Caring for Perennials: What to Do and When to Do it - Softcover

Macunovich, Janet

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0882669575 ISBN 13: 9780882669571

Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC, 1997

Synopsis

Enjoy a spectacular perennial garden without spending endless hours toiling in the dirt. Janet Macunovich shares her time-saving gardening techniques that will have you growing thriving perennials while averaging just one hour of maintenance work per month for every 100 square feet of garden. Stressing the importance of prioritizing, planning ahead, and keeping accurate records, Macunovich provides a month-by-month schedule of the most essential garden tasks. With less time spent working in your garden, you’ll have more time to spend admiring its beauty. 

About this title

Review

I am a lousy gardener. What I know about gardening could be summarized in a few words: "Plant something and hope for the best." Yet, I love to garden, and keep trying year after year in my tiny flowerbeds around the street trees in a sea of concrete here in San Francisco. I don't even bother to attempt planting annuals or growing things from seed, but for years I've been experimenting with perennials to see if I can find something that will survive for more than one year out there in the urban jungle. If I'd had this book years ago, I might have been successful a long time ago. For me, it's a walking tour of everything I have done wrong. For you, it can be a guidebook to doing things right from the get-go!

From the Back Cover

A professional gardener's time-saving strategies for maintaining a beautiful perennial garden

You can have a spectacular perennial garden with less work than you might imagine -- an average of one hour per month per 100 square feet. The secret, according to master gardener Janet Macunovich, is organization -- prioritizing, planning, and record-keeping. Her suggestions include:

ON DESIGN: "Early summer is not the time to make design changes. Transplants and recruits cannot take hold and make much of a difference now that the season of most rapid growth is past. In addition, disturbances now can harm late-season bloomers."

ON WEEDING: "Fall weeding is probably the biggest time-saving strategy in horticulture. My records indicate the first maintenance visit in spring can be shortened by as much as 75 percent if fall work is done thoroughly."

ON DIVIDING PLANTS: "By the sixth or seventh year, most perennials need separate vacations or a soil pick-me-up. Do it before the spectacle actually becomes a worn-out memory of itself."

ON TOOLS: "A five-gallon bucket may be a gardener's greatest labor-saving device. It can serve as a bucket for soaking transplants, a bag to hold small tools or debris, and a portable stool. The only drawback is that you become over-reliant on it and annoyed when your bucket disappears."

Edition details

• Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0882669575
• ISBN 13: 9780882669571
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 200