I have been reading Allan Armitage's Garden Annuals: A Color Encyclopedia. (Mostly looking at the great photos.) Also perusing Armitage's native plants for North American gardens. Anyone reading about gardening? Magazines and seed catalogs count, too. There is a lot of info in some seed catalogs!
Winter reading for Mid-Atlantic gardeners
I've been looking through all the seed and plant catalogs that have come in the mail recently. I like to fold the corner down on the page(s) with something I like. I don't mark what I like on the page. Then when I am ready to order, I go through the catalogs again and see if I can remember what I liked on the pages. It helps keep down some of the impulse purchases. Plus, before I purchase anything, I always check the Garden Watchdog. It has saved me from making a few purchases from companies that don't have very good reviews. I have also been reading - and enjoying the pictures in - The Well-Designed Mixed Garden by Tracy DiSabato-Aust. I also enjoy reading Garden Gate magazine.
Johnny's and Territorial catalogs are loaded , I mean LOADED. with info, I'll be keeping them for reference. May keep Park's too, many pictures and big selection. I looked through an Ortho houseplant book at Ollie's that looked good. Not buying books now, just using PF.
Have really enjoyed books by William Cullina/New England Wildflower Society.
I just read "The $64.00 Tomato", "Radical Prunings", "A Garden Gallery" by Little & Lewis, "Incredible Vegetables from Self-Watering Containers", "The Art of Hardscaping", & a bunch of other gardening books-very inspirational, getting lots of ideas, even though my garden is not in these leagues...
I've just about worn out the Thompson & Morgan's catalog (lots of good info in there too, Sally), Southern Seed Exchange, Johnnys and Select Seeds.
The only gardening magazine I read any more is Horticulture. I got the American Horticultural Society's book on plant propagation for Christmas, and highly recommend it. I also got their A-Z Encyclopedia of Plants on Ebay for around $4 recently and have been reading that.
DiSabato-Aust's Well Kept Perennial Garden is on my wish list for my birthday later this month.
Here's an older book I'll bet you all would enjoy - Carrots Love Tomatoes by Louise Riotte. It's about companion planting - plants that actually benefit each other by being grown close together.
yes hart, I'll save the T and M catalog too. It's nice to be able to look up pics of the different varieties, and each catalog has something the others don't usually.
But I'm grateful for plantfiles, where you get honest opinions from those who have experience with the plant. Otherwise I might have tried meconopsis (toopicky, needs cool) or put night phlox right out front. (great night scent but not said to be very attractive otherwise)
DiSabato-Aust's Well Kept Perennial Garden is one book I go back to a lot. I have used her pruning and pinching techniques a lot. I do hope you get that book for your birthday hart.
I also like reading White Flower Farm's catalog and getting ideas from their container garden photos.
Do any of you have a good seed starting book that you would recommend? I'm just looking for a good reference guide - preferably with lots of color pictures.
No color pictures but I have "From Seed to Bloom" by Eileen Powell, it a quick refference for me. Go to amazon.com I buy "used" books very cheap and they have reviews of the books too.
The AHS book I mentioned above is good but covers all kinds of propagation, not just seeds. It has lots and lots of pictures. I have the Burpee seed starting book, which is very good but really only covers seeds that Burpee sells. Both of these have sections where you can look up specific plants to get details on seed starting.
The wintersown.org website is an excellent reference for details on specific seeds. Thompson and Morgan's website has seed starting info for everything they sell (which is a lot) and is a good resource. JL Hudson is another seed catalog that has lots of info on germinating specific seeds.
There are all kinds of germination charts and even seedling photos at this site:
http://www.theseedsite.co.uk/index.html
Sally, I've found the plant files can be useful but never use them as a single source. There are just too many mistakes in there, especially on the zone ranges for a lot of plants. The comments are the most useful section although I've seen instances where someone is obviously talking about another plant or another variety of a specific plant. I really appreciate the photos, especially when someone posts photos of the whole plant so you can get some idea of how it's going to look in your garden. Too many catalog photos are only closeups of the flowers.
I agree with you about the plantfiles, I do more research to back up what I read.
I am hopeing to add more pictures to the files of the seeds I plan to grow this year, starting with the seeds themselves, then the seedlings and (if they make it) the final bloom. I'll make a mental note to show the entire plant too, good point!
That's good advice about using plantfiles. Not surprisingthat something like this would have some errors. I can't imagine how Dave et al would be able to screen everything( wikipedia has probably a ton of people just doing that)
I agree that adding pics of seeds etc, basically any pic other than the usual closeup of flower or foliage will be good additions to PF at this stage.
I've been looking up a lot of vegetable varieties lately and one well-meaning soul has posted comments on a kajillion plants in plantfiles. Problem is, he hasn't grown these, he's only posting "available at so-and-so" and whatever description is in the online catalog of that seed source.
I'm wasting a lot of time because I already know where these seeds are available and what those catalogs say. I want to know what experiences people have had in growing them.
BTW, here's a handy resource with gardeners' reviews of a slew of vegetable varieties.
http://vegvariety.cce.cornell.edu/index.php
I know what you mean, I like to read members comments too. But I sometimes think that as a creature that wants to succeed we hate to post our failures. I really admire the posters that do, and I promise to be better.
I do rely heavily on the zone from each poster as that tells me a lot, please add your zones, thanks : )
Now I'm going to check out the new link. Not growing many vegs. but never know what I will learn.
Not really grousing. I'm sure there are people who find those posts useful. But personally I'd rather see the comments from people with experience with a plant. Especially vegetables. I want to know if a particular variety has heavy crops or tastes particularly well or holds up under summer heat, etc.
I really need to get better about posting in the files. Something I think I'll add is the plants that do well in my alkaline soil. I can infer that from where some posters live, but I think it's useful to know.
I like Horticulture too. I was subscribing to way too many gardening mags but I've cut it down
to just that, Organic Gardening & Fine Gardening. I'm a horticulture book nut. I just got an
absolutely spectactular book at a discount "Caucasus and its Flowers". I haven't read it yet but
I can tell its gonna be a favorite. It is a pricey one though. I also got a book on Natives of the
Northeast that I'm just getting started on.
I finished $64 Tomato on recommendation from someone here on DG. Pretty funny.
Thompson Morgan is my favorite seed catalog for browsing. Parks & Burpees are mighty
pretty too. I'm getting really annoyed by all the email adds from Parks & Wayside though.
Tam
I love reading all the catalogs this time of year. Like Donna, I dog-ear pages and set the catalog down for a few days. It scares the heck out of my spouse who thinks I am going to order a million plants. I ordered a bunch of seeds last year but lost about 75% of them to dampening and another 10% to a freak blast of wind when I was hardening them off. Not fun!
I just purchased "The Well Tended Perennial Garden" by DiSabato-Aust and "A Year of Roses" by Joseph Scaniello (sp?). I have not been able to put the rose book down and as a consequence I have not opened up the perennial book. I am new to roses and this book speaks in a manner I find accesible. It is funny to me how most books have a lot of the same content but it is finding the right style of presentation that is key for me to be able to digest the information.
Lady, if you like rose books, see if you can find Landscaping with Antique roses. It was written by the people who have the Antique Rose Emporium and I love the stories about how our ancestors nursed beloved rose cuttings through ocean crossings and across the plains in covered wagons. And about how the rose rustlers saved these old roses by finding them in old cemeteries, abandoned home sites and even people's yards. It has a lot of info on old rose varieties and how to grow them too.
Some really good books have been mentioned. I checked the Anne Arundel County library's database and they have The Well-Designed Mixed Garden on the shelf here in Crofton. They also have the $64 Tomato.
I went out and got a copy of Horticulture magazine. Pretty interesting. Nice Photos. Wish they had put in more info in "Plants We Love, 52 to try this year". Would like to see the approx. size listed.
Just got a Johnny's catalog in the mail. This one gets my award for "Seed Catalog With the Greatest Amount of Information".
Isn't Johnny's great? But there is no way on earth I would pay their prices for seeds. Gack!
ditto, g and h