With expert advice on the latest techniques and valuable insights on new plants, this updated version of The Pruning Book deserves a prominent place in your gardening library. From humble houseplants to the most amazing exotics, author Lee Reich explains all the dos and don'ts of cutting back. So you'll always make the right cut the first time -- every time. Reich demystifies even the most complex pruning strategies by providing the precise timing and exact techniques you'll need to guarantee healthy growth and beautiful form. In great detail, he walks you through the process of pruning everything from ornamental trees and bushes to topiaries and bonsai. And all his insights are delivered with clear, straightforward prose and supported by 250 colorful photos and 135 drawings. Whether you're a professional gardener, a landscape veteran --or pruning for the very first time --this essential reference gives you everything you need to master the subtle art of pruning.

    Margaret Roach has been harvesting thirty years of backyard parables-deceptively simple, instructive stories from a life spent digging ever deeper-and has distilled them in this memoir along with her best tips for garden making, discouraging all manner of animal and insect opponents, at-home pickling, and more.After ruminating on the bigger picture in her memoir And I Shall Have Some Peace There, Margaret Roach has returned to the garden, insisting as ever that we must garden with both our head and heart, or as she expresses it, with "horticultural how-to and woo-woo." In THE BACKYARD PARABLES, Roach uses her fundamental understanding of the natural world, philosophy, and life to explore the ways that gardening saved and instructed her, and meditates on the science and spirituality of nature, reminding her readers and herself to keep on digging.

    In her latest book, groundbreaking garden writer Carol Deppe (The Resilient Gardener, Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties) focuses on some of the most popular home garden vegetables--tomatoes, green beans, peas, and leafy greens--and through them illustrates the key principles and practices that gardeners need to know to successfully plant and grow just about any food crop. Deppe's work has long been inspired and informed by the philosophy and wisdom of Tao Te Ching, the 2,500-year-old work attributed to Chinese sage Lao Tzu and the most translated book in the world after the Bible. The Tao of Vegetable Gardening is organized into chapters that echo fundamental Taoist concepts: Balance, Flexibility, Honoring the Essential Nature (your own and that of your plants), Effortless Effort, Non-Doing, and even Non-Knowing. Yet the book also offers a wealth of specific and valuable garden advice on topics as diverse as: - The Eat-All Greens Garden, a labor- and space-efficient way to provide all the greens a family can eat, freeze, and dry--all on a tiny piece of land suitable for small-scale and urban gardeners.- The growing problem of late blight and the future of heirloom tomatoes--and what gardeners can do to avoid problems, and even create new resistant varieties.- Establishing a Do-It-Yourself Seed Bank, including information on preparing seeds for long-term storage and how to -dehybridize- hybrids.- Twenty-four good places to not plant a tree, and thirty-seven good reasons for not planting various vegetables. Designed for gardeners of all levels, from beginners to experienced growers, The Tao of Vegetable Gardening provides a unique frame of reference: a window to the world of nature, in the garden and in ourselves.

    The author writes entertainingly of mosses on rocks and walls, in containers, and as a lush ground cover, and he presents a gallery of his favorite moss species.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    #4 on Publishers Weekly's Bestselling Gardening Books list! This new, completely revised edition has over 500 new photographs, 400 new illustrations, 400 new plants and trees, the latest pest control recommendations, fruit and vegetable recommendations, new tips and plants specifically for Southern Texas, plus everything in the first edition.

    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!

    But aren't they hard to grow at home? No! says orchid grower extraordinaire Steve Frowine. In this handy guide, he shows you step by step how to select the right orchids, keep them healthy, encourage blooms, and even propagate your own plants. Discover how to: * Select orchids that will thrive in your home * Water, fertilize, repot, and propagate orchids * Decipher complicated orchid names * Get familiar with favorite orchid varieties * Create spectacular orchid displays

    Each of its 365 perfectly sized little essays is meant to be read in bed at night after a long day’s work, either real or imagined, in the garden. A charming and mischievously funny companion to curl up with, Wright ranges comfortably—and lyrically—from giving gardening advice to meditating on such topics as antique collecting and travel, great literature and architecture. He is an addictive delight, as memorable describing the challenges of growing plume poppies as he is the simple pleasure of hanging up the dish towel once the housework is done. Written in language that is as timeless as it is seductive, The Gardener’s Bed-Book will appeal to gardening experts and armchair enthusiasts alike.This Modern Library edition is published with a new Introduction by Dominique Browning, the editor in chief of House & Garden and author of Around the House and in the Garden and the forthcoming Paths of Desire: The Passions of a Suburban Gardener.

    Paths of Desire is the enchanting, amusing, and moving account of making a garden -- and confronting the essence of suburban gardening, with its idiosyncratic ecosystem. This meant struggling with depraved skunks and raccoons, marauding teenagers, plastic jungle gyms, toppling garbage cans, uncontrollable eyesores, potholed drives, and all the grinding, honking, and buzzing of the neighborhood. Browning's delightfully frank prose conveys the very sense of being deep in a garden, with all its organic smells and textures, and the myriad joys of deciding what to plant and watching as the vision is realized. It contains a rich store of advice and illustrative anecdotes for enthusiasts and novices alike, as Browning amusingly documents the missteps she took in the planning of her garden and the satisfactions of finally getting it right. In Paths of Desire she teaches us how to embrace our plots of land -- no matter their size, beauty, or proximity to the city -- and make them our own. But she also reminds us that the life of a garden can never be separated from the people who wander in and out of it: characters like the charming but useless children; the philosophical tree doctor and the band of Helpful Men; the neighbors -- legalistic on one side, aesthetically challenged on the other -- and, best and worst of all, the True Love. By the end of the book, Browning has transformed her garden -- and her life -- and has created a place of enchantment, which is most of all what a garden should be.

    Ruth Kassinger’s wonderful story of the unique way she chose to cope with the profound changes in her life—a book that will delight readers of Eat, Pray, Love and I Feel Bad About My Neck—is interwoven with the fascinating history of conservatories from the Renaissance orangeries to the glass palaces of Kew.

    Based on vegetative rather than floral characteristics, this practical guide gives anyone who works with plants the ability to identify weeds before they flower.- A dichotomous key to all the species described in the book is designed to narrow the choices to a few possible species. Identification can then be confirmed by reading the descriptions of the species and comparing a specimen with the drawings and photographs.- A fold-out grass identification table provides diagnostic information for weedy grasses in an easy-to-use tabular key.- Specimens with unusual vegetative characteristics, such as thorns, square stems, whorled leaves, or milky sap, can be rapidly identified using the shortcut identification table.The first comprehensive weed identification manual available for the Northeast, this book will facilitate appropriate weed management strategy in any horticultural or agronomic cropping system and will also serve home gardeners and landscape managers, as well as pest management specialists and allergists.

    Having grown up working in the yard with her father, a master gardener, she relished the moment when she would be able to have her very own garden--and has since owned, loved, and developed six additional gardens, one of which is also a farm. In Martha's Flowers, she brings you into her personal gardens, walking you through rows and rows of tulips, daffodils, peonies, poppies, hydrangeas, dahlias, and more, while sharing stories of what these flowers mean to her. She also invites Kevin Sharkey, a longtime Martha Stewart Living editor and dear friend, to teach how to beautifully arrange these flowers yourself. In the back of the book, she includes a helpful, hardworking list of tools and vessels that are good to have, information on how to plan a cutting garden, and a tutorial on forcing branches. Martha's Flowers is one of Martha's most intimate books ever, and the authoritative advice included will make this a must-have for every gardener and flower enthusiast.

    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!

    Most of us want to live a sustainable life in which we protect the land and keep it safe from development and overproduction. But we can take this a step further by learning how to grow and savor what we can produce ourselves—while still maintaining an alternative career to fund this passion. Michael and Audrey Levatino here share how to:     • Grow your own food.     • Raise chickens, horses, llamas, bees, and more.     • Practice being (a little) off the grid.     • Sell the bounty in your local community.     • Balance a professional career with a rural lifestyle.The Joy of Hobby Farming is a book that will excite armchair farmers and inspire any do-it-yourselfer.