Christy is a highly sought-after speaker, helping audiences to understand the integral connection between bees, food, human health, and the future of the planet.

    In this introductory guide to growing vegetables, Barbara Pleasant addresses common problems that first-time gardeners encounter. Using simple language and illustrated garden layouts, Pleasant shows you how to start, maintain, and eventually expand an organic vegetable garden in even the tiniest backyard. With handy tips on enriching soil, planting schedules, watering, fighting pests, and more, you’ll quickly discover how easy it is to enjoy your own homegrown vegetables.

    Learn how and where to find local foods, how to eat locally on a tight budget, what questions to ask at the farmers’ market, and how to grow your own food in small spaces. With shopping tips and simple guides to preparing what’s in season, The Locavore Way makes eating locally as simple as it is delicious.

    He also offers a comprehensive guide to the various pests and diseases of tomatoes and explains how best to avoid them. No other book offers such a detailed look at the specifics of growing tomatoes, with beautiful photographs and helpful tomato profiles throughout.

    Amateur gardeners wondering how to get started and veteran gardeners looking for new ideas will be inspired by Houbein’s practical, often charming, and always optimistic advice. One Magic Square includes:Earth-friendly tips, tricks, and solutions for establishing and maintaining an organic gardenIllustrated, annotated plans for 30 plots with different themes—including perennials and “pick-and-come-again” plants, anti-cancer and anti-oxidant-rich vegetables, and salad, pizza, pasta, and stir-fry ingredientsComprehensive information about every plant in every plotColor photographs of the author’s own garden—plus helpful illustrationsHoubein family recipes for making the most of your bounty—including salad dressings, fruit and vegetable juices, stir-fries, and more.

    Whereas traditional vegetable plots are largely made up of short-lived, annual vegetable plants, perennials are edible plants that live longer than three years. Grown as permaculture plants, they take up less of your time and effort than annual vegetables do.Martin Crawford’s book outlines the benefits of growing perennial vegetables:Perennials provide crops throughout the year, so there’s always something that can be used in the kitchen. You avoid the hungry gap between the end of the winter harvest and the start of the summer harvest of annual vegetables.Perennial vegetables are less work. Once planted, they stay in the ground for many years. They are the classic plants for no-dig gardeners.Unlike annual vegetables, perennial vegetables cover and protect the soil all year round. This maintains the structure of the soil and helps everything growing in it.Humous levels build up and nutrients don’t wash out of soil. (Cultivating the soil for annuals exposes this humous to air on the surface, causing the carbon to be released as carbon dioxide.)Mycorrhizal fungi, critical for storing carbon within the soil, are preserved. (They are killed when soil is constantly dug for annual vegetables.)Perennial plants contain higher levels of mineral nutrients than annuals because perennial vegetables have larger, permanent root systems, capable of using space more efficiently, and they take up more nutrients.How to grow perennial vegetables gives comprehensive advice on all types of perennial vegetable, from ground-cover plants and coppiced trees to plants for bog gardens and edible woodland plants:In Part One Martin Crawford outlines why we should grow perennials. He then explains where and how to grow them in perennial polycultures, in forest garden or aquatic garden settings. He outlines how to propagate them, how to look after them for maximum health and how to harvest them.Part Two is a plant-by-plant reference of over 100 perennial edibles in detail, from familiar ones like rhubarb, Jerusalem artichokes (sunchokes), horseradish and asparagus to less common ones such as skirret, nodding onions, red chicory, Babbington’s leek, scorzonera, sea kale and wild rocket. With beautiful colour photographs and illustrations and plenty of cooking tips throughout, this book offers inspiration and information for all gardeners, whether experienced or beginner.

    Using all-natural techniques, this new guide from YouTube gardening sensation Luke Marion, founder of MIgardener, will teach you to break down traditional thinking and implement organic systems that will save time, hassle, weeding, water, and space wherever you live.LEARN TO• Properly fuel your garden with an understanding of soil composition, organic fertilizer, and healthy balances of bacteria and fungi• Keep your plants hydrated and conserve water with a core gardening system trench• Extend the growing season with smart use of a poly material tunnel• Avoid tedious manual weeding by using all-natural preemptive weed suppression—without resorting to harmful chemical pesticides• Utilize high intensity planting to grow more food in less space, reduce weeding, watering, and protect soil qualityWith this simple-to-understand gardening method, create an organic garden that allows you to enjoy the rest of the season on autopilot.

    In Grow Great Grub, Gayla Trail, the founder of the leading online gardening community (YouGrowGirl.com), shows you how to grow your own delicious, affordable, organic edibles virtually anywhere.                    Grow Great Grub packs in tips and essential information about: - Choosing a location and making the most of your soil (even if it’s less than perfect)- Building a raised bed, compost bin, and self-watering container using recycled materials- Keeping pests and diseases away from your plants—the toxin-free way- Growing bountiful crops in pots and selecting the best heirloom varieties- Cultivating hundreds of plants, from blueberries to Thai basil, to the best tomatoes you’ll ever taste - Canning, and preserving to make the most of your garden’s generosity - Green-friendly, cost-saving, growing, and building projects that are smart and stylish- And much more! Whether you’re looking to eat on a budget or simply experience the pleasure of picking tonight’s meal from right outside your door, this is the must-have book for small-space gardeners—no backyard required.  GAYLA TRAIL is the creator of the acclaimed top gardening website yougrowgirl.com. Her work as a writer and photographer has appeared in publications including The New York Times, Newsweek, Budget Living, and ReadyMade. A resident of Toronto who has grown a garden on her rooftop for more than 10 years, she is the author of You Grow Girl: The Groundbreaking Guide to Gardening.

    Known world-wide for his connection with God’s world of nature, this authorized work explores the man and his wildly successful garden and orchard…while applying revealed principles to guide our daily lives as well. Home gardeners in 208 countries agree that you can grow better produce with much less cost and less work if you do it God’s way. CAUTION: this book may rock your worldview!

    Eliot Coleman introduces the surprising fact that most of the United States has more winter sunshine than the south of France. He shows how North American gardeners can successfully use that sun to raise a wide variety of traditional winter vegetables in backyard cold frames and plastic covered tunnel greenhouses without supplementary heat. Coleman expands upon his own experiences with new ideas learned on a winter-vegetable pilgrimage across the ocean to the acknowledged kingdom of vegetable cuisine, the southern part of France, which lies on the 44th parallel, the same latitude as his farm in Maine.This story of sunshine, weather patterns, old limitations and expectations, and new realities is delightfully innovative in the best gardening tradition. Four-Season Harvest will have you feasting on fresh produce from your garden all through the winter.To learn more about the possibility of a four-season farm, please visit Coleman's website www.fourseasonfarm.com.

    Eat More Dirt is her delightful compendium of homespun tips and tricks for designing, planting, nurturing, and beautifying your land without the use of harmful chemicals and pesticides. From peat moss to irksome pests and predators, Sandbeck explores the lively world of compost heaps (which can be used to naturally â��vaccinateâ�� your garden against disease), growing good soil, choosing plants well-adapted to your climate, weed warfare, planting protocols, and eco-friendly ways to quench your gardenâ��s thirst. Whether you tend an acre or just a window box, Eat More Dirt is an essential guide to keeping your garden thriving, the natural way. â�¢ Build up topsoil without toxic fertilizers or noisy machinery â�¢ Compost, the other black goldâ�¢ Eradicate weeds with sunflower seeds â�¢ Protect berries from birds with a sugar-water spray â�¢ Gentle pruning techniques â�¢ Banish beetles with wheat bran â�¢ Drive off furry pests with cayenne pepper â�¢ When life hands you a seep, dig a pondâ��transforming garden irritants into garden pearls â�¢ Pre- and post-gardening stretches â�¢ Dancing with tools â�¢ The Zen of puttering â�¢