Are heirloom vegetables more difficult to grow than conventional hybrids? The Beginner's Guide to Growing Heirloom Vegetables debunks this myth by highlighting the 100 heirloom vegetables that are the easiest to grow and the tastiest to eat.Marie Iannotti makes it simple for beginning gardeners to jump on the heirloom trend by presenting an edited list based on years of gardening trial and error. Her plant criteria is threefold: The 100 plants must be amazing to eat, bring something unique to the table, and—most importantly—they have to be unfussy and easy to grow. Her list includes garden favorites like the meaty and mellow 'Lacinato' Kale, the underused and earthy 'Turkish Orange' Eggplant, and the unexpected sweetness of 'Apollo' Arugula.

    Now, drawing on a lifetime of study with native healers, herbalist and ethnobotanist E. Barrie Kavasch offers a step-by-step guide to bringing this beautiful tradition into your own life--from vibrantly colorful outdoor circle designs to miniature dish, windowsill, or home altar adaptations. Inside you’ll find:• Planting guides for medicine wheel gardens in every zone, from desert Southwest to northern woodlands• A beautifully illustrated encyclopedia of 50 key healing herbs, including propagation needs, traditional and modern uses, and cautions• Easy-to-follow herbal recipes, from teas and tonics to skin creams and soaps--plus delicious healing foods• Ideas for herbal crafts and ceremonial objects, including smudge sticks, wind horses, prayer ties, and spirit shields• Seasonal rituals, offerings, and meditations to bless and empower your garden and your friends, and much more Practical, beautiful, and inspiring, The Medicine Wheel Garden leads us on a powerful journey to rediscovering the sacred in everyday life as we cultivate our gardens . . . and our souls.

    But nothing is moreconvenient than grocery shopping in the backyard. A vegetable garden offers the best defense againstrising food prices, the most environmentally sound way to eat, and better exercise than any gym. It willturn anyone into a wonderful cook, since nothing tastes more vibrant than homegrown. And it can takeless time every week than a trip to the supermarket.In Grow the Good Life, Michele Owens, an amateur gardener for almost two decades, makes an entertaining and persuasive case for vegetable gardens. She starts with two simple but radical ideas: Growing food on a small scale is easy, and it is absurdly rewarding.With her wry, funny, and accessible approach, Owens helps beginning gardeners overcome obstacles that keep them from planting a few seedlings every spring. She explains why dirt isn't dirty; the health benefits of growing one's own food; and that vegetable gardens are not antithetical to the frantic pace of modern life, but simple and undemanding if intelligently managed.Grow the Good Life is not just another how-to. Instead, it will teach you the true fundamentals of vegetable growing: how to fit a garden into your life and why it's worth the trouble.

    A combination of aquaculture and hydroponics, aquaponic gardening is an amazingly productive way to grow organic vegetables, greens, herbs, and fruits, while providing the added benefits of fresh fish as a safe, healthy source of protein. On a larger scale, it is a key solution to mitigating food insecurity, climate change, groundwater pollution, and the impacts of overfishing on our oceans.Aquaponic Gardening is the definitive do-it-yourself home manual, focused on giving you all the tools you need to create your own aquaponic system and enjoy healthy, safe, fresh, and delicious food all year round. Starting with an overview of the theory, benefits, and potential of aquaponics, the book goes on to explain:System location considerations and hardware components The living elements—fish, plants, bacteria, and worms Putting it all together—starting and maintaining a healthy systemAquaponics systems are completely organic. They are four to six times more productive and use ninety percent less water than conventional gardens. Other advantages include no weeds, fewer pests, and no watering, fertilizing, bending, digging, or heavy lifting—in fact, there really is no downside! Anyone interested in taking the next step towards self-sufficiency will be fascinated by this practical, accessible, and well-illustrated guide.Sylvia Bernstein is the president and founder of The Aquaponic Source. An internationally recognized expert on aquaponic gardening, Sylvia speaks, writes, and blogs extensively about this revolutionary technique.

    If you want to grow your own fresh garden tomatoes, lettuce, peas, herbs and more without the summer long effort of a traditional garden, then a Raised Bed Garden could be your answer. Raised beds are perfect for growing lots of vegetables in small spaces. They're also ideal for anyone who doesn't want to sit or bend down to pull weeds every day. Raised beds even look better than regular gardens because you can customize the bed boxes to fit the aesthetics of your landscaping. If all of those reasons aren't enough consider this; you can grow more healthy vegetables with less of your own effort which means more produce will make it to your dinner table, and you'll have more time and energy to enjoy it. This book covers everything you need to know to create your own raised bed garden and grow your own vegetables this season. It includes: - Garden Design tips to get the most out of your garden - How to build your raised beds, from fancy beds to free ones - Improving your soil to grow the healthiest plants - What to plant - When to plant it - Low-maintenance tips to make weeds almost non-existent If you are excited to put some plants in the ground and start your own garden paradise then I am excited to show you how!

    From a front-yard farm to a chile lover's plot, growers of every stripe will find inventive designs for growing food in any space.

    White was also a great garden enthusiast. In March 1958 she began publishing her popular column, "Onward and Upward in the Garden." Her first column elicited loads of fan mail, but one letter in particular caught her attention. From Elizabeth Lawrence, a noted southern garden writer, it was filled with suggestions and encouragement. When Katharine wrote back her appreciation, she reported on her Maine garden and discussed the plants and books that interested her. Thus began a correspondence that would last for almost twenty years, until Katharine's death in 1977. Two Gardeners is a collection of these luminous letters, edited and introduced by Emily Herring Wilson. The letters bring to life the unique epistolary friendship between two intelligent women, the "formidable" Mrs. White and the "shy" Miss Lawrence, both avid gardeners and readers, both at a stage of life when to make a new friend was rare indeed: when they first wrote to one another, Katharine was sixty-two, Elizabeth, fifty-four.More than 150 letters went back and forth during the course of their correspondence, though Katharine and Elizabeth would meet face-to-face only once. Whether talking about gardens or books, friends or family, each held a special place in the other's life.Illustrated with photographs of both Katharine White and Elizabeth Lawrence, their families, gardens, and houses, this book is a special treat for gardeners, literature lovers, and anyone who delights in reading about women's friendships.

    Choosing perennials that look great and grow well together is a skill that can take years to develop, but with this book, you're guaranteed to make perfect plant choices right from the start. In Perennial Combinations, expert plantsman, C. Colston Burrell hand-selects 120 of the best perennial combinations for homeowners, then offers his expert advice on how to grow and use the combinations to create great gardens.Each combination is featured in a stunning color photograph accompanied by a numbered photo key and plant list, so it's easy to find and buy exactly the right plants to re-create the combination in your own garden. Each combination features just two to six plants, so they're perfect for even the smallest garden space. You can plant each combination just as it appears in the book, or for a bigger color splash, just repeat the combination or mix it with others that are suited to the same conditions. You'll find combinations for stunning bloom from spring through fall; combinations especially suited to challenging sites like heavy clay soil or seaside gardens; and combinations just for fun, like fragrant combinations and combinations that attract butterflies.C. Colston Burrell has lived and gardened in different climates across America, so he's made sure this book is useful to gardeners from California to Maine. He's also a professional garden designer, and he's applied his talents to create 22 original garden designs that feature the book's individual combinations. Plus every page includes his personal gardening wisdom, so you'll not only know which perennials to plant together, you'll know how to maintain those perennials so your garden will look beautiful year after year.

    

    A field guide to trees around the world, each depicted by a full-color photograph with a caption that describes key features and points of differentiation

    T....

    Sacred, almost mystical qualities have often been associated with their long history of curative and ritualistic practices. Today, as a wider variety becomes more accessible, and their properties receive more attention, we can benefit from a fuller understanding of the power of herbs.Herbarium explores the histories, associations, and uses of 100 herbs, as well as providing ideas for how each herb can be used to improve both food and well-being. Each entry features a specially commissioned illustration with texts that include the botanical name, place of origin, varieties, and areas where the herb is most commonly grown. The essence of each herb is explored in a brief history peppered with interesting anecdotes, complemented by suggestions of classic combinations and helpful tips for gardeners. A reference section includes advice on how to grow and keep herbs, herb-food pairings, and using herbs for health and beauty treatments.A contemporary reboot of the traditional herbarium, this book will expand readers’ knowledge, improve culinary skills, and enhance their appreciation of the incredible world of tastes offered by herbs.

    Every day of her high school life was a struggle. She woke up in the morning and the thought of going to school was like an enormous mountain to climb. 'Nothing will ever be as easy as your school years,' well-meaning adults told her, but I knew for my daughter, and for many kids who have struggled as square pegs trying to make themselves round, this was dead wrong. When Lucy Clark's daughter graduated from school a 'failure', she started asking questions about the way we measure success. Why is there so much pressure on kids today? Where does it come from? Most importantly, as we seem to be in the grip of an epidemic of anxiety, how can we reduce that pressure? Beautiful Failures explores, through personal experience and journalistic investigation, a broken education system that fails too many kids and puts terrible pressure on all kids, including those who 'succeed'. It challenges accepted wisdoms about schooling, calls on parents to examine their own expectations, and questions the purpose of education, and indeed the purpose of childhood.

    Farming the Woods invites a remarkably different perspective: that a healthy forest can be maintained while growing a wide range of food, medicinal, and other non-timber products. While this concept of "forest farming" may seem like an obscure practice, history indicates that much of humanity lived and sustained itself from tree-based systems in the past; only recently have people traded the forest for the field. The good news is that this is not an either-or scenario; forest farms can be most productive in places where the plow is not: on steep slopes, and in shallow soils. It is an invaluable practice to integrate into any farm or homestead, especially as the need for unique value-added products and supplemental income becomes more and more important for farmers. Many already know that daily indulgences we take for granted such as coffee, chocolate, and many tropical fruits, all originate in forest ecosystems. But few know that such abundance is also available in the cool temperate forests of North America. Farming the Woods is the first in-depth guide for farmers and gardeners who have access to an established woodland and are looking for productive ways to manage it. Authors Ken Mudge and Steve Gabriel describe this process as "productive conservation," guided by the processes and relationships found in natural forest ecosystems. Farming the Woods covers in detail how to cultivate, harvest, and market high-value non-timber forest crops such as American ginseng, shiitake mushrooms, ramps (wild leeks), maple syrup, fruit and nut trees, ornamental ferns, and more. Comprehensive information is also offered on historical perspectives of forest farming; mimicking the forest in a changing climate; cultivation of medicinal crops; creating a forest nursery; harvesting and utilizing wood products; the role of animals in the forest farm; and how to design and manage your forest farm once it's set up. This book is a must-read for farmers and gardeners interested in incorporating aspects of agroforestry, permaculture, forest gardening, and sustainable woodlot management into the concept of a whole-farm organism.

    Eaten alone, as a salad, or added to soups, entrees, sandwiches, burgers, or anything else, these tiny greens of nutrition will enhance everyday food and life!Only a small amount of space is needed to grow microgreens—a porch, patio, deck, or balcony, indoors or outdoors, will do. This allows anyone to easily incorporate microgreens into their daily meals, and the greens' nutritional potency make them a must-eat in a healthy diet, any time of the year!