Greenhouse Gardener's Companion: Growing Food and Flowers in Your Greenhouse or Sunspace ANNOTATION
An environmentally friendly sourcebook that is actually two books in one, providing everything the gardener needs to know about setting up a healthy growing environment within a sunspace, plus a complete guide to growing flowers, vegetables and herbs in the greenhouse. Veteran greenhouse gardener Shane Smith is the author of The Bountiful Solar Greenhouse. Two color; line illustrations.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Through lively writing that balances wit with commonsense advice, Smith draws on his more than 20 yearsﾽ experience to cover everything you need to know to establish a charming and productive greenhouse. This revised edition includes more detailed information on greenhouse construction, heating options, and interior design. An expanded section on pest and disease control features updated information on integrated pest management (IPM) for those who prefer to control "bad bugs" with "good bugs" rather than with toxic pesticides. Smith introduces you to the latest greenhouse gadgets, from glazing materials, to fans and vents, to misters and watering devices. A new section on orchids introduces the basic orchid families and provides practical advice for growing the species successfully. This edition includes more than 250 new and exquisite illustrations, plus copious instructive photos and charts, detailed appendixes listing garden associations; suppliers (with website addresses); climate information; helpful references, and more.
Shane Smith is a founder and the director of the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens in Cheyenne, Wyoming. There, he has developed a ""people-focused"" solar greenhouse that employs seniors, at-risk youths, and disabled individuals and that serves the larger community with lectures, tours, and plant sales. Amidst work on a TV pilot for a garden series, numerous lecture tours, a weekly garden radio program, and writing, Smith still finds time to operate and enjoy his greenhouses at work and at home.
SYNOPSIS
Imagine savoring the taste of your own homegrown tomato, fresh from the vine, in February! How about harvesting fresh organic salad greens year-round, or stepping into a blossom-laden tropical paradise on the coldest of winter days? Today, greenhouses and sunrooms are real living spaces where gardeners spend as much time with a book and a cup of coffee as they do with a watering can and a pair of pruning shoes. In this fully revised edition of a best-selling classic, veteran gardener Shane Smith embraces this new ""lifestyle"" approach to greenhouse gardening.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
There's something refreshing about a gardening book that doesn't start out with soil. Smith ( The Bountiful Solar Greenhouse ) puts off the nitty-gritty subject until chapter nine. In the meantime, he covers such subjects as vegetables, flowers and herbs, light and temperature, ground beds and containers, and crop spacing and scheduling. This is not a complicated book; the operative word for it is ``companion.'' And while some of the advice is rather elementary, it does lead the reader painlessly through the steps and requirements of owning and gardening in a greenhouse. Undoubtedly, Smith's role as a lecturer and host of a radio gardening show has also inspired him to write in terms simple enough for beginners. His saving grace is a quiet sense of humor that's evident throughout the book--from his warnings about weather to his ``biased opinion of hydroponics.'' When Smith does get around to soil, he goes at it from the point of view of providing plants with a healthy root system--covering soil pH and nutrients and organic soil amendments in beds and pots. The extensive final chapter is devoted to everything that can go wrong--i.e., pests and diseases, for which Smith recommends mostly organic and biologic controls. As he points out, a ``greenhouse or sunroom garden is probably the closest garden you'll ever live with.'' This is a book to live with. Illustrated. Garden Book Club alternate. (Nov.)
Library Journal
The director of Cheyenne Botanic Gardens and author of The Bountiful Solar Greenhouse ( LJ 4/15/82) has produced a practical, comprehensive guide to making the most of any greenhouse or garden room. Addressing almost every aspect except the actual construction, Smith covers the greenhouse environment (light, humidity, temperature), interior design (plant placement, fans, drainage), individual plants and their propagation, pollination, growth, and scheduling for flower or fruit production. There are chapters on problems, diseases, and insects, and lists of associations, mail-order suppliers, and sun averages during the year across the country. As a Wyoming gardener, he puts a good deal of emphasis on using the greenhouse in summer as well as in winter, but this is a useful, practical guide for readers in most of the continental United States.-- Molly Newling, Piscataway P.L., N.J.
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