No
matter how you garden — on the cheap or with wallet
wide open — it’s wise to garden the smart way.
In
the edible garden, smart means finding ways to maximize
your harvest and minimize your workload and planting
space.
These
three new gardening books outline ways to do just that.
Each provides helpful how-to details — not just pretty
photos.
GROW
UP, NOT OUT
Raised
beds and containers get lots of attention, but vertical
gardening is one of the easiest and most practical ways
to grow edibles.
Vertical
gardening means people living in condos, apartments and
other places with limited yard space can reap the
benefits of fresh food, according to Chris McLaughlin,
author of "Vertical Vegetable Gardening."
Besides
the traditional trellises and arbors, the book shows how
to grow on common household items you can recycle or
reuse for free: broken baby gates that can be folded
side up and spread to create an A-frame, crib springs
turned on their ends, ladders with boards put across the
rungs to holds pots, shoe bags filled with soil, tin tub
gardens you can hang and 5-gallon buckets that are
suspended from trees or poles.
Chris
also shows how to turn wire, twine and other materials
into arbors, teepees, fences and A-frames to support
vining, twining, twisting plants. Even a kiddie pool
filled with soil becomes a small garden. There are lists
of materials and directions on how to make each, and
profiles identify 30 veggies, fruits and herbs best
suited for vertical gardening.
MAKE
EVERY FOOT COUNT
Square-foot
gardening took root 30 years ago when Mel Bartholomew
penned his first book on how to garden less to get more
— for example, 48 crops from two 4-by-6-foot boxes.
Two
million copies later, he now operates the Square Foot
Gardening Foundation ((
)
and recently released two new books on the topic — the
"Square Foot Gardening Answer Book" and the
"All New Square Foot Gardening, Second
Edition."
The
answer book draws on hundreds of questions he’s heard
over the years, including how to garden in a shady yard,
how to calculate the potential yield from a square-foot
garden, how to deter pests and how to rotate crops for
maximum results.
He
also addresses common problems all gardeners can relate
to: The gnats in my square-foot garden are a real
bother; how can I deal with them? Make a spray by mixing
1 part vodka with three parts water. No, don’t drink
it; spray the area infested by the gnats. You can check
whether you’ve gotten rid of the gnats by cutting a
potato in half and leaving it in the area. If, after a
week, the potato is still clean, your gnat problem is
gone.
POT
UP A GARDEN
In
"Grow Your Own in Pots," Kay Maguire features
30 step-by-step projects using vegetables, fruits and
herbs.
She
shows how to sprout seed potatoes in egg cartons and
then grow them in recycled, porous bags or large tubs;
spinach in a window box; rhubarb in old garbage cans;
and beans and sweet corn as companion plants in a tub.
Her
chapter on Garden Soil 101 is particularly helpful
because healthy soil makes a healthy plant. You’ll
like her "compost sandwich," which uses layers
of newspaper, cardboard, yard debris and topsoil to
create the best of best beds for growing anything.
"Growing
your own makes you happy, healthy, and it’s fun,
too," writes Kay.
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