Barbara Pleasant and Deborah L. Martin turn the compost bin upside down with their liberating system of keeping compost heaps right in the garden, rather than in some dark corner behind the garage. The compost and the plants live together from the beginning in a nourishing, organic environment. The authors' bountiful, compost-rich gardens require less digging, weeding, mulching, and even less planting. And here's one of the best parts -- no more backbreaking slogs from compost bin to garden. The authors even identify the plants that benefit most from compost and how the elements of a composted garden work together.
A natural Six-Way Compost Gardening System provides the ruling principles for successfully improving every garden with healthy compost. Readers will learn how to:
1. Choose labor-saving sites that keep gardens and compost piles as close to one another as possible.
2. Work with the compostable riches produced at home. Every yard and kitchen produces plenty of material -- easily identified with at-a-glance charts -- for a great start.
3. Help composting critters do their work by balancing ingredients, adding high-nitrogen meals when needed, and keeping the compost moist.
4. Reuse recycling bin items, such as large plastic buckets and cardboard boxes, as composting equipment.
5. Keep diversity in the mix. The magic is in the variety of the components and how they work together to create "gardener's gold."
6. Customize composting to suit specific garden needs, always concentrating first on soil care.
Adhering to these guidelines, Pleasant and Martin bring readers on a thorough, informative tour of materials and innovative techniques, leading the way to an efficient and rewarding home gardening system. Their methods are sure to help gardeners turn average vegetable plots into rich incubators of healthy produce, bursting with fresh flavor, and flower beds into rich tapestries of bountiful blooms all season long.

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.

This book motivates gardeners to adopt a completely different mindset: instead of growing foreign plants and killing perceived pests, gardeners can benefit from planting indigenous vegetation with the object of actually attracting insects and other garden wildlife. It illustrates how easy it is to work with nature instead of against it. Not just another gardening book, it encourages gardeners to help preserve and restore our fast-disappearing natural heritage. In this way they can contribute to conservation right on their own doorsteps, while deriving great pleasure in the process. Virtually every aspect of environmentally-friendly gardening is covered, making it a complete “how to” guide and debunking some long-held myths. Winner of a University of KwaZulu-Natal book prize, the first edition was out of print for several years after all 15 000 copies had been sold. This is the Western Edition, for the western half of South Africa that the original didn’t pertain to. The book is lighthearted and entertaining whilst avoiding the technical terms, thus making it an easy read. The book is enhanced by delightful humorous drawings that emphasise points made in the text. A must for all nature-loving gardeners, the large amount of information is almost encyclopedic and will also be more than useful to conservationists and anyone with an interest in the natural sciences.

In order to be a successful gardener you have to know how to prune - whether to improve growth, increase fruiting qualities or to enable the plant to grow in space-restricted areas or cold environments. This practical book provides advice on pruning garden plants, from infancy to maturity.Included is detailed advice on renovating neglected plants, from shrubs and climbers to fruit trees and bushes. There is also a fun element, with instructions for creating topiary in the garden.

'An extraordinary and powerful book, full of vitality. Every page celebrates the way traditional skills can shape who we are' Tristan Gooley 'Lyrical, moving and never self-pitying . . . a lovely book' The Times Ben Short has a successful career in advertising, a flat in a trendy part of London, a flashy motorbike. But after years of suffering with anxiety, he's a wreck. A drastic change is needed. For a time, he finds solace working with a forester, then as an apprentice to a Gypsy woodman, setting up home in a dilapidated wagon with just a rescue dog for company. However, it is not until he feels the call of the furnace, a glowing charcoal kiln in the Dorset woods, that he can truly re-forge his thoughts, put the years of suffering behind him, and start afresh by immersing himself in the old ways of woods and fire. Exquisitely written and deeply honest, Burn is a hopeful story of transformation, a celebration of manual work and craft, and a love letter to the English countryside. 'Beautifully written . . . reading it leaves you feeling ruffled but alive' Mail on Sunday

Selected as a Book of the Year 2017 in You Magazine 'A lavish monthly guide to getting the most from your garden' Daily Mail A punnet of plums from your tree, a handful of gooseberries; home-grown nuts and herbs, and a few freshly laid eggs from your hens - all enjoyed in your own small plot. What could be more satisfying? The Garden Farmer is an evocative journal and monthly guide to getting the most out of your garden throughout the year. Whether you are a keen gardener looking for inspiration, or just starting out and wanting to rediscover and reclaim your patch of earth, Sunday Telegraph garden-columnist Francine Raymond lays the groundwork for a bountiful year of garden farming. Maybe you would like to get outside more, grow a few essential vegetables, some fruit trees or bushes for preserving, and create a scented kitchen garden to provide for you year round. Or perhaps you will raise a small flock of ducks or geese, or even a couple of pigs? Could this be the year you decorate your home with nature's adornments, encourage wildlife back to pollinate your trees and plants, and spend celebratory hours in a haven of your own creation? Each chapter of The Garden Farmer offers insight into the topics and projects you might be contemplating that month, along with planting notes and timely advice, and a recipe that honours the fruits of your labour. With just a little effort and planning, every garden can be tended in tune with nature, and every gardener can enjoy a host of seasonal delights from their own soil. Keep up-to-date with Francine's gardening adventures on her blog at kitchen-garden-hens.co.uk.

Stinging nettles are, for many of us, nothing more than persistent weeds with a painful sting. But apart from having an important role in the web of life, nettles are an incredibly useful plant to mankind. They have been put to myriad uses by our ancestors, and many of these are still valid today. Already stinging nettle products are growing in popularity in the field of alternative medicine, as their wide range of health benefits becomes better known. This unique book explores the diverse uses of this fascinating plant - in the garden and the kitchen, for their medical and fibrous properties and so on. It is packed with practical suggestions, as well as a guide to the botany of stinging nettles, and how to collect and store them. For example, you will discover how to use nettles to: make a liquid plant fertiliser brew an unusual beer make a dandruff treatment protect beehives flavour an omelette make friendship bracelets repel flies naturally make green or yellow fabric dyes keep yourself warm in the winter and much more ... The many health benefits of taking nettles in various forms include relief from: hay fever and other allergies; acne and other skin conditions; arthritis and rheumatism; asthma; stress; high blood pressure; depression; enlarged prostate gland. The book also features Digital Nettle Art

*** RHS Grow Your Own Crops in Pots offers everyone the chance to grow their own food, however small the outdoor space on offer. With this book and all the expert advice of urban gardener and author Kay Maguire, you can turn the tiniest space into a productive and attractive plot, using the best varieties and techniques. Follow 30 tried-and-tested container planting projects for top tasting crop combinations such as tomato with basil, fruit salads and cut-and-come-again vegetables. Explore the crop directory to find out the best way to grow more than 60 vegetables, fruit, salads, herbs and edible flowers. Winner of the Practical Book of the Year 2013 at the Garden Media Guild Awards. RHS Grow Your Own Crops in Pots includes: - Every fruit, vegetable or herb that you can successfully grow in a container - The perfect pot for each crop, coupled with the best container varieties - Tricks for getting the tastiest and best-looking crops - Inspirational style for every garden, balcony, patio and terrace - Key techniques for tubs, planters, baskets, boxes and bags - Reminders of how to keep your crops in top condition - Identifying and solving problems if things go wrong - This new edition provides a month-by-month chart of what to do when growing crops in pots

With growing consumer awareness about the dangers of garden chemicals, readers can turn to "The Organic Gardener's Handbook Of Natural Pest and Disease Control" as the most reliable and comprehensive guide on the garden shelf. Rodale has been the category leader in organic methods for decades, and this thoroughly updated edition features the latest science-based recommendations for battling garden problems. With all-new photos of common and recently introduced pests and plant diseases, readers can quickly identify whether they've discovered garden friend or foe and what action, if any, they should take. No other reference includes a wider range of methods for growing and maintaining an organic garden. The plant-by-plant guide features symptoms and solutions for 200 popular plants, including flowers, vegetables, trees, shrubs, and fruits. The insect-and-disease encyclopaedia includes a photo identification guide and detailed descriptions of damage readers may see. The extensive coverage of the most up-to-date organic control techniques and products, presented in order of lowest impact to most intensive intervention, makes it easy to choose the best control.

Know, grow, and create beautiful bonsai Step-By-Step Bonsai is the ultimate introduction to bonsai trees, with illustrated step-by-step projects to make bonsai for beginners simple and achievable. With an A-Z directory of bonsai tree care, you'll learn the key techniques needed to create your own beautiful miniature landscapes. Author and internationally renowned bonsai artist Peter Warren has taught and worked all over the world and brings you the best of Japanese bonsai. His expertise will introduce you to the tools you'll need, tips for bonsai tree care, styling ideas and how to get the best from your bonsai plants. A complete 'how to' on planting, propagation, pruning and training techniques, plant care, and siting. Bonsai trees will bring serenity to your garden and make your landscape truly unique, even in an urban setting. With traditional techniques, display ideas and 20 contemporary projects for your miniature trees, Step-By-Step Bonsai uses photographic guides to make growing bonsai easy and approachable.

With their colorful leaves, sculptural shapes, and simple care, succulents are beautiful yet forgiving plants for pots. If grown in containers, these dry-climate jewels which include but are not limited to cacti can be brought indoors in winter and so can thrive anywhere in the world.
In this inspiring compendium, the popular author of "Designing with Succulents" provides everything beginners and experienced gardeners need to know to create stunning container displays of exceptionally waterwise plants. The extensive palette includes delicate sedums, frilly echeverias, cascading senecios, edgy agaves, and fat-trunked beaucarneas, to name just a few. Easy-to-follow, expert tips explain soil mixes, overwintering, propagation, and more.
Define your individual style as you effectively combine patterns, colors, textures, and forms. Discover how top designers interpret the dramatic options, in ideas ranging from exquisite plant-and-pot combinations to extraordinary topiaries and bonsai. Expand your repertoire with plump-leaved plants that resemble pebbles, stars, and undersea creatures. Short on space? Create vertical gardens and hanging baskets, and use daisylike rosettes in wall displays.
Each of the more than 300 photographs offers an inspiring idea. A-to-Z descriptions cover 350 of the best succulents, plus companion plants. Whether your goal is a gorgeous potted garden for a sunny windowsill or outdoor living area or simply making great gifts this is a comprehensive primer for creating vibrant, living works of art.
"

"Lasagna Gardening With Herbs"
Lasagna gardening is sweeping the nation, as more and more gardeners discover this simple, sensible method of creating healthy soil for easy-care gardens. Pat Lanza's organic, commonsense approach takes the backbreaking labor out of preparing and planting an aromatic, delicious, and low-maintenance herb garden. Discover Pat's homegrown methods for using more than 50 favorite herbs in recipes, making herbal wreaths and delicious herbal teas, and growing and using edible flowers.
"From the first paragraph of "Lasagna Gardening with Herbs" to the last, I felt as though I had finally found my soil sister. Pat Lanza writes and gardens with knowledge, passion, and a pioneer spirit. Her easy-to-implement tips, combined with her encyclopedic wisdom about plants and soil, make her book indispensable to both beginning and advanced gardeners."--Sharon Lovejoy, contributing editor of "Country Living Gardener," a "New York Times" syndicated contributor, and author of numerous books, including "Trowel & Error"
"If Pat Lanza sometimes has dirty fingernails, it's because she's a writer with the hands-on, dig-in-the-dirt passion of a gardener. When she writes about gardening methods, you know she's tried them. And with her discovery of lasagna gardening, she's managed to make it easier for all of us."--Walter Chandoha, animal and garden photographer and author and illustrator of more than 25 books, including "The Literary Gardener"
"Pat Lanza is the only one I know who turns the world upside down when she gardens. She starts with the basics-- dirt first! Her philosophy is that if you do it right from the garden up and make it fun and easy, the garden willdo the rest."--Jim Long, columnist for" The Herb Companion" and" The Herb Quarterly" magazines and author of books on herbs and history
"Pat Lanza is a true renaissance woman, always inventing new ways to tackle old tasks. One day she decided to try her lasagna method of soil improvement with herbs. Did it work? Of course! Her small garden produced prodigious harvests of delicious aromatic herbs! "Carpe diem"!"--Jim W. Wilson, horticulturist and author of numerous books, including "Jim Wilson's Container Gardening"
"About the Author"
Patricia Lanza is a lifelong gardener, a popular speaker, and the proprietor of the Potager, a garden gift shop and cafe in Wurtsboro, New York. Her first book about her time-saving garden methods," Lasagna Gardening," won the prestigious Quill and Trowel Award from the Garden Writers Association of America.

Container vegetable garden refers to growing veggies in a container which is small in size. The container can be a pot, drum, bushel baskets, gallons or wooden boxes. Here is some of the information you'll find in Container Vegetable Gardening Made Easy: - The Benefits Of growing Your Own Vegetables With the availability of a wide variety of fresh and processed vegetables these days at your local supermarket or grocer, why would you bother growing your own vegetables? Listed are ten benefits you can enjoy from growing, rather than buying, your own vegetables. - The Basics Of Growing Vegetables In Containers Learn what kind of pot or container you can use to grow your plants and what materials to avoid. - Useful Tools Included is information about the basic tools that you will need in order to make your gardening experience easier and more productive. - The Potting Soil The most critical consideration when you're purchasing or blending your own potting soil is to ensure that the mix is light enough to provide adequate pore space for air, water and healthy root growth. Included is a quick basic recipe for making your own potting mix. - Watering Container Vegetables This chapter discusses ways to help you determine when you should water you plants and how much you should water them. Learn to recognize the signs that your plant is suffering from over watering or dehydration. - Fertilizing Your Crops For container gardeners, creating a living soil, rich in humus and nutrients, is the key to growing vegetables and herbs. Here are instructions to create an organic liquid fertilizer, which can be absorbed quickly by your plants. - Growing Vegetables Indoors There are many types of vegetables that can be grown indoors without the aid of extra lighting. Here are some of the best ways you can grow vegetables on windowsills and near natural light sources, such as glass doors and windows, and some handy hints you can implement to keep them healthy. The aim of this eBook is to introduce you to basics and advanced container vegetable gardening. You will learn how you can grow resourceful vegetable garden in your house. Also included is a list of 10 vegetables you can easily grow in containers and information on how to quickly make your own miniature greenhouse at very little cost.

Like the idea of growing your own fruit, veg and herbs but don't have the room or energy? "Crops in Pots" is a user-friendly guide to getting a taste of self-sufficiency, growing wherever you can grab the space - whether it be your patio, balcony or window sill. Apart from the many joys of growing your own food, the benefits of container gardening are manifold: accessibility, portability, soil choice, easier pest and disease control...Find out how to get started and choose your pots, how to grow and harvest - including the most appropriate crops for small spaces, how to deal with problems and lots of great tips on how to be successful on a shoestring.

Raising Red Wigglers is written in simple terms that anyone can comprehend and apply. The book over several techniques for raising red wiggler worms including one technique that show you how to start with 500 adult breeders and turn that into 10,000 new worms within sixty days Bruce illustrates other techniques from composting with red wigglers, top feeding your worms and a combination of both depending on your individual needs. Learn the proper proportions of worms to bedding material to benefit best whether for composting or fishing. Included within is a special chapter showing you to keep your worms sized while growing them out so all the worms in your worm bin are of the same size. For anglers, this works great as no more picking through your worms to find the larger ones. Simply go to a worm bin containing all large adult worms The book will show you how to increase the growth rates of your worms so as you can raise them faster to begin reproducing more worms as well. Learn techniques for harvesting worm castings as well as worm cocoons separately These castings are highly sought after by organic gardeners and considered the best plant food around Learn the proper way to setup a new worm bin for your red wigglers, what to feed them as well as what not to feed them.

Just as he demystified the soil food web in his ground-breaking book Teaming with Microbes, in this new work Jeff Lowenfels explains the basics of plant nutrition from an organic gardener s perspective. Most gardeners realize that plants need to be fed but know little or nothing about the nature of the nutrients and the mechanisms involved. In his trademark down-to-earth, style, Lowenfels explains the role of both macronutrients and micronutrients and shows gardeners how to provide these essentials through organic, easy-to-follow techniques. Along the way, Lowenfels gives the reader easy-to-grasp lessons in the biology, chemistry, and botany needed to understand how nutrients get into the plant and what they do once they re inside. (Don t worry: you won t have to learn college-level science.) Teaming with Nutrients will make you a better informed, more successful, more environmentally responsible gardener and will give you a new appreciation for the plants you grow. "

The only comprehensive guide to wood specifically for landscape architects.

Wood, with its unique warmth and richness, takes us back to the roots of our building heritage and back to the landscape. Lightweight, simple, and clean to work with, it is one of the most versatile building materials, and–thanks in part to its natural origin–one that is also especially well-suited to the designed landscape.

Wood in the Landscape gives you the information you need to exploit wood’s full potential in your design work. The first comprehensive guide to the properties, use, selection, and installation of woodwritten from the landscape architect’s perspective, it is destined to become a staple in your practice.

Wood in the Landscape provides full, detailed coverage of all relevant technical aspects of working with wood–including the physical properties and characteristics of wood as well as finishes, fasteners, and adhesives. It examines the construction methodologies used to build a range of common structures, from fences and decking to gazebos and bridges, and shows how to avoid common problems that can adversely affect durability – particularly important when it comes to outdoor settings.

Generously supplemented with over 100 photographs and illustrations, Wood in the Landscape is a terrific source of ideas that will inspire you to explore the many exciting possibilities for using wood to enhance your landscape designs.

Wood in the Landscape is an invaluable resource for landscape architects, landscape designers, and architects who provide site-planning services.

Herbert Koepf was a pioneer of biodynamics in Germany, the USA and in the UK. He was an expert teacher, and drew on his own practical background in farming. This book is a collection of some of Koepf's writings on key aspects of biodynamics. It includes practical guidance on building soil structure, preparing and applying biodynamic sprays, crop rotation, compost and composting methods. He also considers ways of researching the effectiveness of biodynamic methods, and measuring results. This is an invaluable guide for anyone working with biodynamic methods, offering Koepf's unique insights and wisdom on practical issues. This overview of Koepf's work is a newly-edited combination of four pamphlets: Compost, Biodynamic Sprays, Three Lectures on Biodynamics, and Research in Biodynamic Agriculture. Published in association with the Biodynamic Association.