Gardening Book Recommendations

[Kolesar]

Dedicated to the nature lovers in the DU Gardening forum.

We use frameless raised beds and have had six years of success. I have found gardening systems that economize on purchases and reduce the amount of work required. We have a one thousand square foot garden with two permanent beds of strawberries and cranberries and don't have much trouble keeping up with it.

We started raised beds when I found the Vegetable Gardener's Bible by Ed Smith. The Bible is the perfect book for beginners:
http://www.storey.com/book_detail.php?isbn=9781603424752

Gardening when it Counts economizes on effort and purchases. Author Steve Solomon has excellent, detailed instructions on how to use gardening tools and how to germinate, cultivate, irrigate and fertigate your plants:
http://www.newsociety.com/Books/G/Gardening-When-It-Counts

The Winter Harvest Handbook keeps us in greens until January:
http://www.fourseasonfarm.com/books/index.html#harvest

[XemaSab]

1. Sunset Western Garden Book is a must-have for the west

Also the California Master Gardener Handbook has a lot of information about a lot of topics.

[Curmudgeoness]

2. Gaia's Garden, A Guide to Home Scale Permaculture

taught me a lot of things that I had never read in any other book.

http://www.patternliteracy.com/books/gaias-garden

I will also second that Sunset, I have the Sunset National Garden Book, and there is a LOT of information in there.

[JDPriestly]

3. When I read the title of your post, the first book that came to my mind

was the Vegetable Gardener's Bible.

[dmosh42]

4. To really understand the science of what's going on in soil.....

I found the book, "Teaming with Microbes", by Jeff Lowenfels & Wayne Lewis, to be a great help to me. For many years I just tilled my soil, planted, fertilized and watered without much real understanding of what was really making this gardening work. This book is based on much of the work of microbiologist Elaine Ingham, but is written in a comprehensive style that some of us less educated gardeners can understand.