Almost Organic: Green Gardening Tips for the Practical Gardener (Gardening with Don Book 4)

Fresh from the Garden

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From the Author I admit I've always been just a little skeptical of "green gardening practices", but have always adhered to the "natural" way when possible. Thankfully, over the years many of us have become a lot smarter in the way we look at what we're feeding ourselves and putting on our lawns. I've found great success in my gardening efforts by questioning some of the old methods, evaluating some of the new, and then finding a mixture of the best of each as being the way to go.

I'm really just a guy who enjoys some of the simple things in life, one of them being gardening, and I'd like to share some of the learning, experiences, and opinions I have picked up over the years. I've found that over time, different experiences have changed some of those opinions, and I'm certainly not afraid of adapting my thinking or my actions when they make sense to me. I've had my eyes opened somewhat by my organic friends, it's my hope this book will help you decide what path you're on!

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Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. Love all the information in this ebook!!! I don't have a huge garden but the information in here works for any size garden or just for landscaping!! This book is about what it says it is about: So, no surprises on that front. The book is not pretentious, the author shares his knowledge based on his experience.

I like the natural and conversational way he uses to illustrate his points. Over the years I've learned many different gardening techniques and secrets from my mom and my grandparents, whose gardens have always been beautiful and exhuberant. Some of this tips are included in Don's book, but most of them are new to me. Now, about the content: Conservation of water is basic for me. Maybe because I come from a place where water is a scarce commodity in summer. The advice about watering and mowing the lawn is exactly what I wanted to read.

Also, the tips to collect rain water are priceless.

Insecticides and other chemical products are not only dangerous for the environment but also very expensive. Green alternatives like the ones contained in this book are benefitial for plants and animals in general as well as for your wallet. Whenever is possible I choose the green alternative.

However, sometimes it is just not possible, at least for me. That's why I believe that "Almost Organic" is a good title and it is the kind of book I needed. I have enjoyed the reading and learned new things that for sure I can apply to my backyard. I highly recommend this book. I'm a failed gardener who is considering giving it one last go. Unlike the previous reviewer, lawns are a large part of my gardening problem, and because of blurb mentioned lawns specifically I decided to buy this book.

I found it very useful, I suspect the author is like me - not prepared to spend every waking hour worrying about the Plant, but happy to help, particularly if I can get a better garden out of spending on chemicals.

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The book is short and to the point, and I rather like the perfectionist neighbour "Herb" and our author's attempts to learn from him. For the price I wasn't expecting a long book - and this book delivered on what it promised that's why I give it 5-stars and recommend it for gardeners who are looking for a "middle way" with organics. The title of this review will only make sense to those familiar with the content in this eBook.

Having said that, it should be noted that this is one of the more enjoyable books, either fiction or non-fiction, that I've read in months. The book had me hooked within the first couple pages, as the author writes in a light and conversational tone. I learned so much helpful info from this book, where do I start? Ladybugs are essential hunters, rain water is cheap and necessary, Fall treatments will ensure Spring health We should all be so lucky to have Herb as a next-door neighbor: I highly recommend this book to any home gardener who is looking for alternative methodology that can be simple, inexpensive and practical.

You won't be disappointed. And yes, Nauru indeed is in great jeopardy of disappearing from the world map altogether. They need our help! My husband and I are new to the whole "acting like adults" thing. Lavishly illustrated with photographs that capture both the light and detail of this magisterial space, this beautiful book will delight and inspire gardeners of every level.

It is an exquisite celebration of garden design, passion and inspiration. With his wife and three children all more or less enthusiastic about the move , they buy a house high in the North Kent Weald. Why do we still not use odd corners of the land for crops and grazing as the Jacksons did, why not run sheep with a lone horse at pasture, a mutually beneficial practice, small ways that make the most of the land, this is an enjoyable read that we can still learn from.

A 'Piece of Passion' from the author My then wife Ann and I had each grown up in the countryside and we had missed the connection with the land we had known then. As child, I had lived in a former fisherman's cottage in Dorset when self sufficiency was a matter of necessity. My father was on the dole, of which there was not much in the 's, and my mother was in poor health.

We lived on what we could grow or forage and if the tide was right what we could get out of the sea. I remember how a conger eel caught by my father would provide us with fish cakes for a week! But the book is also about more than the activities of a family and their animals. It is an attempt to make a small statement about people's relationship with the land they live on and the importance of that relationship. I have long believed that the 'health' of a nation is better and its communities and their cultures stronger, the more it cleaves and values the land it lives on.

This is not a book about French Gardens. It is the story of a man travelling round France visiting a few selected French gardens on the way. Owners, intrigues, affairs, marriages, feuds, thwarted ambitions and desires, the largely unnamed ordinary gardeners, wars, plots and natural disasters run through every garden older than a generation or two and fill every corner of the grander historical ones. Political allegiances forged and shattered. The human trail crosses from garden to garden.

They sit in their surrounding landscape, not as isolated islands but attached umbilically to it, sharing the geology, the weather, food, climate, local folklore, accent and cultural identity. Wines must be drunk and food tasted. Recipes found and compared. The perfect tarte-tartin pursued. None of these things can be ignored or separated from the shape and size of parterre, fountain, herbaceous border or pottager. So this is a book filled with stories and information, some of it about French gardens and gardening, but most of it about what makes France unlike anywhere else.

There are grand potagers like Villandry and La Prieure D'Orsan and allotments and back gardens spotted on the way. Monty celebrates the obvious French associations of food and wine and finds gardens dedicated to vegetables, herbs and fruit. It is a book that any visitor to France, whether gardeners or not, will want to read both as a guide and an inspiration.

It is a portal to get under the French cultural skin and to understand the country, in all its huge variety and disparity, a little better. Informative and entertaining sections will enlighten you on the nature to be found every month, all illustrated in the author's beautiful watercolour and ink paintings.

Discover what's flowering and what else you might come across on a country walk each month, learn how to tell the differences between similar species, like frogs and toads, and transform the foraged finds from your walks into jewellery or decorations for your home, or even something tasty to eat. Each month includes did you know features on a selection of our most interesting species of bird, plant and animal, helpful tips on how to improve your nature detective skills, as well as interesting snippets of country lore. Celia Lewis reveals all this and much more as she uncovers some of nature's secrets in her latest captivating book.

After moving from the Barleywood garden where he hosted BBC Gardeners' World for seven years, Alan Titchmarsh set up home in an old farmhouse a few miles down the road, and went about planting his own private eden away from the public eye. In this horticultural memoir Alan finally reveals all about this secret garden, explaining with his trademark warmth the personal stories behind its design and evolution. Accompanied by beautiful photographs taken by Jonathan Buckley throughout the eight years in which the garden has been made, My Secret Garden allows us access to all of the successes and failures of this diverse and ambitious project.

Comprising many different styles and spaces - from an acre of formal beds and ponds to wild flower meadows and a stunning winter garden - Alan's tales of development and cultivation will be applicable to all gardeners. With the plot encompassing fruit trees, a handsome greenhouse and wildlife-friendly plantings, gardeners of all styles and levels of expertise will find something to enjoy. In this comprehensive and practical guide to the countryside, passionate and hugely knowledgeable countryman Alan Titchmarsh explores the heritage of rural Britain, its landscapes and wildlife, its traditions, customs and crafts.

He'll look at the beauty of chalk downland, offer a checklist of British butterflies and where to find them and show how to make moth traps and wildlife ponds. He'll identify the best breeds of cattle for meat and milk, explain how best to look after a pig and the secrets of a successful small holding. From keeping chickens to dressing a stick, from dry-stone walling to creating a wild flower meadow. Mandy Kirkby, Vanessa Diffenbaugh Format: But, while everyone knows that red roses signify love, few may realise that an entire language of flowers exists with every bloom, folliage and plant having a particular emotion attached, be it hazel for reconcilliation, wisteria for welcome or ivy for fidelity.

This unique language was created by the romantic early Victorians who carefully planned every bouquet and posy so as to deliver a desired message. As the garden year winds down this is just what the garden lover needs, wise words, sage advice, ideas and views on the garden. A Decade in the Garden, Monty Don. After food rationing was introduced in , and German U-boats began threatening merchant shipping bringing in essential foodstuffs, the Ministry of Agriculture decided something had to be done to make the kitchens of Britain more self-sufficient.

The result was one of Britain's most successful propaganda campaigns - Dig for Victory - encouraging every man and woman to turn their garden, or even the grass verge in their street, over to cultivating vegetables. By half the population were taking part, and even the Royal Family had sacrificed their rose beds for growing onions. Now Dan Smith tells the full story of this remarkable wartime episode when spades, forks and bean canes became weapons the ordinary citizen could take up against the enemy.

It had tangible benefits for the war effort in that shipping could be reallocated for munitions instead of food imports, as well as for the health of the nation in encouraging a diet of fresh fruit and veg. The campaign threw up unexpected celebrities like C. Middleton, whose wartime BBC radio talks on gardening reached a vast audience, and it even sowed the seeds for the modern allotment movement.

Ultimately it is a war story without fighting or killing, one that shows how even The Little Man with the Spade, in the words of the Minister for Agriculture at the time, did his bit for Victory. June Non-Fiction Book of the Month. An inspiring book for both gardeners and cooks, which brings Italy to your table by growing your own produce.

Simple gardening advice and delicious recipes. Whether you have a balcony, a patio, or space for a full kitchen garden, Sarah provides a wealth of easy-to-understand instructions and advice - tried and tested in her own garden.

Organic Gardening Books - The 50 Absolute Best Books

This is the perfect book for anyone who loves Italian food and would like to know how to grow it - even on a small scale. She starts and ends with gardens and throughout plants, trees, fragrance and gardens are much in evidence so I feel I am somewhat justified. She is looking back on life, sorting through accumulations of letters, diaries and photographs with that sadness that comes from knowing that one day who will know that person in the photograph, their story and history. We are introduced to places and people, her beloved husband Michael who sadly died just before her classic A Gentle Plea for Chaos was originally published, her children, her friends, the places where she has lived — and loved.

A jewel of a book. Beside the hundreds of tips and ideas, there is some very good advice to be had on soil, compost and fertiliser in particular. Following her theme of the Pure Style, Jane Cumberbatch presents a book of living, eating and gardening simply and stylishly. Arranged by season, the book is a great pleasure to read. To take one example, the Rose; there are excellent recommendations of what to grow and how to look after your plants, how to use flowers in cooking through to making pot-pourri and pressed flowers.

The son of two passionate gardeners, Antony Woodward was born with chlorophyll running through his veins. Unfortunately, growing up with Latin plant names took its toll, and he was ingrained early on with a profound loathing of both gardens and gardening. Buying Tair-ffynnon, a derelict smallholding 1, feet up in the Black Mountains of Wales, changed everything. Hooked by its beauty -- when not buried in cloud -- Woodward battles to meet the strict requirements of the famous 'Yellow Book' in this unlikely terrain.

He finds himself driven by apparently inexplicable compulsions: Soon, his voyage along the rocky path to his own patch of paradise takes on a more personal tenor as he unearths the deep roots linking gardening and his childhood in this warm, funny and unlikely memoir. Beautifully written and effortlessly engaging, 'The Garden in the Clouds' is a compelling read for anyone who has ever gardened -- or ever dreamt of doing so.

Almost Organic: Green Gardening Tips for the Practical Gardener

Aimed at those looking to navigate the maze of gardening advice and sort out the imperative jobs from those that can wait, this guide is perfect for new gardeners or those looking to make their time in the garden really count. This invaluable gardening guide shows you how to care for your garden month by month.

From large-scale ornamental gardens to pot plants on your patio The Gardener's Year Made Easy will take you through the essential tasks to keep your plants in tip-top condition. Find out the most important jobs to do each month for all aspects of your garden, from vegetable plots to lawn care and large trees to herbaceous borders. Michael Van Straten Format: Superfoods from the Garden is the latest - and most important - book by Michael van Straten, the best-selling author and one of the most respected names in the world of complementary medicine and natural health care.

A lifelong believer that good health comes first and foremost from the food you eat, here Michael brings together his three passions - spreading the word on good health the natural way, organic gardening and producing fantastic meals from freshly harvested food.

Organic Gardening Books – The 50 Absolute Best Books

With chapters devoted to each fruit and vegetable family, Michael begins by detailing the different health benefits of each food - for example, did you know that a generous serving of fresh peas supplies all the vitamin B1 you need for a day, or that leeks have a strong antibacterial effect and offer protection against stomach cancer? Once you have decided which crops to grow, Michael explains how to cultivate and nurture your plants.

As a dedicated organic gardener, Michael offers tips, techniques and shortcuts to help you to achieve the best harvest ever. Finally, each chapter concludes with a collection of recipes, all devised to capture the goodness of the ingredients. Whether you're lucky enough to have your own garden, run an allotment or only have enough room for a few pots and containers, you can successfully grow your own fresh vegetables to feed your family.

John Harrison's practical guide gives you all the information you need to prepare the soil and start sowing your seeds. It includes a month-by-month guide to help you plan your gardening year. The Complete Vegetable Grower contains, in one comprehensive volume, all John's tips and tried-and-tested methods for successful vegetable growing. It includes an indispensable A to Z guide to vegetables, month-by-month advice to help you plan your gardening year, and an easy-to-follow sowing and harvesting chart.

And, for the first time, his practical advice is illustrated with hundreds of beautiful colour photos. When Kay Sexton becomes the proud holder of an allotment, she hopes it will be her first foray towards self-sufficiency for her family. Instead, she finds herself in a strange and hostile world of arcane rules and regulations, and hosepipe standoffs. She finds her mud-caked Wellingtoned feet and successfully navigates her way through allotment-keeping: Taking us through the seasons, a gorgeous bran tub of a book that goes beyond gardening into the delights of land, the plants that make up a garden, the people, animals and insects that visit.

We may all have feet of clay, but that shouldn't stop us trying to make a difference We say, 'Demand the impossible. So said Tim Smit and thus was the impossible delivered: Since Eden opened in , well over ten million visitors have made their way to Eden, drawn by the astonishing, visionary ambition of its founders, the everchanging horticulture and new developments on-site.

More have discovered it as an extraordinary music venue, attending Eden's sessions. But Eden is far more than a visitor attraction. It has mutated into an organisation with projects and partnerships all over the world concerned with rehabilitation physical and social , community education, biodiversity, sustainable construction, green employment and town planning. Marking the 10th anniversary, this edition is the extraordinary, fully updated story of Eden complete with stunning new photographs.

Christopher Lloyd Christo was one of the greatest English gardeners of the twentieth century, perhaps the finest plantsman of them all. His creation is the garden at Great Dixter in East Sussex, and it is a tribute to his vision and achievement that, after his death in , the Heritage Lottery Fund made a grant of GBP4 million to help preserve it for the nation.

This enjoyable and revealing book - the first biography of Christo - is also the story of Dixter from to , a unique unbroken history of one English house and one English garden spanning a century. It was Christo's father, Nathaniel, who bought the medieval manor at Dixter and called in the fashionable Edwardian architect, Lutyens, to rebuild the house and lay out the garden. And it was his mother, Daisy, who made the first wild garden in the meadows there.

Christo was born at Dixter in Apart from boarding school, war service and a period at horticultural college, he spent his whole life there, constantly re-planting and enriching the garden, while turning out landmark books and exhaustive journalism. Opinionated, argumentative and gloriously eccentric, he changed the face of English gardening through his passions for meadow gardening, dazzling colours and thorough husbandry. As the baby of a family of six - five boys and a girl - Christo was stifled by his adoring mother.

Music-loving and sports-hating, he knew the Latin names of plants before he was eight.

This fascinating book reveals what made Christo tick by examining his relationships with his generous but scheming mother, his like-minded friends such as gardeners Anna Pavord and Beth Chatto and his colleagues including his head gardener, Fergus Garrett, a plantsman in Christo's own mould. Hessayon and Judith Wills Format: Nothing is more delicious than food grown at home. Now The Garden to Kitchen Expert completes the story, explaining how to prepare all the produce you have grown for the table. The Garden to Kitchen Expert shows you: An ideal introduction to the delights of gardening for fragrance, I found this guide very useful as it gives suggestions for scented plants in every season even in the depths of winter there can be fragrance in the garden.

In this revised and updated edition of her book The New Kitchen Garden, bestselling gardening writer Anna Pavord tells us all we need to know about growing fruit and vegetables. Following in the curmudgeonly footsteps of The Grumpy Driver's and Golfers Handbooks, is a compilation of all things frustrating about maintaining the average domestic garden. Grump's attempts to improve his extra room outdoors are thwarted at every turn.

His lawn develops alopecia, his fruit trees are shunned by all pollinating insects, his veg is a big hit with slugs and his Indian sandstone patio becomes an ingenious sunken garden. Chapters include Pruning, Weeding, Compost Ivor is convinced that cryogenics fan Walt Disney could be happily accommodated in his non-decomposing compost bins , Sheds, Pond-Life, Oh, I Simply Adore Lobelia people who talk too loudly in show gardens , TV Gardening, Pests and Living With 'Leaf Lady', a woman hell-bent on identifying every foreign leaf that is swept into their garden - and returning it There is a Grumpy Calendar of seasonal jobs in the garden and how best to avoid them, plus advice on how to impress people with a Slacker's Veg Patch vegetables that look after themselves more or less.

As well as a new form of gardening, Martin Crawford is introducing new and unusual plants making this a stand-out choice. For anyone starting out on the grow-your-own route it can all seem like hard labour with very little pleasure. To find out what joys are to come, New Urban Farmer is recommended as a first-class introduction to the delights of growing to eat.

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