Sure, it's even simpler than it was before. Of course, you don't have to worry about fertilizer or poor soil ever again because you'll be growing above the ground. However, the best feature is that anyone, anywhere can enjoy a square foot garden - children, adults with limited mobility, and even complete novices can achieve spectacular results. But, let's get back to the ten improvements. You're going to love them: 1. New Location - Move your garden closer to your house by eliminating single-row gardening. Square foot gardens need just 20% of the space of a traditional garden.2. New Direction - Locate your garden on top of existing soil. Forget about pH soil tests, double-digging (who enjoys that?), or those never-ending soil improvements.3. New Soil - The new "Mel's Mix" is the perfect growing mix. We give you the recipe, and best of all, you can even buy the different types of compost needed.4. New Depth - You only need to prepare a SFG box to a depth of 6 inches! It's true - the majority of plants develop just fine when grown at this depth.5. No Fertilizer - The all new SFG does not need any fertilizer - ever! If you start with the perfect soil mix, then you don't need to add fertilizer.6. New Boxes - The new method uses bottomless boxes placed above ground. We show you how to build your own (with step-by-step photos).7. New Aisles - The ideal gardening aisle width is about three to four feet. That makes it even easier to kneel, work, and harvest.8. New Grids - Prominent and permanent grids added to your SFG box help you visualize your planting squares and properly space them for maximum harvest.9. New Seed-Saving Idea - The old-fashioned way advocates planting many seeds and then thinning the extras (that means pulling them up). The new method means planting a pinch - literally two or three seeds - per planting hole.10. Tabletop Gardens - The new boxes are so much smaller and lighter (only 6 inches of soil, remember?), you can add a plywood bottom to make them portable. Of course, that's not all. We've also included simple, easy-to-follow instructions using lots of photos and illustrations. You're going to love it!

    The Pollinator Victory Garden offers practical solutions for winning the war against the demise of these essential animals. Pollinators are critical to our food supply and responsible for the pollination of the vast majority of all flowering plants on our planet. Pollinators include not just bees, but many different types of animals, including insects and mammals. Beetles, bats, birds, butterflies, moths, flies, and wasps can be pollinators. But, many pollinators are in trouble, and the reality is that most of our landscapes have little to offer them. Our residential and commercial landscapes are filled with vast green pollinator deserts, better known as lawns. These monotonous green expanses are ecological wastelands for bees and other pollinators. With The Pollinator Victory Garden, you can give pollinators a fighting chance. Learn how to transition your landscape into a pollinator haven by creating a habitat that includes pollinator nutrition, larval host plants for butterflies and moths, and areas for egg laying, nesting, sheltering, overwintering, resting, and warming. Find a wealth of information to support pollinators while improving the environment around you:  •  The importance of pollinators and the specific threats to their survival•  How to provide food for pollinators using native perennials, trees, and shrubs that bloom in succession•  Detailed profiles of the major pollinator types and how to attract and support each one•  Tips for creating and growing a Pollinator Victory Garden, including site assessment, planning, and planting goals•  Project ideas like pollinator islands, enriched landscape edges, revamped foundation plantings, meadowscapes, and other pollinator-friendly lawn alternatives  The time is right for a new gardening movement. Every yard, community garden, rooftop, porch, patio, commercial, and municipal landscape can help to win the war against pollinator decline with The Pollinator Victory Garden.

    Designed by a professional and maintained by a crew, they are aspirational bits of beauty too difficult to attempt at home. Or are they?The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden makes a design-magazine-worthy garden achievable at home. The new, simplified approach is made up of hardy, beautiful plants grown on a 10x14 foot grid. Each of the 62 garden plans combines complementary plants that thrive together and grow as a community. They are designed to make maintenance a snap. The garden plans can be followed explicitly or adjusted to meet individual needs, unlocking rich perennial landscape designs for individualization and creativity.

    A new literary classic, Second Nature has become a manifesto not just for gardeners but for environmentalists everywhere. "As delicious a meditation on one man's relationships with the Earth as any you are likely to come upon" (The New York Times Book Review), Second Nature captures the rhythms of our everyday engagement with the outdoors in all its glory and exasperation. With chapters ranging from a reconsideration of the Great American Lawn, a dispatch from one man's war with a woodchuck, to an essay about the sexual politics of roses, Pollan has created a passionate and eloquent argument for reconceiving our relationship with nature.

    Small-scale, self-contained worm bins can be kept indoors, in a basement or even under the kitchen sink in an apartment — making vermicomposting a great option for city dwellers and anyone who doesn’t want or can’t have an outdoor compost pile. The fully revised 35th anniversary edition features the original’s same friendly tone, with up-to-date information on the entire process, from building or purchasing a bin (readily available at garden supply stores), maintaining the worms, and harvesting the finished compost.

    Volume I lays out the vision of the forest garden and explains the basic ecological principles that make it work. In Volume II, Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier move on to practical considerations: concrete ways to design, establish, and maintain your own forest garden. Along the way they present case studies and examples, as well as tables, illustrations, and a uniquely valuable -plant matrix- that lists hundreds of the best edible and useful species.Taken together, the two volumes of Edible Forest Gardens offer an advanced course in ecological gardening--one that will forever change the way you look at plants and your environment.

    This book shows how easy it is to fill our gardens with everything from foxes, frogs and mice, to butterflies, ladybirds and thousands of fascinating creepy-crawlies.

    This book contains detailed information about each vegetable, including its botanical classification, flower structure and means of pollination, required population size, isolation distance, techniques for caging or hand-pollination, and also the proper methods for harvesting, drying, cleaning, and storing the seeds.Seed to Seed is widely acknowledged as the best guide available for home gardeners to learn effective ways to produce and store seeds on a small scale. The author has grown seed crops of every vegetable featured in the book, and has thoroughly researched and tested all of the techniques she recommends for the home garden.This newly updated and greatly expanded Second Edition includes additional information about how to start each vegetable from seed, which has turned the book into a complete growing guide. Local knowledge about seed starting techniques for each vegetable has been shared by expert gardeners from seven regions of the United States-Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast/Gulf Coast, Midwest, Southwest, Central West Coast, and Northwest.

    Sturdy and deep-rooted, perennials can weather climate extremes more easily than annuals. They can thrive without chemical fertilizers and pesticides. And they don’t need as much water, either. These long-lived plants also help build healthy soil, turning the very ground we stand on into a carbon sponge.In this book, Tucker lays the groundwork for tending an organic, sustainable garden. She includes practical growing guides for 34 popular perennials, among them, basil, blueberries, grapes, strawberries, artichokes, asparagus, garlic, radicchio, spinach, and sweet potatoes, and wraps in a recipe for each of the plants profiled. Growing Perennial Foods is for gardeners who want more resilient plants. It’s for people who want to do something about climate change and the environment. It’s for anyone who has ever wanted to grow food, and is ready to begin.

    This is the book for gardeners who want plants they can plant and forget! Tough Plants for Southern Gardens is written for novice and accomplished gardeners alike, for all gardeners who value their leisure time. They also value the appearance of their home and appreciate the benefits of well-placed landscaping…however; they do not want to devote too much time to keeping it beautiful. Tough Plants for Southern Gardens includes 120 of the toughest plants for Southern gardens, including annuals, bulbs, perennials, shrubs and small trees, ornamental vines, and lawns. Each featured plant is noted for its ability to thrive with minimal care. Many of the selections can withstand drought, poor soils, and minimal (or no) pruning, while providing beauty and charm in the home landscape. Each selection provides specific information on the plant's use in the landscape, mature size, flowering characteristics (if applicable), varieties, soil preference, and propagation. Each chapter also contains informative essays covering topics such as: companion planting tips, pest avoidance, and handling invasive plants.

    You’ll discover that container gardening is an easy and fun way to enjoy summer’s bounty in even the smallest of growing spaces.

    They cover it all--from choosing your site and designing your garden to improving your soil, choosing and caring for your plants, and fighting pests and disease. Create the flower garden of your dreams with this comprehensive reference.

    In the sequel to The Essential Earthman, the Washington Post columnist offers a harvest of sharp observations and humorous adventures gathered during a year in his garden, along with much down-to-earth advice on horticulture.

    . . . an optimistic call to action.” —Chicago Tribune Over time, with industrialization and urban sprawl, we have driven nature out of our neighborhoods and cities. But we can invite it back by designing landscapes that look and function more like they do in the wild: robust, diverse, and visually harmonious. Planting in a Post-Wild World by Thomas Rainer and Claudia West is an inspiring call to action dedicated to the idea of a new nature—a hybrid of both the wild and the cultivated—that can flourish in our cities and suburbs. This is both a post-wild manifesto and practical guide that describes how to incorporate and layer plants into plant communities to create an environment that is reflective of natural systems and thrives within our built world.

    The beautiful animals immortalized in Disney 's "Bambi" are also the garden 's biggest pests. Increased hunting regulations have caused the deer population to swell to more than 30 million. At the same time, suburban expansion has led to a loss of natural habitat. The result? Deer are looking for food and finding it in gardens all across the country."50 Beautiful Deer-Resistant Plants" makes keeping deer away as simple as choosing the appropriate plant. Instead of the typical barriers and fencing, expert plantswoman Ruth Rogers Clausen has chosen the 50 most beautiful (and least palatable) annuals, bulbs, ferns, grasses, herbs, perennials, and shrubs. Whether it 's the charming snow crocuses that bloom each spring or the vibrant, long-blooming Texas Sage, these 50 plants provide gardeners a chance to design a deer-proof garden without sacrificing style. Each plant profile includes a deer-resistance scale, tips on growth and care, zone recommendations, and gorgeous color photos showing the plant up close and in the garden setting. Also includes dozens of companion planting ideas. With the helpful and trusted advice in "50 Beautiful Deer-Resistant Plants," gardeners can finally garden without fear of deer.