Download or read book Victory Gardens for Bees written by Lori Weidenhammer and published by D & M Publishers. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who knew modern civilization may be brought down, not by plagues or war, but by bees? Or, more correctly, by no bees? This book investigates the growing problem of bee mortality and offers practical measures we can all take to help. In ecological terms, bees play a critical role in the survival of many plant communities and continuation of life on this planet. No pollination, no seeds. No seeds, no future. Now that bees are facing unprecedented levels of die-off caused by a toxic mixture of environmental stresses, a community-based effort is needed to make gardens, fields and landscapes healthy sanctuaries for bees. Just as citizens banded together to produce Victory Gardens to offset the perilous food shortages of World Wars I and II, now a similarly vital level of collective effort is needed to make our gardens into lifesaving shelters for these essential creatures. Planning a bee-friendly space can provide a beautiful and bountiful selection of edible crops, native plants and fragrant ornamentals, as well as herbs that have medicinal properties for both pollinators and people. With the help of ten inspiring garden plans and planting guides, Weidenhammer shows how bee-friendly plants can be used in creative combinations for plots and pots of all sizes, and are easily grown by novices and seasoned gardeners alike. In the spirit of the history-making Victory Gardens, readers will learn how to pack optimum benefits into a limited space for the survival of hive and home, and backyard beekeepers will learn great planting strategies for making sure their honeybees are healthy and have ample food to overwinter. Victory Gardens for Bees is also buzzing with DIY projects that will provide nesting sites and essential supplies for precious pollinators. With plenty of photographs to help readers identify bees of all stripes, beekeeping tips and other interesting bee-phemera, this book is a must-have for anyone who wants to do their part to save bees.
Download or read book The Pollinator Victory Garden written by Kim Eierman and published by Quarry Books. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The passion and urgency that inspired WWI and WWII Victory Gardens is needed today to meet another threat to our food supply and our environment—the steep decline of pollinators. The Pollinator Victory Garden offers practical solutions for winning the war against the demise of these essential animals. Pollinators are critical to our food supply and responsible for the pollination of the vast majority of all flowering plants on our planet. Pollinators include not just bees, but many different types of animals, including insects and mammals. Beetles, bats, birds, butterflies, moths, flies, and wasps can be pollinators. But, many pollinators are in trouble, and the reality is that most of our landscapes have little to offer them. Our residential and commercial landscapes are filled with vast green pollinator deserts, better known as lawns. These monotonous green expanses are ecological wastelands for bees and other pollinators. With The Pollinator Victory Garden, you can give pollinators a fighting chance. Learn how to transition your landscape into a pollinator haven by creating a habitat that includes pollinator nutrition, larval host plants for butterflies and moths, and areas for egg laying, nesting, sheltering, overwintering, resting, and warming. Find a wealth of information to support pollinators while improving the environment around you: • The importance of pollinators and the specific threats to their survival• How to provide food for pollinators using native perennials, trees, and shrubs that bloom in succession• Detailed profiles of the major pollinator types and how to attract and support each one• Tips for creating and growing a Pollinator Victory Garden, including site assessment, planning, and planting goals• Project ideas like pollinator islands, enriched landscape edges, revamped foundation plantings, meadowscapes, and other pollinator-friendly lawn alternatives The time is right for a new gardening movement. Every yard, community garden, rooftop, porch, patio, commercial, and municipal landscape can help to win the war against pollinator decline with The Pollinator Victory Garden.
Download or read book A Way to Garden written by Margaret Roach and published by Timber Press. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A Way to Garden prods us toward that ineffable place where we feel we belong; it’s a guide to living both in and out of the garden.” —The New York Times Book Review For Margaret Roach, gardening is more than a hobby, it’s a calling. Her unique approach, which she calls “horticultural how-to and woo-woo,” is a blend of vital information you need to memorize and intuitive steps you must simply feel and surrender to. In A Way to Garden, Roach imparts decades of garden wisdom on seasonal gardening, ornamental plants, vegetable gardening, design, gardening for wildlife, organic practices, and much more. She also challenges gardeners to think beyond their garden borders and to consider the ways gardening can enrich the world. Brimming with beautiful photographs of Roach’s own garden, A Way to Garden is practical, inspiring, and a must-have for every passionate gardener.
Download or read book In Defense of Plants written by Matt Candeias and published by Mango Media Inc.. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Study of Plants in a Whole New Light “Matt Candeias succeeds in evoking the wonder of plants with wit and wisdom.” ―James T. Costa, PhD, executive director, Highlands Biological Station and author of Darwin's Backyard #1 New Release in Nature & Ecology, Plants, Botany, Horticulture, Trees, Biological Sciences, and Nature Writing & Essays In his debut book, internationally-recognized blogger and podcaster Matt Candeias celebrates the nature of plants and the extraordinary world of plant organisms. A botanist’s defense. Since his early days of plant restoration, this amateur plant scientist has been enchanted with flora and the greater environmental ecology of the planet. Now, he looks at the study of plants through the lens of his ever-growing houseplant collection. Using gardening, houseplants, and examples of plants around you, In Defense of Plants changes your relationship with the world from the comfort of your windowsill. The ruthless, horny, and wonderful nature of plants. Understand how plants evolve and live on Earth with a never-before-seen look into their daily drama. Inside, Candeias explores the incredible ways plants live, fight, have sex, and conquer new territory. Whether a blossoming botanist or a professional plant scientist, In Defense of Plants is for anyone who sees plants as more than just static backdrops to more charismatic life forms. In this easily accessible introduction to the incredible world of plants, you’ll find: • Fantastic botanical histories and plant symbolism • Passionate stories of flora diversity and scientific names of plant organisms • Personal tales of plantsman discovery through the study of plants If you enjoyed books like The Botany of Desire, What a Plant Knows, or The Soul of an Octopus, then you’ll love In Defense of Plants.
Download or read book Tiny Victory Gardens written by Acadia Tucker and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate activist and farmer Acadia Tucker fell in love with container gardening after glimpsing its potential to produce food-lots of food. By applying select growing practices, and managing for square inches rather than square feet, she has come up with instructions for growing a small-scale farm on your patio, your stoop, or in? your dining room. If what you want is a garden big enough to line a windowsill, she's got you covered there, too. Tiny Victory Gardens profiles 21 container-friendly crops, and includes recipes for cultivating bountiful gardens, with names like Tiny Herb Garden, Salsa Fresca, and Beans, Bees, and Butterflies, It outlines how to find the right containers (there are wrong ones), identify prime tiny real estate, make food gardens beautiful, and raise crops all year long. Tucker describes how to maximize the environmental impact of growing food in pots. She offers tips on attracting pollinators, shows how to build microbe-rich living soil, and explains ways to ditch harmful pesticides and fertilizers. Her goal is to make it easier for anyone with access to a patch of sun to grow food, no backyard required. This is the third book Tucker has written for Stone Pier Press's citizen gardening series, which highlights how to garden in ways that are good for the planet. Book jacket.
Download or read book Glorious Shade written by Jenny Rose Carey and published by Timber Press. This book was released on 2017-04-19 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Turn a shady yard into a sumptuous garden Shade is one of the most common garden situations homeowner’s have, but with the right plant knowledge, you can triumph over challenging areas and learn to embrace shade as an opportunity instead of an obstacle. Glorious Shade celebrates the benefits of shade and shows you how to make the most of it. This information-rich, hardworking guide is packed with everything you need to successfully garden in the shadiest corners of a yard. You'll learn how to determine what type of shade you have and how to choose the right plants for the space. The book also shares the techniques, design and maintenance tips that are key to growing a successful shade garden. Stunning color photographs offer design inspiration and reveal the beauty of shade-loving plants.
Download or read book Attracting Native Pollinators written by The Xerces Society and published by Storey Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2011-02-28 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the recent decline of the European honey bee, it is more important than ever to encourage the activity of other native pollinators to keep your flowers beautiful and your grains and produce plentiful. In Attracting Native Pollinators, you’ll find ideas for building nesting structures and creating a welcoming habitat for an array of diverse pollinators that includes not only bees, but butterflies, moths, and more. Take action and protect North America’s food supply for the future, while at the same time enjoying a happily bustling landscape.
Download or read book 100 Plants to Feed the Bees written by The Xerces Society and published by Storey Publishing. This book was released on 2016-11-29 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The international bee crisis is threatening our global food supply, but this user-friendly field guide shows what you can do to help protect our pollinators. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation offers browsable profiles of 100 common flowers, herbs, shrubs, and trees that support bees, butterflies, moths, and hummingbirds. The recommendations are simple: pick the right plants for pollinators, protect them from pesticides, and provide abundant blooms throughout the growing season by mixing perennials with herbs and annuals! 100 Plants to Feed the Bees will empower homeowners, landscapers, apartment dwellers — anyone with a scrap of yard or a window box — to protect our pollinators.
Download or read book Bringing Nature Home written by Douglas W. Tallamy and published by Timber Press. This book was released on 2009-09-01 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “With the twinned calamities of climate change and mass extinction weighing heavier and heavier on my nature-besotted soul, here were concrete, affordable actions that I could take, that anyone could take, to help our wild neighbors thrive in the built human environment. And it all starts with nothing more than a seed. Bringing Nature Home is a miracle: a book that summons butterflies." —Margaret Renkl, The Washington Post As development and habitat destruction accelerate, there are increasing pressures on wildlife populations. In his groundbreaking book Bringing Nature Home, Douglas W. Tallamy reveals the unbreakable link between native plant species and native wildlife—native insects cannot, or will not, eat alien plants. When native plants disappear, the insects disappear, impoverishing the food source for birds and other animals. Luckily, there is an important and simple step we can all take to help reverse this alarming trend: everyone with access to a patch of earth can make a significant contribution toward sustaining biodiversity by simply choosing native plants. By acting on Douglas Tallamy's practical and achievable recommendations, we can all make a difference.
Download or read book The Humane Gardener written by Nancy Lawson and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this eloquent plea for compassion and respect for all species, journalist and gardener Nancy Lawson describes why and how to welcome wildlife to our backyards. Through engaging anecdotes and inspired advice, profiles of home gardeners throughout the country, and interviews with scientists and horticulturalists, Lawson applies the broader lessons of ecology to our own outdoor spaces. Detailed chapters address planting for wildlife by choosing native species; providing habitats that shelter baby animals, as well as birds, bees, and butterflies; creating safe zones in the garden; cohabiting with creatures often regarded as pests; letting nature be your garden designer; and encouraging natural processes and evolution in the garden. The Humane Gardener fills a unique niche in describing simple principles for both attracting wildlife and peacefully resolving conflicts with all the creatures that share our world.
Download or read book Growing Good Food written by Acadia Tucker and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A handbook for growing a victory garden when the enemy is global warming Written by regenerative farmer Acadia Tucker, Growing Good Food calls on us to take up regenerative gardening, also known as carbon farming, for the good of the planet. By building carbon-rich soil, even in a backyard-sized patch, we can capture greenhouse gases and mitigate climate change, all while growing nutritious food. To help us get started, and quickly, Tucker draft plans for gardeners who have no space, a little space, or a lot of space. She offers advice on how to prep soil, plant food, and raise the most popular fruits and vegetables using regenerative methods. She shares the gardening tools you need to get started, the top reasons gardens fail and how to fix them, and how to make carbon farming count when the only dirt you have is in pots. The book includes calls to action and insights from leaders in the regenerative movement, including David Montgomery, Gabe Brown, and Tim LaSalle. Aimed at beginners, the book is designed to inspire an uprising of citizen gardeners. Growing Good Food suggests what could happen if more of us saw gardening as a civic duty. By the end of it, you'll know how to grow some really good food and build a healthier world, too. Growing Good Food: A citizen's guide to backyard carbon farming is part of Stone Pier's "Growing Good Food" series. It joins Growing Perennial Foods: A field guide to raising resilient herbs, fruits, and vegetables, also written by Acadia Tucker.
Download or read book The Bee Friendly Garden written by Kate Frey and published by Ten Speed Press. This book was released on 2016-02-09 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For every gardener who cares about the planet, this guide to designing a bee garden helps you create a stunningly colorful, vibrant, healthy habitat that attracts both honeybees and native bees. In The Bee-Friendly Garden, award-winning garden designer Kate Frey and bee expert Gretchen LeBuhn provide everything you need to know to create a dazzling garden that helps both the threatened honeybee and our own native bees. No matter how small or large your space, and regardless of whether you live in the city, suburbs, or country, just a few simple changes to your garden can fight the effects of colony collapse disorder and the worldwide decline in bee population that threatens our global food chain. There are many personal benefits of having a bee garden as well! Bee gardens: · contain a gorgeous variety of flowers · bloom continuously throughout the seasons · are organic, pesticide-free, and ecologically sustainable · develop healthy and fertile soil · attract birds, butterflies, and other beneficial insects · increase the quantity of your fruit and vegetable harvest · improve the quality, flavor, and size of your produce Illustrated with spectacular full-color photos, The Bee-Friendly Garden debunks myths about bees, explains seasonal flower progression, and provides detailed instructions for nest boxes and water features. From “super blooming” flowers to regional plant lists and plants to avoid, The Bee-Friendly Garden is an essential tool for every gardener who cares about the planet and wants to make their yard a welcoming habitat for nature’s most productive pollinator.
Download or read book Gardening with Native Plants of the South written by Sally Wasowski and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In today’s South, where fine gardening is a tradition, many homeowners and professional gardeners are discovering a vast “new” palette of plant materials—native plants. They are realizing that these native wildflowers, trees, shrubs, groundcovers, vines, and grasses are far better suited, and therefore easier to grow and maintain, than most of the imported plants that populate traditional landscapes. In this book, the authors offer an exciting vision of the many possibilities and advantages of “going native.” Lavishly illustrated with more than 250 gorgeous color photographs, this book is both an introduction to more than 200 of the most familiar and easiest-to-find native plants of the South and a basic primer on how to use them effectively.
Download or read book The Plant Lover s Guide to Sedums written by Brent Horvath and published by Timber Press. This book was released on 2014-04-22 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sedums are most popular flowering succulent. They range from groundcovers to large border perennials and are often included in green roof and vertical garden design because of their visual interest and drought tolerance. Sedums changes dramatically with the seasons—in fall, they are rich and earthy while in summer their flowers come in vibrant shades of pink and yellow. The Plant Lover’s Guide to Sedums includes everything you need to know about these beautiful gems. Plant profiles highlight 150 of the best varieties to grow, with information on zones, plant size, soil and light needs, origin, and how they are used in the landscape. Additional information includes designing with sedums, understanding sedums, growing and propagating, where to buy them, and where to see them in public gardens.
Download or read book Mini Meadows written by Mike Lizotte and published by Storey Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The word “meadow” conjures images of wide expanses of land, but a mini meadow — a kind of informal flower garden started with seed sown directly into the soil — can be any size; plus, it’s fun, easy to grow, and good for the planet. With as little as 50 square feet and for less than $20, gardeners can plant a colorful meadow that demands little in the way of space, mowing, or maintenance, uses less water than a traditional lawn, and provides habitat for pollinators — not to mention a natural exploration space for children. From choosing the right variety of seeds, preparing the soil, sowing evenly, and watering well, author Mike Lizotte guides readers through the process of successfully creating a miniature meadow that suits their climate, soil, and growing goals, whether planting to beautify a hellstrip, halt erosion, fill a boggy spot, or establish a nesting area for bees and butterflies. Mini Meadows offers gardeners of all levels the keys to creating, caring for, and reaping the rewards of thriving meadows through the seasons, year after year.
Download or read book Fresh Food from Small Spaces written by R. J. Ruppenthal and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Free space for the city gardener might be no more than a cramped patio, balcony, rooftop, windowsill, hanging rafter, dark cabinet, garage, or storage area, but no space is too small or too dark to raise food. With this book as a guide, people living in apartments, condominiums, townhouses, and single-family homes will be able to grow up to 20 percent of their own fresh food using a combination of traditional gardening methods and space-saving techniques such as reflected lighting and container "terracing." Those with access to yards can produce even more. Author R. J. Ruppenthal worked on an organic vegetable farm in his youth, but his expertise in urban and indoor gardening has been hard-won through years of trial-and-error experience. In the small city homes where he has lived, often with no more than a balcony, windowsill, and countertop for gardening, Ruppenthal and his family have been able to eat at least some homegrown food 365 days per year.
Download or read book Bee Basics written by Stephen Buchmann and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2015-09-16 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Native bees are a hidden treasure. From alpine meadows in the national forests of the Rocky Mountains to the Sonoran Desert in the Coronado National Forest in Arizona and from the boreal forests of the Tongass National Forest in Alaska to the Ocala National Forest in Florida, bees can be found anywhere in North America, where flowers bloom. From forests to farms, from cities to wildlands, there are 4,000 native bee species in the United States, from the tiny Perdita minima to large carpenter bees. This illustrated and colorful pamphlet provides valued information about native bees --over 4,000 in population --varying in a wide array of sizes, shapes, and colors. They are also different in their life styles, the places they frequent, the nests they build, the flowers they visit, and their season of activity. Yet, they all provide an invaluable ecosystem service - pollination -to 80 percent of flowering plants. Blueberry bees, bumble bees, yellow jacket bees, carpenter bees, and more are explored, including the differences in their gender, nests, and geographical regions that they visit.
