GardenDesk

Eight Invaluable Gardening Books!

With this page, I want to highlight some of the gardening books that I keep re-reading. These are the ones that I end up referring to again and again in some of my posts.

Since it's winter here, I have been reading lots of gardening books lately. This is my favorite time of the year to read gardening books in fact. During the growing season, I find myself using them more as reference books. I look up plant spacing or how to solve a particular garden problem. In the Winter and Early Spring I read entire gardening books for enjoyment, learning and future application. These books really prepare me for a successful gardening season.

Each year I read new books, but these are the ones I go back to over and over. Some of them are pretty old now, but have stood the test of time for me. Some are probably out of print and if it weren't for the magic of Amazon, might have been long forgotten. Also thanks to Amazon, the cost for most of these books are quite low. Since these are the books I have mentioned in my past posts, I will link to those posts in the book descriptions.

The New Victory Garden This was my first favorite gardening book, and I still love it. I use this book's ideas to get my extra early tomato harvests. It also explains how to build the cold frames that I use. I wrote about them in How to build a Cold Frame and Cold Frames: Great Investments.	Four-Season Harvest As far as I am concerned, Eliot Coleman is the Master! All about season extension, this book was written in 1992 and has been guiding me ever since. I quoted from it in Why We Built Our Hoop House. This is also where I learned about Soil Block Makers.
The 12-Month Gardener More info about season extension and how to do it at low cost! It even has easy plans to build your own greenhouse, which I used to build ours. See my wife and I using the book to build our greenhouse in this post, and then read even more about our greenhouse in this post.	All New Square Foot Gardening For backyard gardeners, this is the book that started it all! Well actually that was his first book, Square Foot Gardening. This is the newer version containing the original ideas as well as 25 years of added gardening wisdom! I refer to this book in this post.
Garden Insects of North America Where would I be without this book? I use this continually to identify insects I find in the garden so I can decide what to do about them. It also easily identifies every stage of each insect. A must have for the organic gardener! I wrote about it's rave reviews here, and about getting my copy here.	Carrots Love Tomatoes Originally written in 1975, this is the revolutionary book about companion planting. It tought me which vegetables to plant together and which ones to keep apart. It also surprised me by helping solve my blister beetle problem and helping my fight with raccoons.
100 Greatest Garden Ideas Jeff Cox was my favorite TV gardener back in the day. This book is a compilation of 100 of his best ideas and tips for your garden. I have used many of his ideas including one to keep raccoons out of your corn.	The Winter Harvest Handbook This is Coleman's newest book that goes deeper into the idea of year-round vegetable production. I use this book to help get maximum use from my hoophouse. I first wrote about the book here.

These eight books are not the only ones I've ever written about, but they are among my
25 most favorite gardening books. In that post, I also went into organic gardening books, composting books and worm books.

Also, if you want more recommendations for good books about hoophouses, frost protection and season extension, I wrote about several in this post.

And if you still want more, please visit my GardenDesk Amazon Store.

So what about you? What is your favorite gardening book? Are any of your favorites on my list, or are they completely different? Why don't you pick up that old favorite book again?
You still have a few weeks until spring in which to read it. :)

Rave Reviews for Garden Insects of North America Book

A few years ago, I wrote a post about how much I liked the book Garden Insects of North America: The Ultimate Guide to Backyard Bugs, by Whitney Cranshaw.

Except for a couple of people commenting on that first post, It seems that nobody likes talking about or reading about insects.

I guess I'm somewhat of an Entomologist at heart because I find bugs fascinating. Understanding the pest insects as well as the beneficial insects found in the garden is a very important part of organic gardening.

I wrote about that in my recent post, Chemical Pesticides Aren't the Answer.
I don't think many people have wanted to read it because, like I said before, many gardeners are uncomfortable about insects.

Since that first post about my favorite Insect Guide, I have used the book a lot, but have heard virtually nothing about it from anyone else. So I'm happy to point out that others now agree with me that this book is a must have.

As I've been looking through countless catalogs and magazines this winter, I keep seeing references to Cranshaw's book. After seeing it at least a half dozen times, I thought I should bring it to your attention again. I saved the last two places I saw it for you.

It appears in the ARIBCO-Organics catalog and gets a glowing review:

In case you can't read it, it says: "Garden Insects of North America - Learn about all the good and bad bugs in your garden. This is the most comprehensive guide available, written by Dr. Whitney Cranshaw, an insect pest specialist. It contains information on 1400 insects and mites that could attack everything in your garden, yard, or farm. It includes colored illustrations for most of them, as well as their life cycles. It details species-specific treatments and offers up-to-date pest management tips. It is user-friendly with its organization by affected plant parts. Geographically, It covers both the continental United States and Canada."

Then Just yesterday I bought the new Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series, Guide To Organic Gardening Bookazine and sure enough, Garden Insects of North America is mentioned.

I love this year's Mother Earth News Guide to Organic Gardening. In it there is a great article entitled "Guide to Organic Pest Control", by Barbara Pleasant. In that article she is complimentary of the book. On page 64 she writes "Every vegetable gardener should have a copy of Whitney Cranshaw's Insects of North America, which covers hundreds of bugs that inhabit home gardens."

It sure is nice to finally see that others are agreeing with me. I have this book listed on my 25 favorite Gardening Books and look up bugs in my copy of Garden Insects of North America: The Ultimate Guide to Backyard Bugs often!

I just can't wait till it's warm enough to even be concerned with insects!