Southwest

Texas Gardening the Natural Way: The Complete Handbook

Compost your old "complete" gardening guide. There's a new way of gardening in Texas that's healthier for people and the environment, more effective at growing vigorous plants and reducing pests, cheaper to maintain, and just more fun. It's Howard Garrett's "The Natural Way" organic gardening program, and it's all here in Texas Gardening the Natural Way.

This book is the first complete, state-of-the-art organic gardening handbook for Texas. Using Howard Garrett's new mainstream gardening techniques, Texas Gardening the Natural Way presents a total gardening program:

• How to plan, plant, and maintain beautiful landscapes without using chemical fertilizers and toxic pesticides.
• Gardening fundamentals: soils, landscape design, planting techniques, and maintenance practices.
• Includes more native and adaptable varieties of garden and landscape plants than any other guide on the market.
• Trees: 134 species of evergreens, berry- and fruit-bearing, flowering, yellow fall color, orange fall color, and red fall color.
• Shrubs and specialty plants: 85 species for sun, shade, spring flowering, summer flowering, and treeform shrubs.
• Ground covers and vines: 51 species for sun and shade.
• Annuals and perennials: 136 species for fall color, winter color, summer color in shade and sun, and spring color. Also seeding rates for wildflowers.
• Lawn grasses: 10 species for sun and shade, with additional information on 16 native grasses, seeding rates for 32 grasses, and suggested mowing heights.
• Fruits, nuts, and vegetables: 58 species, with a vegetable planting chart and information on organic pecan and fruit tree growing, fruit varieties for Texas, grape and pecan varieties, and gardening by the moon.
• Common green manure crops: 29 crops that help enrich the soil.
• Herbs: 66 species for culinary and medicinal uses.
• Bugs: 73 types of helpful and harmful bugs, with organic remedies for pests, lists of beneficial bugs and plants that attract them, a beneficial bug release schedule, and sources for beneficial bugs.
• Plant diseases: organic treatments for 55 common problems.
• Organic methods for repelling mice, rabbits, armadillos, beavers, cats, squirrels, and deer.
• Organic management practices: watering, fertilizing, controlling weeds, releasing beneficial insects, biological controls (including bats and purple martins), and recipes for Garrett Juice, fire ant control drench, vinegar herbicide, Sick Tree Treatment, and Tree Trunk Goop.
• Average first and last freeze dates for locations around the state.
• Organic fertilizers and soil amendments: 61 varieties, including full instructions for making compost.
• Organic pest control products: 30 varieties.
• Common house plants and poisonous plants.
• Instructions for climbing vegetable structures and bat houses.
• 833 gorgeous full-color photographs.

Landscaping with Native Plants of Texas

Landscaping with Native Plants of Southern California

Month-By-Month Gardening in the Desert Southwest

Do I prune my hydrangea in the fall or do I wait until early spring?
When is it safe to put out tomatoes?
Can I divide iris now?

If you have ever asked yourself questions like these, Month-by-Month Gardening in The Desert Southwest is for you. Gardening is a journey, not a destination. The day-by-day gardening experiences - planting a few onion sets in the first warm afternoon of spring… the surprises - a purple crocus before the snow has even gone … the satisfaction - fresh green beans on the dinner table, or tomatoes, bright and red, safely in quart jars … these are the things that keep the gardener coming back year after year.

Month-by-Month Gardening in The Desert Southwest is packed with information that explains what needs to be done and when it needs to be done in the southwestern garden. Topics include:

• The most effective planting techniques.
• How and when to prune.
• The best season for fertilizing your lawn.
• The differences between bare-root, container, and balled-and-burlapped plants.
• Eleven plant categories, including Annuals, Bulbs, Herbs, Vegetables, Houseplants, Lawns, Perennials, Roses, Shrubs, and Trees.
• Twelve monthly calendars for each plant category - 132 calendars in all! - that make is easy to find the proper gardening advice.

Whatever your gardening interests or the time of year, you can take the guesswork and mystery out of gardening. You will become a more satisfied gardener … and your garden will show it!

Month by Month Gardening in the Deserts of Arizona (Month-By-Month Gardening in the Desert Southwest)

The month-by-month guide offers twelve months of advice on the proper timing of gardening for Arizona and includes nine plant categories, full-color photographs and helpful how-to illustrations.

Month-by-Month Gardening in Texas: Revised Edition: What to Do Each Month to Have a Beautiful Garden All Year (Month-By-Month Gardening in Texas)

The Month-by-Month™ series offer valuable advice on the proper timing of garden maintainance activities for each month. Month-By-Month™ Gardening in Texas is one of the first titles of the redesigned series from Cool Springs Press.

Top features include:

• 4-color photography and line-drawing illustrations to demonstrate cultural practices
• Covers all major plant categories
• Specific advice for every month of the year
• Updated edition includes text revisions, additional reference materials, and a new design.

High and Dry: Gardening with Cold-Hardy Dryland Plants

Gardeners in the Interior West and Great Plains face a daunting challenge: a harsh, semi-arid climate of scorching summers and brutally cold winters. These climatic extremes rule out many standard garden plants that thrive in areas with greater rainfall and more moderate temperatures. Yet there is a wide variety of native plants that are not only beautiful but provide highly satisfactory choices for the western garden. In this comprehensive volume, Robert Nold describes the best picks among perennials and annuals; grasses; bulbs; rock garden plants; cacti; yuccas and other similar plants; shrubs; and trees-more than a thousand plants in all. Leavened with humor and rueful wisdom, Nold's pithy descriptions zero in on each plant's outstanding ornamental characteristics while giving the reader an accurate idea of what to expect from the plant's performance in the garden. With very few exceptions, the recommended plants can be expected to thrive without supplemental irrigation once established, and tolerate winter temperatures as low as -10F (-23C). Throughout, the book is illustrated with vivid color photographs and a selection of exquisite botanical watercolors by artist Cindy Nelson-Nold. Anyone with an interest in hardy, drought-tolerant plants will find in these pages an abundance of tempting possibilities with which to experiment. Indeed, High and Dry can serve as a highly useful tool for resource-conscious gardeners everywhere.

Anyone with an interest in hardy, drought-tolerant plants will find an abundance of tempting possibilities.

Gardeners in the Interior West and Great Plains face a daunting challenge: a harsh, semi-arid climate of scorching summers and brutally cold winters. These climatic extremes rule out many standard garden plants that thrive in areas with greater rainfall and more moderate temperatures. In this comprehensive volume, Robert Nold describes the best picks among perennials and annuals; grasses; bulbs; rock garden plants; cacti; yuccas and other similar plants; shrubs; and trees—more than a thousand plants in all. Leavened with humor and rueful wisdom, Nold's pithy descriptions zero in on each plant's outstanding ornamental characteristics while giving the reader an accurate idea of what to expect from the plant's performance in the garden. A must-have for readers in: Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico.

Arizona Gardener's Guide

Gardening is now the favorite outdoor leisure activity in America. Homeowners realize the health benefits available from gardening and the potential increase in their home's property value.

Regional gardening titles offer the most useful advice because they provide credible information on the plants that perform best in specific states. Gardeners want information they can trust and use successfully in their own gardens.

The Arizona Gardener's Guide is a full-color plant selection resource guide written especially for Arizona gardeners. It includes the top 175 landscape plants as recommended by one of Arizona's most respected horticultural experts.

Gardening In The Southwest

Dedicated to gardeners from west Texas to the eastern edges of California, the experts at Sunset magazine and Sunset Books have created this comprehensive regional landscaping guide to the splendor and drama of Gardening in the Southwest. Amidst a cultural backdrop, stunning photo galleries showcase signature southwest garden environs. Essential reference information focuses on microclimates, soil attributes, seasonal factors, and native plants. An extensive section is devoted to design elements-shade structures, water features, firepits, and more.

Texas Home Landscaping