Your Questions About Gardening

GardenersCardiff answers:

The answer to your question is obviously subjective. I PERSONALLY think “Gaia’s Garden” by Toby Hemenway is the best gardening book I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a lot.
Almost all other gardening books I’ve read are just rewrites or rehashes of what other books say. Gaia’s Garden is revolutionary and fascinating.

This book advocates and is based on the principles of Permaculture. This is a step beyond organic gardening in that it teaches gardening that works with nature, not against it.
Many common gardening techniques actually increase the amount of work and outside materials needed.
For instance, Many gardening books recommend yearly tilling of the soil, which actually ruins the soil and its flora and fauna. Permaculture relies on mimicking how forests naturally build soil.

Almost every page of this book has “aha!” moments. My copy is dirty, dog-eared and full of underlining.

GardenersCardiff answers:

Hello,

and congratulations it is an excellent idea to start a square foot garden. Depending how big you want to make your garden I strongly suggest you put some solid boundaries between your squares in place.

Loose bricks or planks for example. This will help you to walk in between the growing plants without compacting the soil.

Dig up the soil at least a week before you want to start planting to aerate the ground. Clear out weeds, stones etc. And mix in a nice organic soil conditioner like worm castings or compost for example.
Make a plan which plants you want to use and research how large the mature plants might grow.

This way you can make sure that you don’t place plants next to each other that don’t suit each other.

Some Tomato plants for example grow quite big and once fully established might deplete a low growing herb plant next to it completely of sun light.

Find out which way the sun travels during the day. So you can make sure that the low growing plants get a spot where they can get enough sun.

Water your small plants regularly because they can dry out quickly when the sun is strong.
Water either in the morning or the evening, but not during the heat of the day. This way you avoid a lot of evaporation and the leaves of plants won’t get sun burnt

But the most important tip I guess is just to enjoy your garden. And don’t worry if you make a mistake we all learn from them.

“An Expert in any field is someone who has made all possible mistakes there are to learn from!”

Kind regards

Stephan

GardenersCardiff answers:

Sunset Western Garden books are the basic and are the best for identifying your growing zone. Older books contain information that the newer ones eliminate, so it’s a good idea to pick up old editions at used book stores as well as the new version. Also get the Sunset book on pest identification and go green to eliminate the nasties. Then add specialty books on topics of interest to you. John Greenley’s book on grasses is one. Botanica by R.G.Turner Jr., a plant encyclopedia, has good photographs…if you see something you like, look it up in Sunset to see if it will grow in your area. Plant catalogues such as David Austin roses and San Marcos Growers( California) are fantastic design resources for wish lists and contain handy tips on growth requirements. They’re free, always a good thing. Check local botanical garden bookstores for a book on native plants in your area and plant those for ease of growing and for helping the planet!! It’s a Pandora’s Box, love. AND, don’t forget to browse the library. Happy growing.