Miniature Gardens: Design and create miniature fairy gardens, dish gardens, terrariums and more-indoors and out - Softcover

Elzer-Peters, Katie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1591865751 ISBN 13: 9781591865759

Publisher: Cool Springs Press, 2014

Synopsis

A revealing peek into the captivating world of gardening in miniature, complete with inspiring photos and practical step-by-step instructions. A delightful, fun, and endlessly creative new trend is sweeping the gardening world: miniature gardening! With your imagination as the only limit to this infinitely customizable technique, miniature gardening showcases your individuality. Once you've learned how to design, create, and grow tiny plant combinations successfully, you'll be able to let your creativity loose indoors and out. In Miniature Gardens, gardening expert Katie Elzer-Peters demonstrates the latest in plant options and designs through her gorgeous color photography and laser-focused Do-It-Yourself advice. Plenty of great tips and idea-generating information on small-scale furnishings are included as well. Where other books on this popular subject offer run-of-the-mill images and only limited how-to information, Miniature Gardens gives you a thorough and beautiful window into this tiny world, from fairy gardening to dish gardening, terrariums, and even a miniature water garden project. From cute home tabletop designs to elaborate mini-villages and everything in between, miniature gardening is a pastime that can be enjoyed by hobbyists and families of all ages and in all sizes of living space. With Miniature Gardens, you're just a lightning strike of inspiration away from bringing to life the endless creations unique to your own imagination.

About this title

Review:

This kitchen garden can sit on the kitchen counter or in the kitchen window, providing fresh herbs a
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Mini Kitchen Garden

Many mini-gardens require little to no care, other than adding or changing accessories, once they’ve been planted. If you want to actually “tend” a little garden, this is the project for you. The Mini-Kitchen Garden uses herbs such as parsley and sage for the “trees” and polka dot plants (non-edible) for shrubs. Inside the tiny picket fence, there’s a pot-within-a-pot where you can plant seeds for microgreens. (You can buy microgreens at the store or at a farmers market, but they’re expensive. ) My favorite accessory in this garden is the clothesline that holds the “Vegetables for Sale” sign. It was handmade by an Etsy artist, but was too large, in scale, for the other projects in this book. It blends perfectly with the rustic container for this garden.

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Step 1

Place the liner in the basket and fill with potting soil up to 2 inches from the top. Poke holes in the bottom of a plastic container and fill it with soil. Sink it into the soil in the larger container so that the lip is just below the soil surface. The purpose of the “pot within a pot” is to make it easier to dig out and replace the soil where the microgreens are growing from time to time without disrupting all of the other plants.

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Step 4

Sow the microgreens thickly in the garden and cover with ¼ inch of the sterilized seedling mix. Water until the soil is about as damp as a wrung-out sponge. Keep the seeds moist as they are sprouting. You can use the spray bottle to mist them. That should provide enough water to keep them damp.

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Step 2

Plant the larger plants around the plastic container that you buried in step 2.

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Step 5

Place the accessories and wait for the microgreens to grow.

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Step 3

Place the fence around the container so that you know where to “dig” to plant microgreen seeds. Use the tiny shovel (or the end of a pencil) to dig ¼-inch furrows in the microgreen garden.

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Step 6

Use kitchen scissors to snip the microgreens off at the soil line when they have their first set of true leaves (which will look like the second set of leaves). You can resow in the same soil up to five or six times. (You only get one harvest from each sowing. )

About the Author:

Katie Elzer-Peters is a horticulturist who writes gardening books, blogs, and articles. A resident of Wilmington, North Carolina, she also teaches classes and runs workshops dedicated to gardening and garden writing. She has a master of science in public garden management and has published several renowned books with Cool Springs Press.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cool Springs Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1591865751
• ISBN 13: 9781591865759
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192