“Gift ideas, please!!!”
I’ve received this text a time or two. Haven’t you? Whether you’re in a family gift exchange or your mother is asking for gift ideas for the fifth time, I’ve got you covered with a list of 7 must-have gardening books from my own library to ask for this holiday season. (Or give to others, too!) These are books that I reference over and over again, or books that helped me become a better, wiser gardener.
1. The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible
This is the book that I give most frequently to anyone starting a garden for the first time. Edward C. Smith’s guidance is well-organized, simple to follow, and timeless. I especially love the vegetable-by-vegetable reference guide. This book definitely stops the endless online scrolling for vegetable-specific information. If you start with Edward’s system as your foundation, it’s hard to go wrong when growing your own food.
2. The Well-Tended Perennial Garden
There is a unique pleasure in growing perennials. But if you’re expecting a garden worthy of a magazine-layout by plopping a few salvias in the ground and walking away, you will know heartache all too soon. Perennials are easy to care for, but not care free. Enter Tracy DiSabato-Aust’s essential guide to perennial gardening. Her book transformed the way that I think about growing perennials and serves as a very significant part of the foundation of my gardening methods.
3. The New Seed Starter’s Handbook
Indoor seed starting is both an art and a science. But once you’ve established a rock-solid indoor seed-starting routine with the right supplies and the right techniques, you will double your garden’s output for a fraction of the cost of growing from transplants. Though some of the information can be a bit dated, The New Seed Starter’s Handbook will build a solid foundation for seed-starting at home that you can later tweak with additions of better technology.
4. Vegetable Love
One of the challenges of growing your own food is figuring out what to do with it all once harvested. To make matters more challenging, most of the time crops are harvested all at once, leaving you scrambling to find great vegetable recipes before things go bad. Barbara Kafka’s Vegetable Love is an essential cookbook for any home, but it’s especially valuable for vegetable gardeners. With over 750 recipes, all organized by vegetable, there is a recipe to suit any palate.
5. Don’t Throw It, Grow It! 68 Windowsill Plants From Kitchen Scraps
A few weeks ago, my best friend asked if she could plant a piece of ginger from the grocery that started to sprout. “Yes!” I exclaimed. “And I have the perfect book for you with lots more ideas for growing plants from scraps.” This it that book. Whether you have kids, know kids, or you’re a kid at heart, Don’t Throw it, Grow It! will satisfy your every curiosity about re-planting kitchen scraps and growing them into new plants.
6. Cool Flowers: How to Grow and Enjoy Long-Blooming Hardy Annual Flowers Using Cool Weather Techniques
Thanks in large part to the explosive social media success of Floret Flowers, a new generation is discovering gardening in their pursuit of an Instagram-worthy, cut flower garden. Although armfuls of dahlias might not be entirely possible here in North Texas, we can grow many cut flower favorites like foxglove, snapdragon, larkspur, bachelor’s buttons, poppies and sweet peas by planting during the cool fall for spring blooms. Flower farmer Lisa Mason-Ziegler details this cool-weather planting process in a book I turn to often: Cool Flowers. It’s an essential selection for anyone interested in flower growing.
7. The Plant Propagator’s Bible
Working as a plant propagator in a tropical greenhouse, I learned to be fearless when it comes to starting plants. I had no other choice! I propagated hundreds of new plants a day by just cutting pieces off existing plants and sticking them into fresh potting soil. It really was as simple as that. No rooting hormones, no “callousing over”, just cut and stick. Of course, there are some intricacies, but surprisingly very few. Which is why I want you, with the support of a good reference like The Plant Propagator’s Bible, to start moving beyond just seeds as a means of starting plants and begin propagating new plants from your existing plants with confidence. My favorite propagation project? Turning one succulent into dozens of succulents when I find a cool, unusual succulent at a garden shop. Simply cut apart and stick into good potting soil. Easy peasy!
Hopefully now you feel 100% prepared when asked, “So, whaddaya want?” when your friend or relative comes calling. Even if no one is pestering you for gift ideas, perhaps you’ve discovered a few new titles to add to your growing gardening library.
Compiling this list was a good exercise for me, too. No matter how long I’ve been doing this, it’s a good idea to go back through these favorite books of mine to see what nuggets of genius I can glean.
If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.
― Shunryu Suzuki
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