Worms Eat My Garbage: How to Set Up and Maintain a Worm Composting System


Mary Appelhof - 1982
    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.

The Backyard Homestead: Produce All the Food You Need on Just a Quarter Acre!


Carleen Madigan - 2009
    With easy-to-follow instructions on canning, drying, and pickling, you’ll enjoy your backyard bounty all winter long. Also available in this series: The Backyard Homestead Seasonal Planner, The Backyard Homestead Book of Building Projects, The Backyard Homestead Guide to Raising Farm Animals, and The Backyard Homestead Book of Kitchen Know-How.

The Complete Houseplant Survival Manual: Essential Gardening Know-how for Keeping (Not Killing!) More Than 160 Indoor Plants


Barbara Pleasant - 2005
    Even experienced houseplant enthusiasts will benefit from Pleasant’s expansive knowledge of indoor gardening, which includes personality profiles, growing needs, and troubleshooting tips for 160 blooming and foliage varieties. Create a greener world, one houseplant at a time.

Making More Plants: The Science, Art, and Joy of Propagation


Ken Druse - 2000
    Whether you crave healthy, vigorous plants, wish to grow new ones to share with friends, or hope to produce scores of them to fill your own beds and borders -- for free -- Making More Plants will help fulfill your most vivid garden dreams. Ken Druse, one of America's foremost gardening authorities, an award-winning photographer, and the author of the best-selling Natural Garden series, presents innovative, practical techniques for expanding any plant collection, with more than 500 full-color photographs.Based on years of personal research, Making More Plants is a practical manual as well as a beautiful garden book, presenting procedures Ken Druse has tested and adapted, as well as photographed step by step. In clear, nspirational language Ken takes the mystery out of seemingly complex practices such as seed conditioning, bulb division, leaf and stem cutting, grafting, and more. Whether focusing on techniques as easy as creating multiple plants from a single perennial using a common kitchen knife or on more complicated practices such as air layering, Ken's advice will inspire both novice and experienced gardeners to turn their homes and gardens into personal nurseries.Supplementing the text and photographs is a comprehensive appendix charting methods for propagating more than 700 different plants, listed by both common and Latin names, an invaluable resource unmatched by even the most thorough of propagation manuals.Straightforward advice, gorgeous photographs, and Ken's own engaging voice all combine to make Making More Plants an indispensable guide for every passionate gardener and plant lover.

McGee & Stuckey's Bountiful Container: A Container Garden of Vegetables, Herbs, Fruits and Edible Flowers


Rose Marie Nichols McGee - 2002
    And with only one exception-watering-container gardening is a whole lot easier. Beginning with the down-to-earth basics of soil, sun and water, fertilizer, seeds and propagation, The Bountiful Container is an extraordinarily complete, plant-by-plant guide.Written by two seasoned container gardeners and writers, The Bountiful Container covers Vegetables-not just tomatoes (17 varieties) and peppers (19 varieties), butharicots verts, fava beans, Thumbelina carrots, Chioggia beets, and sugarsnap peas. Herbs, from basil to thyme, and including bay leaves, fennel, and saffron crocus. Edible Flowers, such as begonias, calendula, pansies, violets, and roses. And perhaps most surprising, Fruits, including apples, peaches, Meyer lemons, blueberries, currants, and figs-yes, even in the colder parts of the country. (Another benefit of container gardening: You can bring the less hardy perennials in over the winter.) There are theme gardens (an Italian cook's garden, a Four Seasons garden), lists of sources, and dozens of sidebars on everything from how to be a human honeybee to seeds that are All America Selections.

Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces


Gayla Trail - 2010
    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.

American Horticultural Society Plant Propagation: The Definitive Practical Guide to Culmination, Propagation, and Display


Alan R. Toogood - 1999
    An extensive introduction explains the botany and plant physiology behind the science of propagation, and the encyclopedic A - Z section presents all the appropriate techniques for more than 1,000 different kinds of plants. Specialized groups such as orchids, ferns, palms, grasses, and roses are given extensive feature treatment.

Ground Rules: 100 Easy Lessons for Growing a More Glorious Garden


Kate Frey - 2018
    Frey distills the vital lessons gardening into 100 simple rules that, if followed, will yield a gorgeous, healthy, and thriving home garden. New home gardeners will discover tips on garden design, care and maintenance, healthy soil, and the best ways to water. They’ll learn how to create a garden that encourages birds and butterflies, how to how to choose healthy plants at the garden center, how and when to re-pot a container, and much more. With bite-size chunks of expert information and nearly 100 inspiring photographs, Ground Rules packs a lot of value into its playful package and will be a go-to resource for gardeners everywhere.

Second Nature: A Gardener's Education


Michael Pollan - 1991
    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.

Don't Throw It, Grow It!: 68 Windowsill Plants From Kitchen Scraps


Deborah Peterson - 2008
    From the common carrot to the exotic cherimoya, you’ll be amazed at the gardening possibilities hidden in the foods you eat.

Succulents Simplified: Growing, Designing, and Crafting with 100 Easy-Care Varieties


Debra Lee Baldwin - 2013
    Step-by-step projects, including a cake-stand centerpiece, special-occasion bouquets, a vertical garden, and a succulent topiary sphere, will inspire you to express your individual style.

Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine


Andrew Chevallier - 2000
    In-depth explanations of today's most popular alternative therapies are enhanced by step-by-step photos.

The Layered Garden: Design Lessons for Year-Round Beauty from Brandywine Cottage


David L. Culp - 2012
    The result is a nonstop parade of color that begins with a tapestry of heirloom daffodils and hellebores in spring and ends with a jewel-like blend of Asian wildflowers at the onset of winter.The Layered Garden shows you how to recreate Culp's majestic display. It starts with a basic lesson in layering; how to choose the correct plants by understanding how they grow and change throughout the seasons, how to design a layered garden, and how to maintain it. To illustrate how layering works, Culp takes you on a personal tour through each part of his celebrated garden: the woodland garden, the perennial border, the kitchen garden, the shrubbery, and the walled garden. The book culminates with a chapter dedicated to signature plants for all four seasons.As practical as it is inspiring, The Layered Garden will provide you with expert information gleaned from decades of hard work and close observation. If you thought that a four-season garden was beyond your reach, this book will show you how to achieve that elusive, tantalizing goal.

Perennial Vegetables: From Artichokes to Zuiki Taro, a Gardener's Guide to Over 100 Delicious and Easy to Grow Edibles


Eric Toensmeier - 2007
    In Perennial Vegetables the adventurous gardener will find information, tips, and sound advice on less common edibles that will make any garden a perpetual, low-maintenance source of food.Imagine growing vegetables that require just about the same amount of care as the flowers in your perennial beds and borders--no annual tilling and potting and planting. They thrive and produce abundant and nutritious crops throughout the season. It sounds too good to be true, but in Perennial Vegetables author and plant specialist Eric Toensmeier (Edible Forest Gardens) introduces gardeners to a world of little-known and wholly underappreciated plants. Ranging beyond the usual suspects (asparagus, rhubarb, and artichoke) to include such -minor- crops as ground cherry and ramps (both of which have found their way onto exclusive restaurant menus) and the much sought after, anti-oxidant-rich wolfberry (also known as goji berries), Toensmeier explains how to raise, tend, harvest, and cook with plants that yield great crops and satisfaction.Perennial vegetables are perfect as part of an edible landscape plan or permaculture garden. Profiling more than 100 species, illustrated with dozens of color photographs and illustrations, and filled with valuable growing tips, recipes, and resources, Perennial Vegetables is a groundbreaking and ground-healing book that will open the eyes of gardeners everywhere to the exciting world of edible perennials.

Rodale's Basic Organic Gardening: A Beginner's Guide to Starting a Healthy Garden


Deborah L. Martin - 2014
    Martin, general garden-building skills (from "Do I need to dig?" to "Where do I dig?") and specific techniques (from "How do I plant a seed?" to "How much should I water?") are presented in growing-season order—from garden planning and planting to growing and harvesting. Many other need-to-know topics like soil, compost, seeds, pest control, and weeds are explained in simple language to ensure success, even on a small scale, on the first try. More than 100 common garden terms are defined, and Smart Starts sidebars offer doable projects to build confidence and enthusiasm for expanding a garden when a gardener is ready. A flower, vegetable, and herb finder highlights easycare plants with good track records. Plus, there are no-dig garden methods, simple garden layouts, and tips and hints inspired by the most popular page views on OrganicGardening.com.With a "no question is unwelcome" approach, a troubleshooting section lessens frustrations and encourages experimentation. Rodale's Basic Organic Gardening is everything a beginning gardener (or one who's new to gardening organically) needs to get growing and keep a garden going strong all season.