Growing Fruits and Nuts in the South: The Definitve Guide

Everyone knows the delight of a fresh tree-ripened peach - it's no secret that homegrown fruit is better than anything you'll ever find at the market. But with the South's temperate climate and long growing season, southern growers planning home orchards have special needs and concerns. Now, in the most comprehensive book written exclusively for southern gardeners, horticultural experts William Adams and Thomas LeRoy show you how to create a successful home orchard that's just right for you and your region.
Growing Fruits and Nuts in the South is the most up-to-date and authoritative guide available. You'll find information on getting started, common-sense pest and disease control, and training and pruning techniques. Specific chapters, on everything from apples to specialty fruits and pecans, explain how to care for your trees and plants and give you hundreds of disease-resistant varieties that have high yields and produce the best fruits and nuts.
William Adams and Thomas LeRoy, both veteran agents for the Texas Agricultural Extension Service, give you the basics and much more: a special chapter, complete with sample plot plans, that explains how to develop small-acreage and pick-your-own orchards; charts, tables, and illustrations that show ideal planting distances, your soil's fertilization needs, potential disease problems, and, for the adventurous, grafting techniques and sources for fruit and nut catalogs, orchardists' supplies, low-toxicity pesticides, traps, beneficial insects, and information on state extension horticulture offices throughout the South.
With 100 gorgeous color photographs, Growing Fruits and Nuts in the South, is the only sourcebook you'll ever need. Now you can enjoy the superior quality of homegrown fruits and nuts fresh from your own backyard.

This guide, written by two recognized experts in Southern fruit cultivation, offers much valuable information in a readily accessible format. Although most of the information is available in more comprehensive treatises, such as Rodale's All-New Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening ( LJ 3/1/92), it is convenient not to have to tease out the best plant varieties and gardening methods for the South. Handy charts offer guidance on these subjects, and the accompanying narratives are realistic and helpful. In addition, a welcome approach to integrated pest management is offered. The authors include an especially complete section on the pecan but fail to mention or dismiss with a few words tropical fruits, including mangoes, papayas, pineapples, and coconuts. They also lump all citrus into one brief chapter and ignore avocadoes. A useful addition to gardening collections in the middle South but not recommended for South Florida or South Texas. (Index not seen.)-- Carol Cubberly, Univ. of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.