Gardening: The Complete Guide

Your complete guide to all things gardening!

• 400 pages of valuable information on planning, planting, and maintaining all types of gardens
• Over 1,000 photos and watercolor illustrations of plants, step-by-step processes, pest identification, and more
• Plant-by-plant directories with detailed information on a variety of plants
• Step-by-step instructions for planting and growing all types of garden plants
• Helpful tips for harvesting and storing fruits & vegetables, and drying flowers
• Tables and charts with handy details about everything from soil pH and vegetable rotation to choosing companion plants

The one-stop gardening guide for those who enjoy the gardening process as much as the finished product!

This 400-page book is packed with information, inspirational photographs, and hands-on instructions. It presents the best gardening techniques with an emphasis on time-saving, efficient practices. Wondering what to plant? Explore sections on growing herbs, flowers, vegetables, and fruit. Need to get organized? Helpful tables and charts throughout help you plan! It's perfect for the gardener who wants to know how things grow and why certain practices are more effective.

For both beginners and experienced gardeners, this essential resource shows in detail how to grow plants with little effort and get great results. From gardening basics, where you'll learn how to get started, plant basics, buying plants, propagation, seeds, planting, and watering, through garden prep including making a plan, designing for easy care, laying out your garden, caring for the soil, composting, testing your soil, soil amendments, fertilizers, cover crops, green manures, and considering climate with hardiness and heat-zone maps, this guide will ensure your garden is built for success!

Learn how to plan a vegetable garden, keep soil and plants healthy, the benefits of hybrids vs open-pollinated, and explore a vegetable-by-vegetable directory. Adding herbs? Learn the benefits, how to design an herb garden, use containers, preserve your harvest, and an herb-by-herb directory. Consider growing fruit, learn about the planting, pruning, and care of fruit trees, espaliered fruit trees, fruiting shrubs, vines, and brambles, training vines and brambles, and explore the fruit directories.

In the section dedicated to water gardens, careful consideration is given to your lifestyle, siting your water feature, practical considerations, liners, edging, pond configuration and design, Japanese gardens, microclimates, formal and informal styles, making a site plan, choosing plants, avoiding invasive plants, floating plants, water lilies, lotuses, marginal and periphery plants, oxygenators, grasses, ferns, and directories for each type of water-garden plant.

For a flower garden, you'll learn all about growing blossoms, floral garden design, planting flower beds, bulbs, perennials, annuals, biennials, deadheading, trimming, and explore the flower directories. The specialty flower gardens section covers rose gardens, wildlife-friendly gardens for bees, birds, and butterflies, rock gardens, and a dried arrangements garden. The vines section covers vine basics, climbing, how to train and prune them, watering, routine care, and a vine directory.

You'll also find all the information you need to maintain your garden, with details on good management, weeds (including common beneficial weeds), animal, insect, and mite pests, pest control, diseases, and associated directories.

This comprehensive volume is presented in handy sections; spend hours leafing through the pages or just a few minutes on what you need for the day! All the best growing secrets and techniques are at your fingertips with Gardening: The Complete Guide!

Miranda Smith was an expert grower who gardened and taught gardening for over 30 years. She was the author of five top-selling garden books, including Your Backyard Herb Garden, Backyard Fruits and Berries, and Greenhouse Gardening. She edited and was the primary writer of The Real Dirt: Farmers Tell about Organic and Low Input Practices in the Northeast.