Techniques Books - Page 6

The Secret Techniques of Bonsai: A Guide to Starting, Raising, and Shaping Bonsai

Masakuni Kawasumi II and Masakuni Kawasu III

Amazon Price: $19.14 List Price: $29.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Kodansha International Amazon Marketplace: 31 new & used starting at $17.27

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Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Gardening & Horticulture -> Japanese Gardens

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

Editorial Review:

The Japanese art of bonsai is practiced worldwide, but while basic techniques have been more or less effectively taught, many of the more intriguing ones, as well as recently invented ones, have not. THE SECRET TECHNIQUES OF BONSAI remedies this oversight with the thoughtful instruction of second and third generation experts.

SECRET TEACHINGS is by the author of the groundbreaking BONSAI WITH AMERICAN TREES, one of the first books to unveil the secrets of the trade. This time, Masakuni Kawasumi II teams up with his son, Masakuni III, to offer not only the basics for creating perfect bonsai but secret techniques he has developed over years of careful work and observation. Masakuni III, the first qualified tree doctor for bonsai in Japan, adds his unique insights. Between them they offer over eighty years of experience.

The techniques are simple and intuitive, yet have been developed only after decades of practice and perfection. Detailed information is provided to start, nurture, and shape bonsai. A number of secret techniques are introduced for beginners and experienced enthusiasts alike. The father-and-son team also delves into bonsai tool usage, another area of their expertise, giving the reader a clear sense of how to use specialized tools—or how to better use the garden and workshop tools they have at home. All these make this an invaluable book for beginners and experienced enthusiasts alike.

* Growing bonsai from seedlings or cuttings
* Secret techniques and new shortcuts to better bonsai
* Techniques for shaping, pruning, training, grafting, and repotting
* Step-by-step photos
* Expert advice from Japan's first bonsai tree doctor
* Detailed advice for using numerous bonsai tools to perfect bonsai work

Designer Plant Combinations: 105 Stunning Gardens Using Six Plants or Fewer

Scott Calhoun

Amazon Price: $12.89 List Price: $18.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Storey Publishing, LLC Amazon Marketplace: 38 new & used starting at $11.55

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Editorial Review:

For every gardener who has hesitated over plant pairings or wondered if an array of favorite plants will work well together in the garden, Designer Plant Combinations inspires and delights with professionally designed combinations using just two to six plants. Here are the secrets to combining French lavender with California fuchsia; prairie coneflower with hummingbird mint; and tall purple moor grass with dwarf Korean lilac in a small garden bed. The dramatic effects are marvelous.

Author Scott Calhoun traveled the country searching for the freshest, most exciting plant groupings. He visited the gardens of top designers from coast to coast and chose more than 100 combinations to include in his photographic celebration. Riots of complementary colors, masses of grasses, foliage spectacles in extraordinary shades of green and purple, and height variations as arresting as city skylines are all featured in these exciting gardens, each one an intimate self-contained glimpse of a larger garden.

Rather than complete garden designs, these combinations are small, understandable pieces that demystify the design process for home gardeners. The innovative ensembles are invitations to try plants together in fresh, inventive ways. The combinations are perfect as embellishments to or reinventions of existing gardens. A favorite pairing can be the beginning of a larger garden design, or a five-plant grouping might be all that is necessary to fill in a small urban garden. The possibilities are as varied as the gardener's imagination.

Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community

Heather Coburn Flores

Amazon Price: $16.50 List Price: $25.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Chelsea Green Amazon Marketplace: 51 new & used starting at $14.60

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Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Gardening & Horticulture -> Techniques -> Organic
Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Gardening & Horticulture -> Techniques -> Urban

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Gardening can be a political act. Creativity, fulfillment, connection, revolution—it all begins when we get our hands in the dirt.

Food Not Lawns combines practical wisdom on ecological design and community-building with a fresh, green perspective on an age-old subject. Activist and urban gardener Heather Flores shares her nine-step permaculture design to help farmsteaders and city dwellers alike build fertile soil, promote biodiversity, and increase natural habitat in their own "paradise gardens."

But Food Not Lawns doesn’t begin and end in the seed bed. This joyful permaculture lifestyle manual inspires readers to apply the principles of the paradise garden—simplicity, resourcefulness, creativity, mindfulness, and community—to all aspects of life. Plant "guerilla gardens" in barren intersections and medians; organize community meals; start a street theater troupe or host a local art swap; free your kitchen from refrigeration and enjoy truly fresh, nourishing foods from your own plot of land; work with children to create garden play spaces.

Flores cares passionately about the damaged state of our environment and the ills of our throwaway society. In Food Not Lawns, she shows us how to reclaim the earth one garden at a time.

Incredible Vegetables from Self-Watering Containers: Using Ed's Amazing POTS System

Edward C. Smith

Amazon Price: $13.57 List Price: $19.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Storey Publishing, LLC Amazon Marketplace: 58 new & used starting at $3.99

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Shiny green cucumbers; firm, juicy tomatoes; baby lettuces handpicked one salad at a time—these are the tasty benefits of the backyard vegetable garden. But earth gardens are a lot of work. They require a plot of plantable land and a significant time commitment to sowing, watering, weeding, and tending each plant.

Is there a solution? Self-watering containers allow vegetable gardeners—from the casual weekender interested in a tomato plant or two to the very dedicated gardener with limited space—to grow richly producing plants in a controlled, low-maintenance environment.

Lifelong gardener Ed Smith became fascinated with the possibilities of self-watering containers and began testing dozens of vegetables in various containers, experimenting with nutrients, soil mixtures, plant varieties, and container positioning. Now Smith is here to tell gardeners that anyone can grow and enjoy wonderful organic vegetables, using pots with continuous- flow watering systems.

Smith shares advice on choosing appropriate containers, how to provide balanced nutrition using his secret soil formula, and what additional tools benefit the container gardener. The reader will also find advice on starting from seed versus buying plants, which vegetables thrive in containers and which might be a bit more challenging, along with space-saving tips on pairing plants in single containers. After the last green tomato has been picked and is ripening on the windowsill, Smith wraps everything up with a chapter on fall clean-up and preparing for next spring. Now there’s really no excuse for store-bought tomatoes!

The Grape Grower: A Guide to Organic Viticulture

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Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Gardening & Horticulture -> Fruit
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Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Gardening & Horticulture -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Grapes are the most popular and widely grown fruit in the world. From the tropics to Alaska, grapes will grow successfully in almost every climate. Whether you raise them for fresh eating, or for making wine, juice, or jellies and preserves, the right grapes will reward you with abundant crops for a modest investment of time and effort.
Now for the first time comes a book for grape growers who wish to use organic growing methods to raise healthy, thriving vineyards in the backyard or on a small commercial scale. The Grape Grower distills the broad knowledge and long-time personal experience of Lon Rombough, one of North America's foremost authorities on viticulture.
From finding and preparing the right site for your vineyard to training, trellising, and pruning vines to growing new grapes from seeds and cuttings, The Grape Grower offers thorough and accessible information on all the basics. The chapters on grape species, varieties, and hybrids are alone worth the price of a college course in viticulture. Technical information on the major (and minor) insect pests and diseases that affect grapes, as well as their organic controls, makes this book an invaluable reference that readers will turn to again and again.
Rombaugh also provides a wealth of information on hardy but little-known grapes that are native to North America, and on a wide range of topics, including:

pruning neglected or overgrown vines

growing grapes on arbors and in greenhouses

controlling animal pests in the vineyard

bunch grapes and muscadine grapes for the South

winter protection, and how to increase the hardiness of grapes

creating your own new varieties

Niwaki: Pruning, Training and Shaping Japanese Garden Trees

Jake Hobson

Amazon Price: $23.07 List Price: $34.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Timber Press, Incorporated Amazon Marketplace: 43 new & used starting at $18.98

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Fabulous 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

My husband wanted this book because we have started a large oriental garden. It explains turning plants into Japanese artisist sculpture. It enlightens you to whats going on and why. This is a very good "how to" book.

a must for hobby gardeners 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

well,put simply: if you whant to know how to do it and what to do , this is it.

Niwaki: Pruning, Training and Shaping Japanese 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This is an ok book - not great wich I wish it had been but good. I will definitly try some of the Japanese pruning technicques.

Editorial Review:

Over the years, Japanese gardeners have fine-tuned a distinctive set of pruning techniques that coax out the essential characters of their garden trees, or niwaki. In this highly practical book, Western gardeners are encouraged to draw upon the techniques and sculpt their own garden trees to unique effect. After discussing the principles that underpin the techniques, the author offers in-depth guidelines for shaping pines, azaleas, conifers, broadleaved evergreens, bamboos, and deciduous trees. Complete with abundant photographs, personal anecdotes and a wealth of advice, this unprecedented resource will inspire gardeners everywhere to transform their own trees into niwaki.

Cubed Foot Gardening: Growing Vegetables in Raised, Intensive Beds

Christopher O. Bird

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Excellant Start For Backyard Gardeners 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1TS6AHKY4KN4C PHOTO SLIDESHOW: The pictures with this review are a daily account of the garden I raised last year using much of the advice from this book.

BOOK REVIEW: Chris Bird believes it's easier to grow a garden in raised beds, and in this book, he shows you how. Bird details the fundamentals of cubed foot gardening (how to build the boxes, space considerations, etc) and gives a brief introduction to the most popular vegetables grown in the US. He includes a useful season planting guide, which should be used instead of everyone's grandparents' methods like "plant corn two Mondays after the first dogwood bloom."

The most appealing aspect of the book is the personal voice of the author. More than a how-to guide, this is one man's story about his successes and failures. He even admits when his method may not be the best or points out his many setbacks in his life of gardening.

I was given this book one year after I started gardening in raised beds and have spent the last year correcting many of the mistakes I made on my own. Along with the seasonal planting guide and suggestions on which crops to plant, I learned creative designs for trellises and innovative planting techniques, including a brilliant "salt shaker" method of scattering small seeds evenly over an area.

Marijuana Indoors: Five Easy Gardens

Jorge Cervantes

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

excellent 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I think this book is great for anybody interested in the growth process of marijuana, it is step by step and very easy to follow. For people that smoke weed and never really thought of growing their own, reading this book will deffinately show you that it is an easy way to save money by growin your own weed.

Editorial Review:

If you really want to know exactly how to grow a garden from beginning to end, this is the book for you. Jorge chronicled five different growers from beginning to end. He lists everything they use to layout and construct their grow room including all the prices for everything. He also clues you into all the facts and figures and how to achieve the gram of dried sinsemilla per watt of HID light. Get the inside story from five growers. Every last detail on their grow operation (except location) - how they harvest heavy crops of potent marijuana indoors. They tell everything-how to choose a safe house, build a grow room & cloning chamber, install ventilation, hydroponic gardens & grow lights. Sixty full-color photographs, more than 80 black & white drawings, charts, and graphs illustrate the text. An index and an indispensable appendix of formulas and conversions are also included.

Perennial Combinations: Stunning Combinations That Make Your Garden Look Fantastic Right from the Start (Rodale Garden Book)

C. Colston Burrell

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Perennial Combinations features plant medleys that bring color, texture, and excitement to the garden in every season. The book features 130 of the best pernnial combinations with photographs of each grouping, along with a numbered photo key and plant list. Each grouping features just two to six plants; gardeners can plant the combinations as they appear for small garden spaces or they can repeat or mix the combinations for large beds and landscapes.

Available for the first time in paperback, with a new chapter of plant combinations featuring today's big, dramatic perennials, backyard gardeners will find the best choices to accent wide open spaces, marry slopes and high foundations, and make an impact on the landscape with impressive and showy plants. From tall plumes to bold foliage, many of these plant combinations create a living privacy screen and offer a bounty of bloom for those looking to make an "architectural" statement in their perennial beds. Plant cultivar names have been updated throughout the book so gardeners can choose perennials that are readily available at local nurseries.

MaryJane's Outpost

MaryJane Butters

Amazon Price: $19.80 List Price: $30.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Clarkson Potter Amazon Marketplace: 48 new & used starting at $17.13

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Get out! No matter what your age, MaryJane Butters walks you to the door and OUT you go. Wilderness ranger turned Idaho organic farmer, MaryJane is a woman OUTSIDE . . . the norm. Drawing from her own diverse background, she’ll show you exactly HOW to get outdoors—and what to do once you’re there.

Think and get inspired in her OUTTHINKING chapter. Head to your porch, yard, or rooftop, using the innovative and easy suggestions you’ll find in OUTBOUND. Kick up a little sass with her ideas in OUTRIGGED, joining the ranks of “reel” women who go tramping (trailer camping), or wily huntresses who take the kind of “heart shots” that knock ‘em dead and into the freezer. In OUTSTEPPING, learn to load a backpack with her unique high-protein meal plan that won’t break the bank or your back.

And throughout these pages you’ll encounter the inspirational stories of OUTSPOKEN women who’ve blazed the trail and beyond. By the time you turn the last page, you’ll be going flat-OUT for all the world to see.