Rate this book

Easy Growing: Organic Herbs And Edible Flowers From Small Spaces (2012)

by Gayla Trail(Favorite Author)

4.34 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0307886875 (ISBN13: 9780307886873)

languge

English

genre

Food & Cookbooks

publisher

Clarkson Potter

review 1: Excellent book by Gayla Trail. She has a few other books that I have enjoyed and one of them I own. This book focuses on herbs. It has good advice, fun projects and nifty recipes.--How to Make Homegrown Liquid Feed--Good way to recycle an overabundant harvest.1. Wearing gloves, roughly chop or rip all parts of the plant including leaves, stems, and flowers into chunky bits. Toss them into the bucket and add 4 parts water to 1 part fresh herbs. Molasses increases the growth of beneficial microorganisms; add it in if you like and stir vigorously.2. Set the sloppy mixture aside for 1-3 days, stirring aggressively a few times per day. Regular agitation draws oxygen into the brew to aid in the production of beneficial microorganisms. Beware: If you don't agitate at lea... morest once a day, the mix will rot and stink up the neighborhood.3. Strain out the slurry and toss it into the compost bin or lay it on the garden soil around needy plants. Reserve the liquid in a recycled container or jar and use it as a concentrate. I add a few cups to a large watering can of water regularly throughout the growing season, apply it as a foliar feed using a spray bottle, and pour it on full-strength when transplanting seedlings. Your plants will love it!NOTE: This will also work as a less potent fertilizer if you need to use up out-of-date herbs from the cupboard. Brew it up like regular drinking tea and leave out the molasses. Cool the brew off before using.--Origami Seed Envelopes--Use scrap paper from out-of-date gardening catalogs and magazines, old maps, frayed posters, discarded wrapping paper or wallpaper samples. Store in anything that will keep the seeds dry.1. Take a 4 inch square piece of paper and fold in half diagonally to make a triangle.2. With the triangle pointing up, fold the bottom right corner up until it meets with the left side. Press the seam flat.3. Repeat with the left corner until it meets the right side.4. Fold down the top flap and tuck it into the fold of the front piece to secure.5. To fill the envelope with seeds, simply pull out the top flap and open it up. Pour the seeds in and tuck it back together.6. Label each packet with the name of the plant and the date collected. If you can't write on the packet, print the labels found online at easy-growing.com onto sticker paper and affix one to the front.--Other Notes--Prune off the top of soft growing tips of basil, mint and other leafy herbs using your fingertips or a pair of scissors. Doing this encourages it to branch off into two stems and bush out. Do this to: basil, mint, oregano, lemon verbena, scented geranium, thyme, rosemary, shiso, tarragon, stevia, chamomile, cilantro, catnip, oracheAttract natural predators! Here are some ideas: install bird and bat boxes and feeders, leave behind stacks of wood that ladybugs can hibernate inside, create shelter for toads lizards and snakes by piling up rocks or overturning broken pots, set out a dish of water for thirsty critters, mulch the garden bed year-round to attract ground beetles, leave behind a few dead plants and grasses through the winter to provide seed and shelter, allow dill parsley and other umbelliferous plants to set flowers that attract beneficial waspsGrow these herbs from seed: angelica, anise, anise hyssop, arugula, basil, caraway, catnip, chamomile, chervil, chives, coriander, cumin, fennel, mustard greens, nasturtium, orache, pansy and viola, puslane, savory, smallage (wild celery), sorrel, sunflower, violetGrow these herbs from seed, but sow direct outdoors as they do not transplant well: borage, calendula, dillSoak nasturtium, runner bean or other seeds with a hard shell in water for no more than 24 hours to encourage the shell to crack open. Rub parsley, bay, and coriander seeds along a piece of fine sandpaper to cut into the hard shell slightly.
review 2: I really like this book because it combines two things that I think are really useful for people interested in small-space gardening. First of all, it has excellent "beginner" gardening information, so if you have never grown anything before, you can pick this up and green your thumb almost instantly. Secondly, this book is focused mainly on herbs, which I think is such an overlooked part of small-space gardening. Fresh herbs are outrageously expensive at the grocery store, and they take up very little space in the garden. Many of them are quite hardy, both of climate and neglect, and will often come back year after year with little help from the gardener. So, if someone was like "I only have a patio/balcony/fire escape and I want to learn to garden and get the most return on my investment" this would be a great book to hand them. This will go on the short list of books I recommend to city friends who ask about learning to garden. As a more experienced gardener, I also got a lot out of this book. Gayla has a gift for plant lists, and she breaks them up into such useful groups. Plants that will tolerate damp spots, shady spots, boiling hot spots - they're listed. There are lists detailing which plants you should grow from seed and which are worthwhile to buy as starts, and which propagation methods are best for most herbs in the book. And, of course, in the style we have come to expect from Gayla, there are totally gorgeous photos, some funny write-up's, and many delicious recipes for using up all the herbs you are going to grow. This book is one you can come back to again and again when you want to expand your herb garden. It's a keeper. less

Download links for: Easy Growing: Organic Herbs and Edible Flowers from Small Spaces

Advertising