Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
|||
Books > Health, Home & Family > Gardening > Specialized gardening methods
As readers and critics around the country agree, any new book by
the renowned garden writer Elizabeth Lawrence is like finding a
buried treasure. "A Rock Garden in the South" will not disappoint.
Released posthumously, this book is not only a welcome addition to
the Lawrence canon, but fills an important gap in the garden
literature on the middle South.
How to create stunning window displays to enjoy throughout the year. Discover the pleasure of decorative and edible plants without a garden. All you need to know about the basic principles involved in planting containers and window boxes. Match your window box design to your decor with ideas for different styles, from country cottage to modern. It features advice on seasonal plantings and striking combinations for year-round interest. It offers easy-to-follow instructions for planting up different types of containers and useful tips on upkeep. Topics include getting started, maintenance, seasonal choices, knowing your style, satisfying the senses, seasonal tasks, best window box plants and the common names of plants. Imaginatively planted window boxes are a delight not only to the creator but also to visitors and passers-by, with uplifting spring boxes of bright tulips, narcissi and hyacinth, or welcoming cascades of fuchsias, begonias and lobelia. In this book you will find inspiration for decorative and edible designs that will give pleasure throughout the year. There are suggestions for using a variety of containers as well as different styles and combinations to achieve just the effect you want. In addition you will find expert advice on planting up containers and quick reference charts, making this an indispensible handbook for the creative gardener.
Dig into eco-gardening and cultivate your green thumb. Discover how to care for the planet while you care for your garden. This is your no-fuss guide to planet-friendly gardening. Do you want a beautiful and productive garden that won't cost the earth but don't know where to start? This wildlife gardening book for beginners will introduce you to all aspects of sustainable gardening. It includes a wide selection of recommended plants including trees, climbers, and wildflowers, to help encourage local biodiversity in your garden. Whether you're growing in pots on your patio or have a fully-fledged garden, this organic gardening book explores everything you need to know to create your own eco-garden. Discover how to minimise garden waste and make soil-building compost. Learn how to do your bit to reduce your carbon footprint and make a positive contribution to slowing down climate change. You don't have to be a horticulture expert to get started, this indispensable reference book will take you through every single step! It includes: - Tips on how to turn your outdoor space into a refuge for local wildlife - Packed with practical, jargon-free know-how and simple gardening techniques - Easy-to-follow format to help grow your gardening knowledge Let It Grow! Gorgeous, full-colour photography provides plenty of inspiration and environmentally-friendly ideas. Expert tips and step-by-step instructions on every page guide you on how to be more sustainable and why it's important. Grow Eco Gardening covers everything you need to work in harmony with nature. It's the perfect book for beginner gardeners who want to do their bit for the climate. Complete the Series: Make your green-fingered dreams a reality with the Grow series from DK. Learn how to brighten up even the trickiest areas in Grow Containers, or discover how to prune your garden in Grow Pruning & Training. Alternatively, there are more titles to explore such as Grow Easy Veg and Grow Houseplants.
NEW EDITION 2018. Extend the life of your plants, trees and shrubs with this authoritative and comprehensive gardening manual. It covers all the standard propagation techniques including sowing seed; taking cuttings; dividing; growing suckers and offsets; layering; how to create extra bulbs, tubers and corms; and grafting two plants together. An A-Z directory lists all the key plants for propagating, describing each plant's size, colour and shape, and how and when to propagate them to get the best results. Plants propagate themselves naturally in the wild, using all kinds of ingenious techniques. This practical book explains the most effective techniques for propagating 375 different types of plants. The book begins with growing plants from seed, covering everything from lettuces and chillies to sunflowers and sweet peas. Next, there are instructions on taking cuttings from established plants to give you exact copies of the parent plant at minimal cost. Dividing plants, layering and grafting methods all follow and all are explained with step-by-step instructions and photographs. The directory of plants includes growing tips for each individual species.There is also advice about propagation equipment from secateurs and garden knives to bio-degradable pots and cold frames, as well as how to improve your soil and make compost. Beautifully illustrated with over 1100 clear and informative photographs and illustrations.
Organic Gardening in Cold Climates can teach you how to reap a vegetable bounty despite a short growing season. Gardeners from the Rocky Mountains to New England can enjoy luscious red tomatoes, fresh kale, and baby carrots chilled by the damp earth in their own backyard. Perrin helps you plan your garden and shows you how to plant, fertilize, water, mulch, and harvest -- without the use of agricultural chemicals. Special sections explain companion planting, season extenders, composting, natural pest and disease control, saving seeds, and the French Intensive method of gardening. You'll also find hints for cooking and preparing vegetables, a list of cold climate seed suppliers, and sources for further information. Includes 64 pen-and-ink drawings, index, 2 appendixes, and 4 charts.
A polytunnel, high tunnel or hoop house, can be used as an affordable, low-carbon aid to growing your own food all year round, from crispy salads and fresh vegetables in the dead of winter to juicy melons and mouth-watering grapes in high summer. But once you've decided to invest in a polytunnel, there are many questions to be answered, including: * Do you need planning permission? * What are the different sizes and types you can buy? * Where should you put it, and how do you put it up? * What can you use it for, how do you look after it, and what are the likely problems? The Polytunnel Handbook looks at all aspects of using a polytunnel, from planning your purchase to harvesting the rewards, and includes a step-by-step guide detailing how polytunnels are put up and maintained. There are chapters on developing healthy soil and preventing pests, and a jargon-free guide to the range of often mystifying accessories that many tunnel retailers offer. For the DIY enthusiast there is a full set of instructions for building a polytunnel from scratch, and the authors explain how to keep your polytunnel productive in every season.
Consumer interest in tea has grown rapidly in recent years and continues to climb. Worldwide there are 25,000 cups of tea consumed every second - more than billion cups per day! For tea drinkers interested in the freshest flavour, growing the leaves at home is the ideal solution. Lucky for them, tea is not an exotic, hard-to-grow crop - it can be successfully grown anywhere that camellias can be grown. In Grow Your Own Tea, readers will learn how to cultivate, harvest, and process this venerable crop. Parks and Wolcott share details on how to get started; describe cultivation, long-term maintenance, and harvesting; show how to grow tea plants in containers; and describe how to process and store harvested tea leaves. Grow Your Own Tea includes information on how to produce white, green, oolong, and black teas.
Selected as one of the best gardening reads of 2019 by The Daily Mail Short of outdoor space but want to grow fruit and vegetables? Congratulations. Really, lucky you. Not for you the back-breaking trudge of tending large spaces of land, the weeding, digging and pest vigilance. Gluts? They will mean nothing to you. Instead you can look forward to small but perfectly formed bursts of flavour. Handfuls of fresh leaves, berries and tomatoes, just when you want them, and at arm's reach. As more of us live in cities with restricted outside spaces, growing food becomes all the more important, not just for the delicious results, but as a mindful way to connect us to the seasons and to nature. Full of tried-and-tested, fool-proof crop ideas exclusively tailored for containers, raised beds and small gardens, Crops in Tight Spots guarantees vegetable growing success for even the most newbie of gardeners and limited of spaces.
Leading landscape architect Kim Wilkie is revered for his unusual vision and his acute grasp of how people have moulded their environment over the centuries. This updated version of his classic book, Led by the Land, has been expanded to include fresh thoughts on farming and settlement and new projects, both huge and intimate, from the designs for new cities in Oman and England to the Swansea Maggie's Centre, and from plans for London's Natural History Museum grounds to the sculptural setting of a furniture factory in Leamington Spa. Wilkie has taken his genius to many parts of the world - including the United States, Chile, Russia, Transylvania, Italy, the Middle East, the very edge of the Arctic Circle, as well as the British Isles - but to each undertaking he brings the same approach of reverence for the land and the creatures that inhabit it. He does not impose his inspiration on it but interacts with it. He allows the land to lead him. Led by the Land ruminates on our species' place in the environment, the way past masters have fashioned it and the hopes for our future fruitful connections and offers not only a rich account of an unusual talent, but also an optimistic vision for our future.
From the bestselling author of Teaming with Microbes and Teaming with Nutrients comes an important guide to mycorrhizae and the role they play in agriculture, horticulture, and hydroponics. Teaming with Fungi is the first book to accessibly explain the essential symbiotic relationship between soil-dwelling mycorrhizal fungi and plants, Almost every plant in a garden forms a relationship with fungi, and many plants would not exist without their fungal partners. By better understanding the relationship, gardeners can take advantage of the benefits of fungi, which include an increased uptake in nutrients, resistance to drought, earlier fruiting, and more. Learn how the fungi interact with plants, how to grow their own, and how best to employ them in the home garden. "This book accomplishes what few other books have - helping the public use these essential fungi to improve the immune systems of plants." - Paul Stamets, author of Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the I World
Water lilies are inextricably linked to the ancient cultures of Greece and Rome, Egypt and the Far East, where they were highly valued, just as precious metals or gemstones, their properties were thought to be medicinal, spiritual and purely aesthetic; they have been represented in architecture, printed textiles, religious paintings and illustrations, cited in mythology, folklore, mysticism and the creative imagination. This volume meticulously records our enduring love affair with the most beautiful and exotic of plants, the water lily. It is a comprehensive and detailed account of their introduction into European culture, largely through the passion and devotion of one man, Joseph Bory Latour-Marliac (1830-1911), whose lifelong work in the field of propagation, cultivation and commercialization of water lilies inspired a generation of horticulturists, artists and poets to create the words and images that are deeply embedded in our culture today. Claude Monet, for example, used lilies from Latour-Marliac's nursery to create his garden in Giverny. The work Latour-Marliac did gave rise to development of specialist lily nurseries and growers across Europe and North America; in fact, Latour-Marliac's nursery still exists today, owned by Robert Sheldon, an American who shared Latour-Marliac's passion for water lilies and water gardening and has been the force behind the nursery's continued success today.
Scientist/gardener Carol Deppe combines her passion for organic gardening with newly emerging scientific information from many fields -- resilience science, climatology, climate change, ecology, anthropology, paleontology, sustainable agriculture, nutrition, health, and medicine. In the last half of The Resilient Gardener, Deppe extends and illustrates these principles with detailed information about growing and using five key crops: potatoes, corn, beans, squash, and eggs. In this book you'll learn how to: -Garden in an era of unpredictable weather and climate change -Grow, store, and use more of your own staple crops -Garden efficiently and comfortably (even if you have a bad back) -Grow, store, and cook different varieties of potatoes and save your own potato seed -Grow the right varieties of corn to make your own gourmet-quality fast-cooking polenta, cornbread, parched corn, corn cakes, pancakes and even savory corn gravy -Make whole-grain, corn-based breads and cakes using the author's original gluten-free recipes involving no other grains, artificial binders, or dairy products -Grow and use popbeans and other grain legumes -Grow, store, and use summer, winter, and drying squash -Keep a home laying flock of ducks or chickens; integrate them with your gardening, and grow most of their feed. The Resilient Gardener is both a conceptual and a hands-on organic gardening book, and is suitable for vegetable gardeners at all levels of experience. Resilience here is broadly conceived and encompasses a full range of problems, from personal hard times such as injuries, family crises, financial problems, health problems, and special dietary needs (gluten intolerance, food allergies, carbohydrate sensitivity, and a need for weight control) to serious regional and global disasters and climate change. It is a supremely optimistic as well as realistic book about how resilient gardeners and their vegetable gardens can flourish even in challenging times and help their communities to survive and thrive through everything that comes their way -- from tomorrow through the next thousand years. Organic gardening, vegetable gardening, self-sufficiency, subsistence gardening, gluten-free living.
The ancient art of bonsai is thoroughly explored in this book. With the aid of this title, you'll discover the varied and intricate artistic paths to creating a bonsai in its many different finished forms. You'll also find practical instructions on starting and training your own bonsai and the special care and display needs of these plants. A final section describes in encyclopedia format those plants that have been proven to grow successfully and attractively under bonsai treatment.
Includes: *500 recommended plants & designs*planting tips and growing conditions *rules and principles of container gardening color, flowering time, height, spread and hardiness of each plant *photos showing each plant in a container setting *covers MN, WI, IL, IN, MI, OH
Gardening for Everyone is a sustainable guide to growing vegetables in five simple steps: planning, building, planting, tending and harvesting. With the same wisdom and stunning aesthetic as Simply Living Well, Julia's beautiful new book is a guide to creating and growing a garden simply and sustainably with profiles of essential vegetables and herbs, ecological tips, and fun and creative projects. Growing food in your backyard (or even on a porch or windowsill!) is one of the simplest and most rewarding ways to nourish yourself, be self-sufficient and connect with nature in a hands-on way. Here sustainability expert Julia Watkins shares everything you need to know to grow your own vegetables, fruits and herbs, as well as wildflowers and other beneficial companion plants. The book covers all the nuts and bolts of creating and caring for your garden - planning, building, planting, tending and harvesting - followed by a deeper dive into the plants themselves: demystifying annuals vs. perennials, cold-weather vs. warm-weather veggies, and profiles of favorite crops. Throughout, Julia offers tips for creating an eco-friendly and sustainable garden (such as vermicomposting, no-till 'lasagna' gardening, and attracting pollinators), plus some fun and unexpected hands-on projects like how to build a bean teepee, make wildflower seed paper, and enjoy refreshing herbal lemonade ice pops.
Turn your outdoor space into a sanctuary for nature and join the rewilding movement today! Introducing Wild Your Garden, a practical guide to rewilding your outdoor space, with advice, inspiration and step-by-step projects brought to you by Gardeners' World and Springwatch guests The Butterfly Brothers. We all have the potential to make the world a little greener, and Wild Your Garden shows you how to create a garden that can help boost local biodiversity. You don't need specialist knowledge or acres of land. If you have any outdoor space, you can make a difference to local wildlife, and reduce your carbon footprint, too! So what are you waiting for? Dive straight in to discover: -Practical illustrated step-by-step projects for all level of gardeners -Tips and advice to adjust to the principles of wild gardening -Inspiration for rewilding your garden space and encourage local biodiversity to thrive Whether you wish to transform a paved-over yard into a lush oasis, create refuges to welcome and support native species, or turn a high-maintenance lawn into a nectar-rich mini-meadow to attract bees and butterflies, this great gardening book has something for everyone to discover. The Butterfly Brothers are expert landscape gardeners specializing in wildlife-attracting projects of all sizes across the UK. Having worked closely with Chris Packham, Alan Titchmarsh and even Sir David Attenborough, they will show you how to easily support wildlife and reap all the benefits Mother Nature has to offer, no matter the shape and size of your garden. In fact, Alan Titchmark once said: "It's up to every single one of us to do our bit for wildlife, however small our gardens, and The Butterfly Brothers know just how that can be achieved." Did you know that the concept of rewilding is being increasingly seen as a viable tool in the fight against rising C02 emissions? So let's all work together to do our part for the planet! Whether it's plummeting pollinator numbers, building bird boxes or crafting a woodland wonderland, this gardening guide is jam-packed with top tips and tricks for wilding your garden and becoming one with nature! The ideal gardening gift for the nature lover in your life, those looking to take steps to reconnect with nature, or those who wish to protect local wildlife from the comfort of home!
Dry weather defines the southwest, and it's getting dryer. A water becomes more precious, our gardens suffer. If we want to keep gardening, we need to revolutionize our plant choices and garden practices. Hot Colour, Dry Garden provides home gardeners with a joyful, colour-filled way to exuberantly garden in low-water conditions. Garden expert Nan Sterman highlights inspiring examples of brilliant gardens filled with water-smart plants. Gardeners will find advice for adding colour to the garden, information about designing for structure and texture, and a plant directory that features drought-tolerant plants that dazzle. Hot Colour, Garden is a must-have guide for gardeners in the Southwest and other areas affected by drought and low-water conditions. |
You may like...
|