This handbook covers: selecting the perfect chicken breed, feeding your hens, healthy egg laying, chicken behavior (including bullying) and how-to treat common chicken health issues. The handbook is suited to both first time keepers and veterans by providing varying degrees of detail to keep both readers engaged. Full color photos and illustrations throughout provide specific examples of chicken anatomy, health and behavior.

    A selection of 30 beautiful designs suggests the range of this increasingly popular material, and the illustrated instructions make the craft's fundamentals easy to learn. Because the simplest projects come first, beginners can work their way through the book progressively, building on their skills. Novices will have fun making the carved trough, sandcast bowl, and elegant relief panel. More sophisticated projects, including a decorative walkway and polished table, come next, and they'll bring charm to any outdoor space. More adventurous artists can unleash their creativity on a "Garden Guardian" sculpture or water feature. A Selection of the Crafters Choice and Homestyle Book Clubs.

    Stressing the utility of raised beds and wide rows, gardening expert Dick Raymond shares his time-tested techniques for preparing the soil, starting plants, and controlling weeds. With helpful photographs, clear charts, and profiles of reliable garden vegetables, Joy of Gardening will inspire you to grow your best crop ever.

    Now DK brings this ancient practice into the 21st century, explaining how to grow and care for bonsai trees with a clear step-by-step approach.Offering easy-to-follow advice and simple photography, Bonsai demystifies the art of bonsai with sequences covering the traditional styles of Chokkan, Moyogi, Shakan, and Kengai, as well as deadwood bonsai styles such as Ishizuki, Yose Uye, and Sharimiki.For bonsai enthusiasts in search of fresh ideas, innovative techniques, and new ways to display their living art, Bonsai is the must-have book of the season.

    Adam Nicolson, the son of writer Nigel Nicolson and grandson of Vita Sackville-West and Sir Harold Nicolson, takes us on a personal journey through the history of one of England's great houses.

    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.

    Here’s how to ensure your plot provides fresh, healthy food all year round. Follow month-by-month, easy-to-follow advice on what to do on your allotment and how to do it. Pick up time saving tips and techniques on everything from pruning to dealing with pests. There’s clear guidance on when to sow, plant, and harvest for excellent resultsGet more from your allotment with this indispensable companion.

    On the other hand, gardening itself could be the culprit: elaborate, traditional perennial borders; water-hungry or disease-prone plants; needy lawns; and high-maintenance plants that require staking or clipping all suck up precious hours. Simply put, we need to start gardening in a whole new way. In this inspiring book, Val Easton shows exactly how to have a low-maintenance garden that doesn't sacrifice style. You won't have to give up your favorite plants or settle for expanses of ugly bark nuggets. You just have to unlearn some bad old habits and pick up some good new ones. So, how do you go about making a "new" low-maintenance garden? First, design your garden with maintenance in mind—good-looking hardscape will both save weeding time and showcase your favorite plants. Second, simplify your garden routines—learn the most efficient planting and maintenance techniques and don't get stressed if everything isn't letter-perfect. Third, learn how to work with nature rather than against it. And finally, embrace home-grown fruits, herbs, and vegetables; well planted containers; and thoughtfully chosen plants.The New Low-Maintenance Garden doesn't just tell you how to garden in a whole new way—it shows you, through profiles and beautiful photographs of real gardens that embody low-maintenance techniques. The pressures of life are not likely to ease up anytime soon, but the lessons of this timely book will help you banish guilt over undone garden chores and revel in your garden successes.

    It describes more than 100 food plants and gives specific information on the growth habits, culture, harvest, and storage of each.

    Finally, the collected wit and wisdom of the magazine's most irreverent and beloved columnist can be found in a single A - Z volume, providing gardeners from coast-to-coast with his valuable tips for planting, troubleshooting, and growing flowers, vegetables, shrubs, trees and more, all delivered in his signature cantankerous style.Sidebars throughout the book - "Ask Grumpy" - help readers tackle common garden problems ("How do I get ride of little house ants?"), and readers from the past 35 years take part in the book when Grumpy shares his favorite reader's responses to some of his advice, his favorite rules for gardening, and Q & A's covering your favorite plants and flowers are all inside. Additionally, beautiful line-drawings and illustrations throughout make the book as beautiful to look at as well as entertaining to read.The Grumpy Gardener is sure to become the most trusted tool in your gardening shed!

    From the balconies of Manhattan to the patios of Malibu to the backyards of Chicago, anybody with a few square feet of earth is doing their best to make their little corner of the world more gracious and beautiful. And the best thing is, you really don't have to be born with a green thumb to give life to a glorious garden. Anybody can do it with a little coaching. Which is where Gardening All-in-One For Dummies comes in.Puzzled by pruning? Baffled by bulbs? Can't tell a hosta from a hyacinth? Don't worry! This all-in-one reference delivers the know-how you need to transform your little patch of the outdoors into a blooming paradise. Drawing upon the expertise of the National Gardening Association, it gets you up to speed on:Basic gardening skills--from understanding your microclimate to using gardening tools to managing pests and common plant diseases How to design, plan and build a garden landscape that reflects your unique sense of style Selecting, planting and maintaining stunning roses Building a raised bed for your perennials and making them bloom in any climate Choose, grow and maintain annuals From amaryllis to spider dahlias to wood tulips--coaxing beauty from homely bulbs Enjoying nature's bounty by growing you own vegetables and herbs A veritable encyclopedia of gardening, this Gardening All-in-One For Dummies is an indispensable resource for novices and experienced gardeners alike. It brings together between the covers of a single volume seven great books covering:Gardening Basics Garden Design Roses Perennials Annuals Bulbs Vegetables and Herbs Your one-step guide to a beautiful garden, Gardening All-in-One For Dummies shows you how to experience the "purest of human pleasures" in your own backyard.

    

    Explore the latest methods for cultivation without chemicals, discover the benefits of composting, and learn how to maintain an organic garden year-round. Packed with stunning photography throughout, you'll be see why the organic gardening movement can create beautiful results equal to, and more often superior than, gardening with pesticides.The Rodale Illustrated Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening is the complete, comprehensive guide to a natural and chemical-free garden. Whether you're an experienced gardener looking to go organic, or a beginner wanting to create a healthy, natural garden, this guide has all the advice you need to turn your garden into thing of natural beauty, safe for kids, pets, and wildlife. The Rodale Illustrated Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening is your invitation to organic gardening for spectacular, all-natural results.

    You (and your bees) will be buzzing with delight.From picking the right hive and bringing your bees home to surviving winter and collecting honey, experienced beekeeper Amber Bradshaw takes you on an easy-to-follow journey through your first year of beekeeping and beyond.Beekeeping for Beginners includes: Just the essentials—Learn everything you need to know to begin your first colony—written with brand new beekeepers in mind. Modern beekeeping—Start your colony off right with guides that feature the newest practices and current, natural approaches. Learn to speak bee—Clearly defined terms and a complete glossary will have you talking like a pro beekeeper in no time. Begin your beekeeping the right way—and avoid getting stung by mistakes—with Beekeeping for Beginners.

     In Downsizing Your Life for Freedom, Flexibility and Financial Peace , you’ll learn about the joys of the downsized life: Lower personal expenses, Flexibility to move to wherever your career takes you, Clutter-free living, and More time to do what you love to do! Thanks to the economic downturn, Claire Middleton and her family lost their business and had to sell their spacious home. They sold or gave away more than half of their possessions to comfortably fit into the little house where they now live (quite happily). And they learned that downsizing, even forced downsizing, can be a blessing in disguise. In Downsizing Your Life for Freedom, Flexibility and Financial Peace , Claire shares her story as well as those of others who learned the truth about possessions and freedom after downsizing their lives (voluntarily or not). Is your lifetime’s worth of stuff holding you back? Are you missing out on dreams and opportunities because the burden of your possessions weighs you down? It’s never too late to free yourself! Downsizing Your Life for Freedom, Flexibility and Financial Peace will show you how: just click the “Buy” button at the top of this page to get started.