Showing posts with label gardening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gardening. Show all posts
Jan 2, 2017
Mar 1, 2016
Mar 6, 2015
Practical projects for self-sufficiency - Chris Peterson
Summary: Have you ever wanted to build your own chicken coop, cider press, or herb-drying rack? How about a clever two-bin composter, horse-blanket washing machine, or genuine Langstroth beehive? In Practical Projects for Self-Sufficiency, you'll find these projects and a couple of dozen more to help you develop and grow your self-reliant lifestyle. Where most self-sufficiency books give you pages of words and a couple of small drawings for an explanation, this book shows you exactly how to do things, employing beautiful photos and complete plans in the best Cool Springs Press tradition.
Library Journal Reviews
If you are one of the many backyard farmers, this book has 30 projects to help you enjoy the fruits of your labors. Peterson (Building with Secondhand Stuff) and Schmidt (The Complete Guide to Greenhouses & Garden Projects) lend their considerable expertise to these plans. Clear, step-by-step instructions are paired with large photos. The projects are very doable, even for beginners. Sections cover food prep and storage, outdoor building projects, and small animal enclosures. However, this collection has odd choices. Some projects really stand out, such as the cider press, manual laundry washer, solar still, loom, and strawberry planter with mesh cover, but others appear less related—doggy-door installation, kit shed, fire pit, etc. The designs related to raising bees or chickens are better covered by specialized books, such as Kim Flottum's Backyard Beekeeper or Storey Publishing's The Backyard Homestead Guide to Raising Farm Animals. VERDICT This is a well-organized book with great instructions, but unless one is hunting actively for these particular projects, it falls a little flat. Recommended where variety is desired.
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Apr 1, 2013
Yards - Billy Goodnick
Summary: Nobody wants to spend time in a tired, underperforming yard. But how to achieve a low-cost, low-maintenance yard that's environmentally savvy as well as beautiful - a place that works for every need? Award-winning landscape architect and garden coach Billy Goodnick says, “Whether you're starting with bare ground or you're renovating an existing yard, you gotta have a plan.” With step-by-step, clear examples, he demystifies the planning process: from site analysis to lifestyle considerations to plant selection. It's all about training the eye to see the big picture first, so all the other pieces fall into place, leading to the outdoor environment of one's dreams. Full color photos throughout.- (Ingram Publishing Services)
"Billy Goodnick delivers the most laid-back, user-friendly, and entertaining garden advice you'll ever read. Invite him into your backyard--now!"
--Amy Stewart, New York Times bestselling author of Wicked Plants
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Nov 1, 2011
The BUST DIY guide to life - Laurie Henzel
Summary: Collects do-it-yourself and craft projects from Bust magazine covering such topics as food and entertaining, travel, and career and finance.
Whether it’s sewing clothes, making cheese, or growing a garden, the modern appeal of “do-it-yourself” projects has a broader reach than ever. And who better to teach us how to DIY our lives than the über-crafty editors of BUST, the quirky, raw, and real magazine “for women who have something to get off their chests”? In The BUST DIY Guide to Life, magazine founders Debbie Stoller (of Stitch ’n Bitch fame) and Laurie Henzel have culled more than 250 of the best DIY and craft projects from its 15-year history. Organized by category—beauty and health, fashion, food and entertaining, career, finance, travel, and sex—and written in BUST’s trademark brazen and witty style, this quintessential DIY encyclopedia from the quintessential DIY magazine is eclectic, empowering, hilarious, and downright practical, truly capturing the spirit of women today.
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Oct 1, 2010
The wild braid : a poet reflects on a century in the garden - Stanley Kunitz
Summary: Throughout his life Stanley Kunitz has been creating poetry and tending gardens. This book is the distillation of conversations - none previously published - that took place between 2002 and 2004. Beginning with the garden, that "work of the imagination," the explorations journey through personal recollections, the creative process, and the harmony of the life cycle. A bouquet of poems and a total of 26 full-color photographs accompany the various sections. - (Blackwell North Amer)
Booklist Reviews
Kunitz, who will turn 100 years old in July, has twice been named Poet Laureate of the U.S. He is not only a distinguished and luminous lyric poet but also an ardent gardener. As he reflects on his callings in this lovely mix of prose, poetry, conversation, and photographs, he illuminates the many ways each practice nurtures the other. Kunitz traces his rapport with nature to his boyhood, when he found refuge from family tragedy in woods and fields. In describing his seaside Provincetown garden, he contemplates the garden as "the cosmos in miniature" and a "compressed parable of the human experience." He observes that both gardening and writing poetry depend on the "wild permissiveness of the inner life." In the aftermath of a serious illness and an amazing recovery, Kunitz talks radiantly about death and art, and how an artist's work expresses "gratitude for the gift of life." In all, this is a graceful and moving glimpse into a rare and giving artist's refined poetics, garden aesthetics, and spirituality. ((Reviewed May 15, 2005)) Copyright 2005 Booklist Reviews.
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Jun 1, 2010
California native plants for the garden – Carol Bornstein
California native plants for the garden - Bornstein, Carol
Summary: California Native Plants for the Garden is a comprehensive resource that features more than 500 of the best California native plants for gardening in Mediterranean-climate areas of the world. Authored by three of the state's leading native-plant horticulturists and illustrated with 450 color photos, this reference book also includes chapters on landscape design, installation, and maintenance. Detailed lists of recommended native plants for a variety of situations and appendices with information on places to see native plants and where to buy them are also provided.
Sunset Magazine Review
This guidebook . . . is both practical and inspirational. Lovingly detailed plant profiles . . . make you covet each species. -- Sunset Magazine, April 2006
May 3, 2010
American meadow garden: creating a natural alternative to the traditional lawn – John Greenlee
American meadow garden: creating a natural alternative to the traditional lawn - Greenlee, John
Summary: In a book with full-color photos, an expert nurseryman and designer details site preparation, plant selection and maintenance of a meadow garden, explaining how ornamental grasses perform in different climates and areas.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* In a book long awaited by green mavens and horticultural enthusiasts, Greenlee's dynamic garden designs are paired with Holt's splendid photographs in a beautifully produced, information-packed volume that looks at meadows in the context of garden spaces large or small. Greenlee is a passionate advocate for meadows as fecund and lovely habitats, while stressing the water-saving qualities of meadows as opposed to mown lawns. He describes sunlight and clouds as elements essential to appreciating the aesthetics of meadows, explains the basics of grass ecology, and makes recommendations specific to various terrains for creating evocative effects within a "purposeful" design. The diverse meadows featured in Holt's photographs effectively illustrate Greenlee's premises. Suggestions for grasses that can be combined with select perennial flowers, ferns, bulbs, and annuals are provided for sites in regions of all climates with an eye to establishing a compact ecosystem and avoiding the waste of traditional lawns. With a step-by-step guide to planting and maintaining a meadow garden, an A to Z of grasses, and many other invaluable resources, this is the most comprehensive and practical resource yet on this increasingly popular garden type. Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.
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