The Most Complete Gardening Bibliography I've Ever Put Together

This is the most comprehensive list I've come up with – but there are a lot more books out there. If you find one that's not on this list, let me know!

Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties: The Gardener's & Farmer's Guide to Plant Breeding & Seed Saving, Deppe, Carol © 2000, Chelsea Green Publishing, Don't let the title send you running for the exits. The first half of this book, all about breading your own veggies, is not easily digested and has a lot of dense data in very shot order. The second half, the half on seed saving, she switches gears and it reads at times like well-written poetry. I have read most of this part many, many times since I got the book in 2008. If you are interested in seed saving or breeding your own vegetable varieties (Hint: you can and it's not that hard!), this book needs to be on your shelf!

Designing the New Kitchen Garden, Bartley, Jennifer © 2006, Timber Press, Portland, OR Lots of wonderful ideas and source material for a good many daydreams. And the source of some important lessons in creating a garden that can sustain more than just your spirit. By the way, you’ll know you’re a real gardener when you begin to receive the Timber Press catalog – they have a comprehensive list of gardening books that will help you get into the details of any aspect of gardening that you can imagine!

Edible Flowers, From Garden to Palate, Barash, Cathy Wilkinson, © 1995 Fulcrum Publishing, This is the only really comprehensive book on growing edible flowers – it’s a fascinating cuisine we have largely lost through neglect. Have an adventure and a nasturtium for dinner!

Good Bugs for Your Garden, Starcher, Allison Mia, © 1998, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill Allison Starcher is an artist who grows in Santa Monica. This book's illustrations were drawn in her garden and that means this book is written for those of us in Southern California. A delightful book, you can learn from it and use it to teach children about insects in your back yard.

Heirloom Vegetables, Stickland, Sue, © 1998 Fireside Books, A wonderful introduction to heirloom vegetables and how and why to grow them! A fabulous read for all prospective vegetable gardeners. And now that the Weaver book is no longer easily available, this is the runner up.

Heirloom Vegetable Gardening: A Master's Guide to Planting, Seed Saving, and Cultural History,Weaver, William Woys © 2003, BookSales Inc, Originally published in 1997, it is now out of print and getting a copy can be hellish. The book sells for almost $300 used on Amazon! It is a wonderful book that needs to be put back in print because the research he put into the book allows this to be one of the most informative books on heirloom vegetables that has ever been published. Good luck in finding it, I'm sorry to say. You can get the entire book on a CD-ROM through Mother Earth News.

How to Grow More Vegetables, Eighth Edition: (and Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops) Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You ... (And Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains,) Jeavons, John © 2012, 8^th Edition (so far, it seems to be close to an annual event) Ten Speed Press, Jeavons has a his research to back up his assertions and he's never met a contrary point of view that wasn't tossed off with the disdaining wave of his hand. I do not agree with most of the gardening advice in this book, but he has facts and figures of how many plants of broccoli and everything else you need to feed a family of four and other information that no one else seems to bother with.

Out of the Earth: Civilization and the Life of the Soil, Hillel, Daniel © 1992, University California Press, Hillel has written the most easily understood book on soil of all the books on soil in the world. This is not a gardening book, but it is an introduction to the basis of gardening: the soil. The most readable book on soil published to date. 

Pests of the Garden and Small Farm © 1998, University of California, Agriculture and Natural Resources (ANR), One of many books that are a part of my gardening bookshelf for reference. I can't remember all these pests, and I'll bet you can't either – if I could only have one book on pests, this would be one of two. I would have this one with Trowel and Error (below). (Their entire catalog is worth a look:  http://anrcatalog.ucdavis.edu/default.aspx )

Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners, Ashworth, Suzanne, © Seed Savers Exchange This is the industry standard for folks who want to save their own seeds. I like the Deppe book better, but this is the one the rest of the world turns to, perhaps because it has been around a longer and is its second edition.

Small-Scale Grain Raising, Second Edition: An Organic Guide to Growing, Processing, and Using Nutritious Whole Grains, for Home Gardeners and Local Farmers, Logsdon, Gene 2^nd Edition © 2009 Chelsea Green Publishing ANYTHING written by Logsdon is worth the investment of your time and money. I read this from its original 1970 Rodale Press printing and it is still an excellent resoure if you suddenly become intoxicated of growing your own wheat and other grains. It takes more land than most of us have, but a small patch of wheat is a delightful experiment.

Sunset Western Garden Guide 8^th Edition, Brenzel, Kathleen Norris, Editor, ©2007, Sunset Publishing All of the recent editions have their merit, but each successive edition has more plants and updates the scientific undergirding of gardening, so I encourage you to invest in the most recent edition you can afford (used copies are usually easy to find, either locally or at Amazon.com, I have a few for sale!). This is the number one go-to book for horticulture in Southern California; no other book is as authoritative as this one for our area. We cannot take advice from most gardening books and apply it to what we do in Los Angeles because our climate and soils are nothing like the rest of the world – especially those on the east coast and England where most books about gardening seem to originate.

Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web, Revised Edition Lowenfels, Jeff and Lewis, Wayne, © 2010, Timber Press This book changed the way I garden. Forever. Their introduction to the soil is somewhat dry, but when you get to the modern scientific discoveries dealing with soil, you will be amazed!

The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping: Home Landscaping with Food-Bearing Plants and Resource-Saving Techniques, Creasy, Rosalind, © 1982, Sierra Club Books – This is where edible landscaping began! This is still a good book. I understand a 2^nd edition is in the works; I think that is great news. All about growing food where others can see it. For those who march to their own drummer... and that includes a lot of gardeners.

The Resilient Gardener, Deppe Carol, © 2010, Chelsea Green Publishing, Deppe has written one of the few books to really teach me something about gardening in the last 15 years. I love her writing style, yes. But I love the depth of knowledge she posseses and her well-earned observations. Not all of her ideas translate readily to Southern California, but we can learn from her and adapt.

The Grape Grower, Rombough, Lon © 2002, Chelea Green Publishing, White River Junction, VT. Of several books on the subject of growing grapes, this is the most thorough, the best written and covers the most material. And they all cost about the same money. You’ll come to think of it as your very favorite, if you get into growing grapes for table or for wine. Chelsea Green is another publishing house you’ll want to investigate – especially if you get into sustainable living. Truly a pioneer publishing house with many wonderful titles to entice you into curl up with a good book.

The Home Orchard, Growing Your Own Deciduous Fruit and Nut Trees, University of California, Agriculture and Natural Resources, © 2007, Another great book from UC’s Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources – search out their website and you’ll find a wealth of free information there as well as publications like this one to purchase. This book is about the most thorough book on home orchards you will ever find - it is no only comprehensive, but comprehendible and easy to follow. There is no aspect of home orchards that is not covered in this volume.

The Kitchen Garden, Thompson, Sylvia © 1995, Bantam Books, Sylvia is from our area (she has written for the LA Times) so she knows a bit of gardening here. This is a great book that I refer to frequently along with her Recipes from a Kitchen Garden.

The Old-Fashioned Fruit Gardener, Gardner, Jo Ann, © 1989 Nimbus Publishing, Halifax, Nova Scotia A wonderful resource to learn how folks used to use small fruits of their garden complete with growing instructions and recipes.

The New Seed Starter's Handbook, Bubel, Nancy © 1988, Rodale Press There is no facet of seed starting that isn't included in this book. It is old, but it is still the best on the topic. The only thing that has changed has been advances in super powerful lights with more of the light spectrum for growing plants. In truth there isn't a need for those kinds of plant growing lights if you are just starting seeds indoors to be planted out in a few weeks.

The Rodale Book of Composting: Easy Methods for Every Gardener, Gershuny, Grace © 1992 Rodale Press I learned how to garden organically in the early 1970's with Rodale Press and I owe a lot to many of their different gardening titles. This is the most authoritative book on composting for the layman that has been published to date. Everything you want to know about composting is here.

The Seed Underground, Ray, Janisse ©2012 Chelsea Green Publishing, This book just came out and I'm not yet through it all the way, but I love the way she writes, with the rhythm of person sowing seeds or weeding the garden. She writes with poetry and with the authority of someone who knows what she is talking about internally and externally. A really good read.

The Soul of Soil: A Soil-Building Guide for Master Gardeners and Farmers, Gershuny, Grace, © 1999 Chelsea Green Publishing, One of my favorite books on soils, this was not written for gardeners but for farmers which limits its usefulness, but the principles are useful and she writes with passion and clarity Chelsea Green Publishing has a whole catalog of good books on gardening with an emphasis on 'organic' and 'sustainable.'

Trowel and Error, Lovejoy, Sharon © 2002 Workman Publishing, this is really the only pesticide book I use, although, it is not strictly a pesticide book. She is a delightful writer with lots of humor and she has gem of a home-made this and that collection.

Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden, Reich, Lee © 2004, Timber Press, Portland, OR If you are not familiar with Timber Press, check out their website, they are one of the best publishing houses in the field of horticulture today and their catalog will make your eyes twirl. We can’t grow all of these fruits, but this book is an eye opener for what can be grown vs. what IS grown. Each plant’s fruit is described with directions for cultivation and a list of desirable cultivars. This is the ‘expanded sequel’ to the book that drove me nuts trying to find a way to grow currants in Los Angeles (an as yet unfulfilled dream), Timber Press is another wonderful publisher of a good number of gardening books on my shelves.

david

Next Growing Food Class: September 1, 2012!

Growing Food in Southern California 
  with David King

1st Saturday of Every Month, 10AM - 12PM

 at

The Learning Garden at Venice High

Venice Blvd & Walgrove Ave, Venice, CA 90291

Grow Food classes are hands-on mini-workshop where you experience first-hand what the plants and soil are doing, and what you can do to maximize their production in the coming month.  

Emphasis on sustainable, organic practices, including: water conservation, beneficial pest management, soil maintenance, seed saving, and more.

Sample curriculum from July, 2012:

It is most important to have water at the roots of plants – spraying water into the air to fall on the soil, is not very efficient.   A lot of that water can be blown away from your plants (on to the neighbors!) and a lot evaporates off into the air. It is not very efficient at all. But there are other ways to to water that are better. All these other ways involve putting the water close to the root zone. The two ways to do this include some of the newest technology and some of the oldest technology. The newest technology is drip irrigation; the oldest is called an 'olla' – pronounces OYE-ya.  Variations of ollas are found in several different ancient cultures and there is a move to put them back into gardens today.

Individual classes are $20, or buy a package of 6 for $100 and save $20.

Classes are held at The Learning Garden, a busting, year-round educational center located on the campus of historic Venice High School, less than 2 miles from the beach. 

David King, Gardenmaster at The Learning Garden, has been growing food and teaching others how to do so in the Southern California climate for more than 20 years. He is a vocal advocate for food sustainable, organic practices in food production

The Learning Garden at Venice High School
Venice Blvd & Walgrove Ave, Venice, CA 90291
(310) - 722 - 3656

August

Cannellini  Beans

A pair of hands sifts through the harvest of Cannellini beans; 12 feet of row netted just shy of 10 pounds.  I am thinking a family of four would use about 50 pounds in a year.   But this is just one of the many things we are harvesting from the garden this month.

I used to think of August as nap time and in the heat of Southern California's summer, it sure is inviting! Grab a cool drink, a hammock and the Dodgers on the radio and listen for the muffled sounds of snoring...

But not anymore! Not since I realized that growing the food was less than half the battle. Of course there's a lot to do on that account, more will be revealed very soon, but getting the harvest in and making good use of it is another important part of gardening.

It's hot work, but this week alone, I've harvested 10 pounds of those famous Italian Cannellini beans (a dried bean sometimes referred to as 'white kidney beans' but that doesn't do them justice!), about as many pounds of peppers – mostly the sweet banana types that I hope to pickle soon. As well as the tons of cucumbers I am hauling in. If you followed my advice and planted Armenian cucumbers, you are swimming in cucumbers by now and have come to realize the reason that pickles have such prominence in our culture – pickles makes good use of all these tons of cukes in a pinch! Which is probably why we have so many pickling methods (from all over the world) as well so many different recipes!

How much you preserve of your harvest makes a huge difference in how well you can eat from your garden over the long haul. When the season is in full swing, like it is right now, dealing with the abundance is the major focus of the home gardener.

There are several ways to deal with fresh produce that will allow you to eat from your garden long after the heat of August is gone. You can dry the produce. This is the easiest way. Beans, like my Cannellinis (above), are simply left on the plant until the pods are crispy and ready to drop the white bean seeds on the ground. I come along, gather them up and lay them in a dry, partly sunny location to dry for a couple of days. In Southern California that should do them nicely. Putting them away with too much moisture could result in moldy beans by the time you want to use them in cooking. I give them a quick two day stint in the freezer to kill any larvae that might be lingering and then seal them up tightly in a glass jar until time to use.

Juicier veggies can be dried too, but they take longer and are a little more involved. If you want to dry tomatoes, or peppers, pick up a good book on drying. Look for a list of suggested books in this post to find one I recommend. Drying has the wonderful advantage of not being dependent on the power grid to continue to be edible, unlike freezing which is totally dependent on electricity. With disaster waiting at the turn of the next power outage.

Likewise, canning definitely cannot be done without careful consideration. Pickling and making jam are a subset of canning and are not as involved as other types of canning though they too need some awareness and strict attention to sanitation. Pickling and jams are easier because the high acidity or sweetness (pickling uses vinegar, while jams and jellies avoid botulism with lots of sugar) keeps the bad organisms from growing in your food without using a pressure cooker. Get a good book on canning and pickling and discover this whole different world you've missed!

I grew up with canning and pickling as a part of the rhythm of life. This was in Kansas and it would be 102º with the typical mid-Western high humidity. We'd be at Grandpa's picking green beans, tomatoes, strawberries, beets, grapes and sweet corn. Grandpa lived by himself and for his day-to-day cooking he used a little electric hot plate which couldn't boil the vats of water required for our massive canning adventures so we'd have to fire up the big stove – a behemoth wood burning stove! So there we would all be in Grandpa's kitchen, every window open and every fan on high, working, and sweating, our butts off to put all these vegetables and fruits into quart jar while Mom kept a verbal tally for us, “That's 16 quarts of beans!” We did strawberry jam, canned green beans (though by the time we got to eat them they were 'gray' beans), sweet corn, strawberry jam, grape jelly and pickled beets. It was hot work and I'm not suggesting that you go through this kind of torture. Canning and pickling need not happen all at once and involve a wood burning stove!

We didn't ferment things, being of a certain kind of mid-Western Christian persuasion, but fermentation has begun to make a comeback in modern times, especially since recent discoveries are extolling the health benefits of kim chi and other fermented foods. Making alcohol has been one way of preserving grape juice and cider for apples. It requires no refrigeration which is why these methods predate electricity by more than a few years. Now you can purchase your own still for a couple of hundred bucks and be on your way to compete with Old Bushmills or was that Old Kerosene? Kim Chi is a fermentation of cabbage that preserves cabbage with salt.

At this time, a gardener needs to keep the green (and yellow wax) beans picked (they can be pickled as well) or they’ll stop producing. Keep using the basil, continually pinching the flower tips – flowers and the first pair of leaves and throw into whatever you're cooking or a salad - the flowers are as edible as the leaves. Next month, you can harvest whole plants and make pesto and this constant pinching will cause the plant to grow into a vigorous small shrub! Share the abundance of all your produce with friends, relatives or a food bank. Nature isn’t stingy so carry on that tradition and share too. Everyone needs a fresh homegrown tomato now and then to remind us how blessed we really are.

Anything planted into the garden in August can be seen as an act of desperation. Mind you, you CAN plant, but, baring a spell of unseasonably cool weather, it isn't going to be a cakewalk for you or the plants. You'll both need extra water and both of you will have a shot at sunstroke that could kill them much more readily than you. At least, you should have the sense to move into the shade if you notice symptoms of hyperthermia. Plants, on the other hand, have to stay put. If you do plant on a hot day, it is good idea is to find a way to shade your little darlings. A stick, about 18 inches long, propping up a black nursery flat, with the flat to the south of the plants is a tried and true way for many gardeners to provide shade for their newly planted starts.

Remember to consider how long your new plant is going to take to fruit. Will it still be warm enough to set a crop? Right now in August, I would plant only a very few varieties of tomatoes because most will begin to flower in late November. Yes, I know there are warm days in November, but how many? Can you count on enough warm days to get tomatos from pollination to ripe before the cool nights cause it to rot on the plant? I think that's a poor bet. Instead, I think we should try to get cool season crops in before they really like to be set out or on the other hand, perhaps grow a few quick summer crops like beans.

What to plant in the coming months is a great game gardeners love to play, wiling away long, insufferably hot hours in the shade. It is best to write down some of the ideas you're having for next summer's garden now. while this year's experience is fresh, otherwise the harvest of knowledge could be wasted. Of all the ways to learn gardening, the most sure and least expensive is to keep a garden journal. It is so easy now days and can be very inexpensive. If you have a computer, a digital camera and a word processing program you are set up. It can be a cheap camera (find a used one on eBay) and a free word processing program, and your thoughts will be preserved for the next year's garden. If that's not your bag, get a paper notebook, draw your plans, paste in pictures from catalogs and write your observations in a multitude of colors. Or use a combination! The point is to write down things so you'll remember them and to find a way to write them down that will give you enough pleasure to insure you'll do it. A chair or bench in your garden is the most perfect place to do this. Haul out a few catalogs, something cool to drink, sit down in the shade with your notebook (computer or paper) and think about the year gone by. It can be a meditation that is almost as good as eating from your garden.

But don't throw all your attention in to next summer's garden. Spend some time now to consider what you will grow in our mild winters. I'm looking through some catalogs seeking good varieties of cabbage, broccoli, onion, lettuce and others. If I order them soon, I'll have them by the end of August and I'll be starting little pots of seedlings that will be going out into my garden by the beginning of October. Check out this post where I've listed a few of the vegetables I want to grow along with some varieties that I like. I'll order seeds to start now, and, to save on postage, I'll also order seeds that I'll be using a little later on.

No matter what's going to happen, August is the time to contemplate the fall and winter garden; in addition to the stuff above, I'll plant seeds of artichokes (a perennial) and I’ll plant several different heirloom varieties of sweet peas – maybe some blends of antique varieties, two seeds per pot. I love the scent of sweet peas and I've had a contest with myself to try to get red sweet peas for Valentine's Day. So far, no luck. They just sit there and sulk until March and then they flower – too late for romance! That could be a theme song.

Consider not only planting seeds from the seed companies, but commit to learn how to save your own seed from year to year. It's not only fun thing, but it makes you a much better gardener in the long run. It helps our generation to connect with our past – my Grandpa, and probably yours too, or at least his father, planted seeds they saved from year to year. This saving of seed comprises a huge heritage in our collective history that we today do not enjoy. Saving seeds from the plants you grew, connects you with your plants and our collective past in a whole new and delightful way that has a magic and satisfaction that is close to sacred.

Saving seed can be as simple as saving the seeds from your beans – bean seed is the bean in the pod. Leave the pods on the plant until the pod is crispy and viola! You have the seeds for next year. No fuss. Dry them thoroughly, give them the freezer treatment, as above, for two days and store in a cool dark place until next year! Other plants can be more complicated but all are easily learned. By leaving a few plants in the garden, you will provide forage for bees and other insects that makes your garden a more integral part of nature. It almost makes the free seed your bonus!

Allow me to make a shameless plug for the Seed Library of Los Angeles (slola.org) an organization that has its headquarters at The Learning Garden. SLOLA provides free seeds to its members for a $10 lifetime membership – every meeting features a presentation on how saving seeds of different types of plants and time to check out seeds from the collection of several hundred seeds, almost as much as some commercial seed houses! Over time, these varieties of seeds will become more adapted to the climate and soils of Southern California and will become our own vegetables. This is important because the coming years (if Global Climate Change is real) we will experience some difficult years for all agriculture. If we learn to grow our own food and there is a crop failure in the traditional crop growing regions, not only can we be self sufficient, but we might be able to provide famine relief for them as well. I know most of us don't think of our gardens as a hedge against starvation, and maybe that's too fine a point on it, but to me this is a reasonable scenario and one that adds a sense of urgency to what we do. Growing your own food and doing it well is a fabulous hobby and a worthy enterprise without considering climate change, but there is that reality right behind the curtain that haunts our day to day lives, much like the threat of nuclear war animated society's thinking in the late 1950's and early 60's.

One of the oddities in the chart below is that often one vegetable will appear in two columns, 'Start These in Containers' and 'Start These In The Ground' in the same month. This just means that there are two ways to grow this crop – I will usually use both to attain my goal of X number of plants. Some plants planted directly will grow faster and be harvest-able before the plants started in containers for transplant later – but, the ones in the ground are more exposed and are likely to suffer a greater percentage of depredation. Therefore, I average my desire for fresh eating sooner with the reality of fresh eating later being a more sound bet.

Others are stated one month earlier in containers and are seeded directly in the Garden next month. I will use both probably, again, to get the results I want. Sweet peas started in containers in August will not be any faster to flower than sweet peas direct seeded in September. Usually I do both just to make certain I don't have a sweet pea crop failure!

As we get ready for the coming plantings of Fall, this is a good time to introduce you to my own technological advancement, The Planting Stick. It's not really complicated.

Observe The Planting Stick.  It is about nine inches long and once was a part of a longer stick that was holding a vine or a small tree upright in a 10 gallon nursery pot.  Once the plant was planted, this stake was removed (many are not and are available by simply scanning your own or your neighbors front yard for anything that was planted by some mow, blow and go guys recently).  I cut it to nine inches because that is the size I find works for me, a bachelor who lives with a dog that doesn't eat a lot of vegetables.   

The stick is pushed down, lengthwise,  on the garden ground with an edge pointed down.  It makes a straight indentation in the soil and into that indentation, I drop seeds of whatever is the veggie du jour today.  

Carrots are covered with a light sprinkling of vermiculite. Vermiculite will hold moisture against the small seeds and help them to germinate. Many of our soils will crust over after being wetted and under that hard crust, carrot seeds will be entombed never to see daylight. You don't need to use vermiculite with other seeds – their plants can break through the crust. You'll use this stick in the coming months, so get it ready. Guess how long you'll want it – it's free so if you guess wrong, it's easy to start over.

Start These In Containers

Start These In The Ground

Move to the Ground from Containers

Sweet peas

Sweet peas

Broccoli

Cabbage

Kale

Cauliflower

Fava beans

Onions

Leeks

Refer to the text for exact dates.

Figs On the Grill

This is only a 'recipe' in the loosest sense of the word, but it's worth your attention. Gardener's in the Mediterranean Climate should be seeing figs getting ripe right now or soon. Pick figs that are soft to the touch and slice in half. Put face down on a grill until warm, flip over and warm on the back side as well – you are not trying to 'cook' them so don't overdue it. Just leave them long enough to heat through out.

Put a dollop of a good stout, plain yogurt (I like to find yogurt labeled 'Greek') on top of each slice. Drizzle with honey. Eat carefully to avoid falling of your chair.   

It's that good.

david