General Books - Page 5

Dirr's Hardy Trees and Shrubs: An Illustrated Encyclopedia

Michael A. Dirr

Amazon Price: $44.07 List Price: $69.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Timber Press, Incorporated Amazon Marketplace: 53 new & used starting at $37.59

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 55 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Beautiful Book 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is a valuable book to see what trees and shrubs are like when they are mature. It will sort of help in identification, but it is not a book for identification. I enjoyed viewing it over again and again.

Thank you for this book! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I bought this book to gain more knowledge about trees and shrubs so I make informed decisions on what to grow in my yard. This book helped me tremendously. I wouldn't have been able to select the trees and shrubs that surround and beautify my entire yard without the help of this book. I used to take it with me to nurseries and when seeing a tree I like, I opened the page that discusses it and got the ins and outs about it. I also have asked specialty nurseries for a specific tree I found in this book that they don't display, but can get as a special order. It was worth it. It is true that no book can contain all the information you need to know about trees and shrubs in your area, however, this book comes quite close!

Editorial Review:

This bestselling encyclopedia, illustrated with brilliant photographs, describes the best woody plants adapted to cooler climates, showing both habit and details of more than 500 species, and including some 700 additional cultivars and varieties. Brief cultural information is supplied for each plant, as well as Dirr's perceptive comments and opinions.

How to Build Your Own Greenhouse

Roger Marshall

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Storey Publishing, LLC Amazon Marketplace: 39 new & used starting at $15.22

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

For avid gardeners, the biggest downside of the hobby is the limited growing season in much of the country. Gardening during the winter is often reduced to tending houseplants and browsing seed catalogs for next summer’s tomato choices.

Master Gardener and builder Roger Marshall enthusiastically presents his case for home greenhouses with a thorough examination of everything the potential builder needs to know. Marshall’s coverage of the subject begins with a careful consideration of the various purposes served by greenhouses. Will the structure be used as a damp, warm hothouse for rare orchids? A tropical paradise for banana and citrus trees? A friendlier environment in which to get a jump on a summer vegetable garden is the goal for many gardeners, while an inviting setting for a year-round hot tub surrounded by lush greenery has an undeniable appeal. Whatever its eventual use will be, Marshall helps the reader examine every option and make an informed choice.

After determining the type and style of the structure, Marshall progresses, chapter by chapter, through the construction elements of the greenhouse — from choosing a site, to laying the foundation and determining which glazing material will work best. Plumbing, heating, supplemental lighting, misting, and automatic venting systems are also covered for the truly committed reader/gardener.

The final section of the book includes detailed plans for nine actual greenhouses, from a simple cold frame to an elaborately detailed framed, detached structure. Whatever the greenhouse goal, Marshall opens the way to longer growing seasons, abundant organically grown fruits and vegetables, and many more happy months playing in the dirt!

How to Grow Fresh Air: 50 House Plants that Purify Your Home or Office

B. C. Wolverton

Amazon Price: $12.24 List Price: $18.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Penguin (Non-Classics) Amazon Marketplace: 52 new & used starting at $7.50

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 38 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

More Questions than Answers 3 out of 5 stars.
5 of 7 people found this review helpful.

"How to Grow Fresh Air" is the best book I've found on the topic of using plants to improve air quality. It has easy-to-use recommendations, rating plants' ability to improve air quality and listing information that will help the reader decide if they can keep this plant alive.

There are a few problems. First, the book does not describe the 50 best plants -- it describes the only 50 plants tested. Second, this book doesn't indicate how many plants should be put in a room. An internet search of unknown accuracy indicated 1 to 3 plants (size medium to large) for 100 square feet of floor space (attributed to the author). Third, the book doesn't tell you about any patterns the authors observed in their research: does plant size matter? Leaf size? By how much? Growth rate? If there were a simple pattern (like large fast-growing plants are best; or that air-cleaning appears to be a characteristic of certain plant species), then this would be very good to know. Forth, the research is at least 12 years old, and there doesn't appear to be any new research on this subject. Fifth, I found two conflicting tables in the technical section. This doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling about the book's technical accuracy -- like Al Gore's "time goes backwards" Global Warming chart. The whole thing reads like an exploratory research project that wasn't funded further -- but should have been.

With that said, this book has useful advice, and seems to be worth the purchase price. I'm going to give buy a few of the highest rated plants for my office, and see if their gas-elimination properties (combined with my air filter) yields improved air quality.

Editorial Review:

Plants are the lungs of the earth. This revolutionary guide, based on 25 years of research by NASA, shows how common houseplants can combat sick building syndrome and cleanse the home or office of common pollutants. Color photos & llustrations. Online promo.

The Garden Primer: Second Edition

Barbara Damrosch

Amazon Price: $12.89 List Price: $18.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Workman Publishing Company Amazon Marketplace: 66 new & used starting at $5.32

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The most comprehensive, entertaining, down-to-earth one-volume gardening reference ever, and highly praised:

"Barbara Damrosch delivers the goods."—Chicago Tribune
"Best of the crop."—House Beautiful
"Barbara Damrosch's writing has the snap of a good snowpea and the spice of an old rose."—The Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer
"Covers just about everything you could think of and then some." — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"An extraordinarily comprehensive guide." — The San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle
"Takes your soaring visions of garden splendor and plants them firmly in the ground."—The Toronto Star

Now the beloved classic is revised front-to-back. The new edition has gone 100% organic, which in Barbara Damrosch's hands also means completely accessible. It reflects the latest research on plants, soils, tools, and techniques. There is updated and expanded information on planning a garden, recommended plants, and best tools. Ecological issues are addressed much more extensively, covering lawn alternatives, the benefits of native species, wildlife-friendly gardens, and how to avoid harmful invasive species. More attention is paid to plants appropriate to the South, Southwest, and West Coast, while cold-climate gardeners are given detailed advice on how to extend the growing season. Simply put, the book is a richer and fuller compendium than ever before, with more text, more illustrations and garden plans, expanded plant lists, and gardener's resources. But Barbara Damrosch's core of practical, creative ideas and friendly style remain—she is still an "old-fashioned dirt gardener" at heart.

Gardening at the Dragon's Gate: At Work in the Wild and Cultivated World

Wendy Johnson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate is fundamental work that permeates your entire life. It demands your energy and heart, and it gives you back great treasures as well, like a fortified sense of humor, an appreciation for paradox, and a huge harvest of Dinosaur kale and tiny red potatoes.

For more than thirty years, Wendy Johnson has been meditating and gardening at the Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in northern California, where the fields curve like an enormous green dragon between the hills and the ocean. Renowned for its pioneering role in California’s food revolution, Green Gulch provides choice produce to farmers’ markets and to San Francisco’s Greens restaurant. Now Johnson has distilled her lifetime of experience into this extraordinary celebration of inner and outer growth, showing how the garden cultivates the gardener even as she digs beds, heaps up compost, plants flowers and fruit trees, and harvests bushels of organic vegetables.

Johnson is a hands-on, on-her-knees gardener, and she shares with the reader a wealth of practical knowledge and fascinating garden lore. But she is also a lover of the untamed and weedy, and she evokes through her exquisite prose an abiding appreciation for the earth—both cultivated and forever wild—in a book sure to earn a place in the great tradition of American nature writing.

Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web

Jeff Lowenfels, Wayne Lewis

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 38 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Excellent resource 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Despite the short length of this book, it was packed with lots of good information and was easy to read. It brought to my attention aspects of fungi versus microbial activity that I was never aware of and how these affect soil quality for gardens versus shrubs. The book has had an immediate payback for me, as I am a novice composter and now know how to do that better. It also described compost teas which I was only vaguely familiar with. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in gardening in an earth-friendly way or to those who have relied solely on inorganic fertilizers and need to learn their true effects.

Editorial Review:

Smart gardeners know that soil is anything but an inert substance. Healthy soil is teeming with life-not just earthworms and insects, but a staggering multitude of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms. When we use chemical fertilizers, we injure the microbial life that sustains healthy plants, and thus become increasingly dependent on an arsenal of artificial substances, many of them toxic to humans as well as other forms of life. But there is an alternative to this vicious circle: to garden in a way that strengthens, rather than destroys, the soil food web-the complex world of soil-dwelling organisms whose interactions create a nurturing environment for plants. By eschewing jargon and overly technical language, the authors make the benefits of cultivating the soil food web available to a wide audience, from devotees of organic gardening techniques to weekend gardeners who simply want to grow healthy, vigorous plants without resorting to chemicals.

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

Rose Marie Nichols McGee, Maggie Stuckey

Amazon Price: $12.21 List Price: $17.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Workman Publishing Company Amazon Marketplace: 49 new & used starting at $7.87

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 48 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

With few exceptions-such as corn and pumpkins-everything edible that's grown in a traditional garden can be raised in a container. 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.

California Native Plants for the Garden

Carol Bornstein, David Fross, Bart O'Brien

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

invaluable 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.

This is one of two must have books if you are interested in gardening with native California plants. This book is definitely the 'guidebook' half of that collection (the other being Designing California Native Gardens). It does an excellent job of getting you acquainted with all the different plants you may be wanting to bring into your garden, and in giving you actual photographs of the plants! One giant peeve of mine in gardening books and guidebooks is the use of hand done illustrations- in other contexts they are charming but you really can't get a feel for a plant unless you are looking at its' actual picture. It just gives you a much better feeling for the plant- the texture of it's leaves, the weediness of its' growth habit, that kind of thing. This is a book you will find yourself using as a reference again and again. Five stars are given enthusiastically.

Editorial Review:

California Native Plants for the Garden is a comprehensive resource that features more than 500 of the best California native plants for gardening in Mediterranean-climate areas of the world. Authored by three of the state's leading native-plant horticulturists and illustrated with 450 color photos, this reference book also includes chapters on landscape design, installation, and maintenance. Detailed lists of recommended native plants for a variety of situations and appendices with information on places to see native plants and where to buy them are also provided.

The Backyard Orchardist: A Complete Guide to Growing Fruit Trees in the Home Garden

Stella Otto

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Garening 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I bought this book because I wanted to learn to care for the fruit trees and plants in my yard. This book looks like it has a lot of good information but honestly unless you are really good at gardening it is very wordy. I don't think I will sit and read it but I will probably use it as a reference book.

great reference on fruit trees 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I have about 5 books on fruit trees and this is by far the best and most comprehensive. Only drawback is that they don't use real pictures.

Editorial Review:

For every gardener desiring to add apples, pears, cherries, and other tree fruit to their landscape here are hints and solid information from a professional horticulturist and experienced fruit grower. The Backyard Orchardist includes help on selecting the best fruit trees and information about each stage of growth and development, along with tips on harvest and storage of the fruit. Those with limited space will learn about growing dwarf fruit trees in containers.
Appendices include a fruit-growers monthly calendar, a trouble-shooting guide for reviving ailing trees, and a resource list of nurseries selling fruit trees.

Lasagna Gardening: A New Layering System for Bountiful Gardens: No Digging, No Tilling, No Weeding, No Kidding!

Patricia Lanza

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 39 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Peat moss from Canada renewable and abundant... 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

I feel compelled to address the peat moss concern in the most critical review of this book. It is a shame that the ancient peat bogs in Britain were devastated :( but this is not the case in North America. Most peat in the U.S. comes from Canada which harvests a fraction, .006, of their peat supplies. Moreover, those supplies renew themselves at 70 times the rate of harvest. This, and more reassuring information is provided by the The Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss Association: http://www.peatmoss.com/concern.php

With that bit of cheery news aside...I too share a few benefits I received from this marvelous book, trying not to duplicate comments of other reviewers.

E-Z Paths!: Tired of the dusty, dirty, noisy job of weed beating my garden's paths, I decided to use wetted newspaper covered with a few inches of wood bark mulch. The bark mulch was free from county road crews and a local tree business who were happy to dump it in my yard when they were in the area. When I ran out of newspaper I found a small business pleased to give me piles of discarded cardboard boxes. After one year the paths are still weed-free and the transformation puts a smile on my face each time I walk in the garden.

Modified bag idea: I loved the idea of bagging leaves and setting the bags over grass to kill it, but alas, we have few deciduous trees and I did not want to bag mulch. Inspired by Lansa's ingenuity, I purchased 10 EarthBoxes, set them over a grassy area, then planted winter crops in the boxes. This method has helped me reclaim my large garden bit-by-bit. EarthBox RB-EB-GRN-PBB Garden Kit Dark Green I have also used just four EarthBoxes to anchor four corners of heavy plastic with success.

Well written: Ms. Lansa's writing voice is much like having a conversation with a neighborly garden mentor.

Eco-friendly: The no-till methods help soil retain carbon as well as saving on fuel.

Conclusion: The book is as priceless as good heirloom seed and just as share worthy.

Editorial Review:

A gardening system that works-- so you don't have to!

Turn in your tiller for a stack of old newspapers! Replace your shovel with a layer of grass clippings! Let Pat Lanza show you how you can create lush, successful, easy-care gardens in practically any location without hours of backbreaking digging or noisy tilling.

* Practical, first-person advice from an experienced gardener
* Great ideas to let you spend more time enjoying your gardens and less time working in them
* Specific "lasagna" techniques for the most popular vegetables, flowers, herbs, fruits, and more