Weeds: An Organic, Earth-friendly Guide to Their Identification, Use and Control

PRAISE FOR WEEDS:"Here is a very organic look at weeds, considering them not as invading forces to be destroyed, but as indicators of soil health, green manures, an incomparable resource for wildlife, compost material and even food."– Organic Gardening"A refreshing insight into some of our least popular plants."– BBC Gardeners' World magazine"This book remains grounded in realistic, practical gardening."– The Organic WayIn this earth-friendly, organic guide, John Walker’s fresh approach encourages you to see garden weeds as more than simply unwelcome invaders in your flower borders, kitchen garden, allotment, greenhouse, polytunnel, patio, courtyard, containers, lawn, path or drive. Whatever your garden’s size, Weeds will help you identify, make use of and tackle the weeds you find there.This accessible, illustrated and updated guide, with over 100 full colour photographs includes…- Information on how different weeds grow, spread and survive, and what they can actually tell you about your garden or allotment- Tips for using weeds to improve the fertility of your garden, feed your plants and encourage wildlife such as bees and other pollinators- Practical, hands-on techniques for preventing, clearing and curtailing weeds without using chemical weedkillers (herbicides)- A photographic directory to help you identify 60 common garden weeds, showing at-a-glance how easy, difficult or urgent dealing with each one is- Lists of insect-friendly plants for ‘bug banks’, and those for weed-smothering ground cover- Advice on clearing weedy ground without doing any back-breaking diggingWeeds is an essential and timeless go-to reference for every gardener’s bookshelf.

John Walker is an award-winning gardening and environmental author, writer, blogger and publisher with 40 years’ experience in practical gardening, teaching and the garden media. He grew up in the countryside, caught the gardening bug while still at school, and trained at Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Cambridge University Botanic Garden and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, where he was awarded the Kew Diploma in Horticulture. He is also a qualified teacher. John was features/deputy editor of Garden Answers magazine and contributing editor of Kitchen Garden. John writes about organic, earth-friendly gardening for national newspapers and magazines, including The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph and the Royal Horticultural Society’s journal The Garden. His recent book How to Create an Eco Garden: The Practical Guide to Greener, Planet-friendly Gardening was shortlisted for the 2012 Garden Media Guild Practical Book of the Year. He also wrote The Bed and Border Planner, edited A Gardeners’ Guide to Annuals, and contributed to the Garden Organic Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening. John has won the Garden Media Guild Environmental Award three times, and has been shortlisted for Gardening Journalist of the Year three times. John is slowly making a new earth- and climate-friendly garden from a once bracken-riddled hillside at his edge-of-woodland home in Snowdonia, North Wales.