Dec 17

HGEL’s List of Favorite Books For Gardeners…

An addiction to gardening is not all bad when you consider all the other choices in life.
quote / saying by Cora Lea Bell

And what better way to feed your addiction and get ready to learn the art of gardening than to fill your library with great resource books! And, if not for you, why not gift a gardening book to the one you love who loves gardening?  Here are some of my favorite books from my gardening library:

Published January 2016, The Timber Press Guide to Vegetable Gardening in Southern California, by regional expert Geri Miller, focuses on the unique eccentricities of California’s gardening calendar, which include extreme temperatures and low rainfall. The month-by-month format makes it perfect for beginners and accessible to everyone—gardeners can start gardening the month they pick it up. You can order it and most of these books on Amazon.

Timber Press:

• Guide to Vegetable Gardening in Southern California

 

Create your own artisanal “farm-to-glass” specialty cocktails using local, seasonal, unusual, and organic produce with this illustrated bartending guide from the renowned cocktail chef, Matthew Biancaniello, who is transforming modern mixology.  (We grow for him at The Cook’s Garden by HGEL) Available at Amazon or at THE COOK’S GARDEN garden shop on Abbot Kinney in Venice.

Harper Collins

• Eat Your Drink

 

Rodale:

• Vegetable Garden Problem Solver
• Organic Gardening
• The Rodale Book of Composting
• Organic Manifesto – Maria Rodale

Sunset:

• The Western Garden Book of Edibles

 

University of California – ANR:

• Natural Enemies Handbook: The Illustrated Guide to Biological Pest Control
• California Master Gardener Handbook – Dennis Pittenger
• Specialty and Minor Crops Handbook
• Drip Irrigation in the Home Landscape – Schwankl/Prichard
• Link to more UC ANR publications: http://anrcatalog.ucdavis.edu/ FREE Publications: http://anrcatalog.ucdavis.edu/FreePublications

Fritz Haeg:

• Edible Estate: Attach on the Front Yard (Not a ‘how-to guide but a great pictorial on this movement – project by project)
  

Stell:

• Secrets to Great Soil

Riotte: Companion Planting

• Carrots Love Tomatoes
• Roses Love Garlic

Capon:

• Botany for Gardeners

Jeavons:

• How to Grow More Vegetables & Fruit

Harris/Clark:

• Arboriculture: Integrated Management of Trees, Shrubs and Vines

Tasch:

• Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing As If Food, Farms and Fertility Mattered

Creasy:

• Edible Landscaping
  

• Edible Landscaping Recipes from the Garden

Keator/Middlebrook:

• Designing California Native Gardens

Bornstein:

• California Native Plants for the Garden

Pollan:

• Botany of Desire
• Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual
• In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

Denevan:

• Outstanding in the Field – A Farm to Table Cookbook

American Horticultural Society

• Homegrown Harvest – A season-by-season guide to a sustainable kitchen garden

DK Publishing – Garden Organic (UK-based horticulture nonprofit)

• Grow Organic

Darryl Estrine & Kelly Kochendorfer

• Harvest to Heat

David Deardorff & Kathryn Wadsworth

• What’s Wrong with My Plant? (And How Do I Fix It?)

Ivette Soler

• The Edible Front Yard: The Mow-Less, Grow-More Plan for a Beautiful, Bountiful Garden

School Garden Books

Page:

• Cultural Uses of Plants

Dennee:

• In the Three Sisters Garden

Binet/Payne:

• The Worm Cafe – Mid-scale Vermicomposting of  Lunchroom Waste

Appelhof/Fenton/Harris:

• Worms Eat Our Garbage

Moerman:

• Native American Ethnobotany

California Department of Education:

• A Child’s Garden of Standards

Martin:

• Nature’s Artbox

Timbrook:

• Chumash Ethnobotany

Patten/Lyons:

• Healthy Foods From Healthy Soils

California School Gardening Network:

• Gardens for Learning – Creating and Maintaining Your School Garden