Gardeners can never have enough plants in their yard, seed catalogs on their nightstand or garden books in their library. Before the springtime air tempts you to dash out and purchase more seeds and plants, it’s best to educate yourself a bit. Drought-tolerant, low-maintenance, sustainable yards that grow flowers as well as food are what the garden experts are preaching this year. This way gardeners can conserve water, create wildlife habitat, protect local watersheds, save energy and have healthy soil to grow tons of “Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter” tomatoes this summer.
I instantly fell in love with this first book. It’s hard not to. Willi Galloway is a Portland-based award-winning radio host, writer and former editor at Organic Gardening magazine. Her delicious new book, Grow Cook Eat: A Food Lover’s Guide to Vegetable Gardening (Sasquatch Books), is fabulous. If you are fed up with the pesticide-packed produce at your local supermarket and are joining the millions of home gardeners yearning to grow their own food, this book is for you. Galloway will take you by the hand and show you step by step exactly how to sink a seed into the soil to grow your favorite vegetables. Each entry has a recommended recipe as well as harvesting and storage tips. Breathtaking color photos of food and flowers by Seattle-based photographer Jim Henkens are finely woven throughout the book.
Seattle and L.A.-based outdoor living expert Debra Prinzing’s new book, The 50 Mile Bouquet: Seasonal, Local and Sustainable Flowers, (St. Lynn’s Press) is in bookstores this month and it is a must-read. You’ll be educated about the “slow flower” movement. Right now nearly 80 percent of cut flowers in the U.S. are flown in from other countries. Many of these foreign flower farms use chemicals that have been banned in the United States because of their toxicity to animals and humans, yet workers on these farms are exposed to them on a daily basis. All so we can have flowers on our tables? That seems mighty selfish to me. You will be happily seduced by the stunning photography of David Perry; he and Prinzing traveled around the U.S. visiting 50 flower farms to interview the dedicated farmers who stand at the forefront of this cultural shift.
Tag, Toss and Run: 40 Classic Lawn Games (Storey Publishing) is author and sustainability educator Paul Tukey’s latest book on turf, and it is a blast. Tukey is usually seen traveling around the country giving talks for Safe Lawns (www.safelawns.org ), his nonprofit advocacy group promoting chemical-free lawn care. Actress Victoria Rowell (The Young and the Restless) co-wrote the book. Both grew up in rural Maine without much to play with except “their own wits and the lovable nitwits and nincompoops from the neighborhood,” says Tukey. “Our days were spent with endless outdoor games,” they write. “No cell phone, no pocket money, no instructions other than to be home by dinnertime!” With obesity levels for 5- and 6-year-olds doubling in the past decadeĀand even worse for teenagersĀthis book is the perfect motivator and guide to get kids off the computer and outside this summer. Some of the games: Double Dutch, Capture the Flag, Bocce, Follow the Leader, Kick the Can, Tug of War, Ghost in the Graveyard and my all-time favorite, wheelbarrow races. What I also learned? Long ago, Russell Frisbie, a baker in Connecticut, stamped his name into his pie tins where nearby Yale students began tossing the metal tins through the air hollering “Frisbee” as they threw it. Wham-O bought a pie-pan prototype from Fred Morrison, named it the Pluto Platter, later the Frisbee, and made millions.
Have you always wanted to read a book by a hydrology scientist? I have just the book for you. Hydro-geek Robert W. Domm and horticulturist Lynn Steiner have teamed up for the user-friendly rain garden handbook Rain Gardens: Sustainable Landscaping for a Beautiful Yard and a Healthy World (Voyageur Press), designed exclusively for the home gardener. This beautiful book provides simple, low-cost ideas and advice to help you create your own rain garden using native flowers, shrubs and trees. Just what is a rain garden? “A rain garden is a plant bed that collects rain runoff from your roof, driveway, patio or other waterproof outdoor surface. A pipe connected to a downspout or an above the ground channel conveys the water to the garden,” explain the authors. What sets it apart is that it is usually on an incline or a down-slope so that water can be collected there. The soil is well amended with compost and plants are carefully chosen so there is no fertilizing or maintenance, and the rainwater is absorbed into the ground. It includes photos and simple steps on planning, plumbing, building, planting and standing back to admire your work.
And last, for you city slickers, pick up a copy of Willow Rosenthal and Novella Carpenter’s The Essential Urban Farmer (Penguin Group). Two of our favorite Bay Area writers, eco-advocates and farmers released this 500-page treasure a few months ago. Though there is plenty of clear information about growing a prolific garden, what is most useful about this book is that it addresses all of those questions novice city farmers may have, such as how to procure the land, how to deal with contaminated environments or to how to choose and care for (and kill) farm animals in the ‘hood. “We were both trial-and-error urban farmers. We would’ve loved to have had a guidebook that showed us best practices. So this is the book that we wished we’d had when we were starting out,” says Carpenter. The authors claim in the intro that the average urban backyard can grow all the fruit and veggies for one person in 25-by-40-feet, and that it makes economic sense to garden if you have more time than money. (Isn’t that all of us these days?) Thinking about getting some bees, chickens, goats or rabbits? Get this instructive book first!
MARIN BAY-FRIENDLY GARDEN TOUR
This splendid eco-tour, Saturday, May 19, is organized through the Bay-Friendly Landscaping Gardening Coalition, a regional nonprofit comprised of home gardeners, landscape professionals and local governments.
Registration is required to receive a guidebook with directions, garden descriptions and entrance tickets. Cost: $10. Register at www.BayFriendlyGardenTour.org. (Registration deadline is May 11.)
One of the stops on the tour is the gorgeous garden at the Marin Brain Injury Network in Larkspur. Soil scientist Stephen Andrews will be lecturing there about “Building Healthy Soil” at 11am and 1pm. I will be there signing books from noon to 2pm. Come on down to talk dirt with us!
Dig dirt with Annie at dirtdiva.com
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