What gardening books are you reading?

[Phaedra]

An interesting discussion

*By giving too much nitrogen to the soil, you create a copper deficiency. Copper is needed for neurotransmitters. (started from 16:01 of the video)

 

[digitS']

John Jeavons was an important introduction to developing garden soil fertility. His book, How to Grow More Vegetables ... was an important introduction to more intensive efforts. Peter Chan's Better Vegetable Gardens the Chinese Way simplified it. Reading about Rudolf Steiner showed how I could have gone another way. It seemed far less than practical.

I was once involved as a community gardener. A friend "took over" the garden on one side. He was very much a disciple of the organic, which probably worked okay for him as a baker but his ideas on gardening proved so impractical. He dug out one bed, amended, and planted it. Started another and couldn't finish by midseason. More than 3/4 of his allotment remained untouched. The next year, he didn't make it back and the ground remained fallow. I visited him at home and his backyard was the same story -- wildly cultivated and left untended over years, apparently.

Niki Jabbour has some good guidance for gardeners living in the northern climates. Eliot Coleman took protected growing in a more commercial direction but, even for folks with small gardens, also practical.

Steve

 

[Phaedra]

Our original orchard area is still very wild now, after two years. So far, several David Austin roses did well without too much care. I am thinking to use Charles Dowding's no-dig method to grow pumpkins and potatoes, onions, and even carrots there, as the west side doesn't have so much space for them.

 

[Phaedra]

Finished, a good one

 

[Phaedra]

'The laugh of the day now is that maybe manure will become, in fact and not in jest, manure factories that just happen to produce meat, milk, or eggs as by-products.'

'We all need to read again Farmers of Forty Centuries, by F.H.King, published in 1911, about Asian agriculture at that time. In Japan, Korea, and China, manure was treated like a precious gem because it was a precious gem. Every scrap of animal waste, human waste, and plant residue was scrupulously collected and reapplied to the land. So precious was manure that Chinese farmers stored it in burglarproof containers. The polite thing to do after enjoying a meal at a friend's house was to go to the bathroom before you departed. I am not making that up.'

I like the content and the way Gene Logsdon wrote this book, informative and interesting.

 

[Branching Out]

That is both funny and thought provoking Phaedra!

I am re-reading The Complete Book of Garlic, by Ted Jordan Meredith. Sections of this book go way over my head, so I take this tome out of the library once a year or so in an effort to gradually build on my garlic knowledge. Garlic cultivation has exploded in recent years, and I wish the author would put out a new edition with updated growing notes on the many newer cultivars.

 

[digitS']

A Gene Logsdon article became what I always looked for first back during those years of having an Organic Gardening subscription.

Peter Chan's Better Vegetable Gardens the Chinese Way

This is that book (along with a couple more magazine issues saved ).



Peter Chan was a professor in the agriculture program at Portland State University when he authored this book. Although that area is a little more typical of the Pacific Northwest than here, Chan was educated in China so it goes quite a distance from my "all gardening is local " orientation and so it was still insightful and useful to me.

Steve