7 Incredible MUST-READ Gardening Books!
Are you in need of some fresh garden inspiration? This is the blog post for you! Discover a whole new world of innovative gardening technique through the new books featured below.
The Complete Guide to Seed & Nut Oils by Bevin Cohen
Press your own right at home – homemade oils for cooking and health.
The Complete Guide to Seed and Nut Oils is a comprehensive, beautifully illustrated and photographed, full-color guide to growing, foraging, and pressing nut and seed crops to produce high-quality oils for culinary and other uses. Coverage includes:
A brief history of seed oil extraction
Culinary and health benefits of home-pressed oils versus factory produced oils
Presses and other equipment options for ease, cost, and convenience
How-to for growing, harvesting, processing, and pressing nuts and seeds
Profiles of over 40 nuts and seeds to grow, forage, or source including hempseed, flax, peanuts, sunflowers, walnuts, okra, and more.
Oil processing, storage, and culinary and other uses
Scaling up for community or small-scale commercial production.
Whether you want to produce oils for cooking, balms and salves, self-sufficiency and resiliency or for small-scale commercial or community production, The Complete Guide to Seed and Nut Oils is a one-stop shop to get you started.
Plant Grow Harvest Repeat by Meg McAndrews Cowden
Grow your dream garden.
From her 1/4-acre food garden in zone 4a, Meg McAndrews Cowden grows enough to feed her family of four nearly year-round using simple, modern methods. Extending the growing season on both ends, including harvesting deep into winter, her methods have inspired tens of thousands worldwide. Her devoted followers relish the vivid photography and reflections from the garden alongside tutorials on soil blocking and recyclable pots, and fully subscribe to her planting guides and seed suggestions.
More than anything, Meg’s work reminds us, everyday, about the unmitigated joy one finds from growing your own food, the peace you feel digging in the earth, and the sense of unparalleled pride from growing a pepper you could never buy in the store.
Attracting Beneficial Bugs by Jessica Walliser
This revised and updated edition of Jessica Walliser’s award-winning Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden offers a valuable and science-backed plan for bringing balance back to the garden.
With this indispensable gardening reference—now updated with new research, insights, and voices—learn how to create a healthy, balanced, and diverse garden capable of supporting a hard-working crew of beneficial pest-eating insects and eliminate the need for synthetic chemical pesticides.
After a fascinating introduction to the predator and prey cycle and its importance to both wild ecosystems and home gardens, you’ll meet dozens of pest-munching beneficial insects (the predators) that feast on garden pests (their prey). From ladybugs and lacewings to parasitic wasps and syrphid flies, these good guys of the bug world keep the natural system of checks and balances in prime working order. They help limit pest damage and also serve a valuable role in the garden's food web. But they won't call your garden home if you don't have the resources they need to survive.
With a hearty population of beneficial insects present in your garden, you’ll say goodbye to common garden pests like aphids, cabbage worms, bean beetles, leafhoppers, and hornworms, without reaching for a spray can. To encourage these good guys to stick around and do their important work, you'll learn how to create a welcoming habitat and fill your garden with the best plants to support them.
Inside you’ll find:
Bug profiles introducing dozens of beneficial insects and the down-and-dirty details on how they catch and eat their prey
Plant profiles featuring the best plants for supporting beneficials
Interviews with entomologists who focus their life's work on understanding the value of insects, including Doug Tallamy, Paula Shrewsbury, Leslie Allee, Dan Herms, and others
An inspiring look at how plants and insects intersect in the most incredible ways
Why gardening for bugs is just as important to the greater world as it is to your garden
Tips for creating insectary plantings and borders to support a broad range of beneficials
The acclaimed first edition of Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden ushered in a new way to garden; one that appreciates and understands of the power of returning a natural balance to the garden. This revised and updated edition continues to herald and expands on that same important message.
In The Urban Garden you’ll find dozens of inspiring and creative ways to grow flowers, shrubs, vegetables, herbs, and other plants in small spaces and with a limited budget.
Whether you want to grow on a balcony, rooftop, front stoop, or a tiny urban patio, turn your growing dreams into reality and build a gorgeous and unique garden that showcases your personal style while still being functional and productive. With the ingenious ideas and resourceful tactics found here, you’ll be maximizing yields and beauty from every square inch of your space, while also making a lush outdoor living area you’ll crave spending time in.
Take inspiration from urban gardeners around the world and learn to:
Install planting pockets on fences and walls
Grow a rooftop garden in lightweight grow bags
Tips for designing small spaces that feel BIG
Build a salad table for growing lettuce and greens
Utilize garden structures and plants for decorative screening
Support pollinators by creating a small-scale habitat
Design a pet-friendly urban yard
Employ climbing plants and vines to add privacy and reduce noise
Plant in layers to maximize yields and add beauty
Whether you’re growing edible plants or beautiful flowers, the 101 amazing growing ideas found in The Urban Garden will turn your tiny urban yard into a treasure trove of green you’ll be proud to share with family and friends.
Southern Gardening All Year Long approaches southern landscapes from a different perspective. Instead of encyclopedic lists and articles focused on botanical gardens or someone else’s landscape, author and host of Southern Gardening Gary R. Bachman connects with his audience through personal stories that share his expertise gained over decades of planting, all told in an easily digestible format.
Most stories in Southern Gardening All Year Long focus on Bachman’s hands-on experience with gardening. He recounts tales about his own personal gardens―plants that have thrived and failed―and presents his advice in a common-sense style. Bachman's personal, conversational writing makes Southern Gardening All Year Long an old-fashioned, over-the-fence chat with a knowledgeable and helpful neighbor.
Just as he has done in newspapers, and on television and radio, with Southern Gardening All Year Long, Bachman hopes to help gardeners be successful in their own landscapes, alleviate some of the apprehension new gardeners feel, and inspire experienced gardeners to try new plants instead of the same old plantings every year. Gardening success doesn’t always follow steps 1-2-3, but Bachman encourages readers not to worry about plants that don’t survive. Failures happen in gardens every season. Offering a variety of tips and tricks and over 170 color images, Southern Gardening All Year Long will become a gardener’s best friend.
Part-gardening bible, part-call to action, award-winning authors Kathleen Norris Brenzel and Mary-Kate Mackey present advice, tips, and how-to’s for gardeners seeking better health, increased happiness, and stronger communities
A gardening book for the times we live in, The Healthy Garden combines practical advice for starting a garden with a rare view into how home gardening builds resilience, personal happiness, and community strength. Filled with savvy tips from dozens of experts, each chapter celebrates the many ways gardening works to build health. These professionals and passionate plant people offer lively insights into landscape design, soil science, nutrition, and plant choices. With its can-do, Victory Garden approach, The Healthy Garden is essential for anyone seeking to live closer to nature in their own backyards.
GROW: A Family Guide to Plants and How to Grow Them by Riz Reyes
Discover 15 plants and fungi with life-changing powers and learn how to grow them at home.
Meet their surprising relatives (the tasty tomato is a cousin of deadly nightshade!) and unearth their interesting stories (lettuce was the first plant to be grown in space!). Then follow step-by-step instructions to grow and care for each one, whether you have a big backyard garden or a sunny windowsill.
Written by horticulturalist Riz Reyes and fully illustrated by Sara Boccaccini Meadows, this is the perfect introduction to growing plants for families everywhere.