Gardening with Nature - How to Grow Your Own Vegetables, Fruit and Flowers by Natural Methods

Leonard Wickenden

Description

“Gardening With Nature” is a classic guide to growing fruit, vegetables and flowers with a focus on using mainly natural means. With simple, step-by-step instructions and helpful diagrams, this volume is ideal for the eco-friendly gardeners with little previous experience. Contents include: “Fundamentals”, “Preparing and Repairing the Soil”, “The Care of Seedlings”, “Beginning the Young Plant Through Infancy”, “Vegetables – What to Grow”, “Vegetables – How to Grow Them”, “The Flower Garden – The Lawn”, “Small Fruits”, “Large Fruits – Reclaiming Old Orchards”, “Herbs – How t Grow Them”, etc. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new introduction on the history of gardening.

Sujets

• Jardinage
• Potager
• Jardin décoratif
• Vegetables
• Gardening
• Kitchen garden

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 26 janvier 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781447498223
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

GARDENING WITH NATURE

how to grow your own Vegetables, Fruit Flowers by natural methods
by
LEONARD WICKENDEN
CONTENTS
I NTRODUCTION BY L AWRENCE H ILLS
P REFACE : H OW TO U SE THIS B OOK
1. F UNDAMENTALS
What is Soil? How Formed, How destroyed. Restoring Worn-out Soil. Minerals. Use of Rocks. Lime. Nature s Method of Maintaining Fertility. Soil Analysis.
2. P REPARING AND R EPAIRING THE S OIL
Organic Matter and its Inexhaustible Supply. Cover-Crops. Manure. How to Make Compost. Commercial Dried Manures. Sheet Composting. Leaves. Seaweed. Other Wastes. Soil Conditioners. pH.
3. C ULTIVATING THE S OIL
Is Digging Beneficial? Should Manure be Turned Under? Value of Aeration. Subsoiling. Mulching. Earthworms. Weeds. Location and Drainage.
4. T HE C ARE OF S EEDLINGS
Spring Sowing. Trays. Planting Indoors. Watering. Thinning. Troubles with Seedlings. Hotbeds and Coldframes. Sowing in the Open. Portable Coldframes.
5. B RINGING THE Y OUNG P LANT T HROUGH I NFANCY
Hardening Off. Transplanting. Protection Against Cutworms, Slugs, Cabbage Root Fly.
6. V EGETABLES -W HAT TO G ROW
Garden for Family of Four. What size? Three-year Rotation. Choice of Crops. When to Plant. How much Seed to Buy. The Smaller Garden.
7. V EGETABLES -H OW TO G ROW T HEM
Don t Rush the Season. Detailed Instructions for Each Vegetable.
8. T HE F LOWER G ARDEN -T HE L AWN
Annuals, Biennials, Perennials, Bulbs, Corms, Rhizomes, Tubers. Easily Grown and Popular Annuals, Biennials and Perennials. Flowers for Shade and Poor Soil. Narcissi, Tulips, Hyacinths, Gladioli, Lilies, Irises, Peonies. Vines. Roses. Shrubs. The Lawn. Ground Covers.
9. S MALL F RUITS
Blackberry, Blueberry, Boysenberry, Currant, Elderberry, Gooseberry, Grape, Loganberry, Raspberry, Strawberry.
10. L ARGE F RUITS . R ECLAIMING O LD O RCHARDS
Soil, Planting, Winter Protection, Pruning. Apple, Cherry, Damson, Nectarine and Peach, Plum, Pear. Reclaiming Old Orchards.
11. H ERBS -H OW TO G ROW T HEM -H OW TO S TORE AND U SE T HEM
Common Herbs. What is a Herb? Annual, Biennial and Perennial Herbs. Preserving. Cooking with Herbs.
12. H EDGES
Function of a Hedge. Precautions to Observe. Suitable Evergreen Trees. Deciduous Hedges. Low Hedges. Trimming. Hedges for Specific Purposes. Planting.
13. T HE P ROBLEM OF D ISEASES AND P ESTS
Disastrous Results of Using Poison Sprays. Destruction of Beneficial Insects. Bee Colonies Declining. The Organic Solution. Other Protective Measures.
14. A LLIES IN THE I NSECT W AR
Lady-Birds, Ichneumon Flies, Hover Flies, Lacewing Flies, Parasites of the Japanese Beetle and White Fly, Ground Beetles, Tiger Beetles, Rove Beetles, Centipedes-Birds, Hedgehogs, Shrews, Toads, Snakes-Control by Disease.
15. S UMMER C ROPS FOR THE W INTER K ITCHEN
Canning, Freezing, Storing. Preferred Procedure for Various Crops. How to Freeze Common Vegetables and Fruits. Storing: Onions, Tomatoes, Cauliflower, Broccoli, Root Crops, Potatoes, Celery, Squash, Pumpkins, Sweet Potatoes.
16. H OME GROWN S EEDS
Advantages of Producing. Danger of Cross-fertilization. Saving Beans, Peas, Tomatoes, Peppers, Okra, Endive, Carrot and Celery. Disadvantages. Cleaning, Drying and Storing.
17. A TTRACTING B IRDS
Planting for Birds. Feeding Stations, Birdbaths, Nesting Boxes. Kinds of Food: Sunflower Seeds. Other Seeds, Suets, Table Wastes. How to Make a Birdbath. Winter Shelters.
18. T HE C HICKEN H OUSE
Valuable Adjunct to Organic Garden. Size of Flock. Economics. Preserving Eggs. Which Breed? How Long Will a Hen Produce Profitably? Size of House. Slaughtering. The Miracle of Deep Litter.
19. G ARDEN T OOLS
Small Hand Tools, Large Hand Tools, Wheel and Power Tools. Sundry Devices. Weather Instruments.
20. T WENTY Q UESTIONS
Soil Acidity. Chemical Fertilizers. High Yields. NPK. Problems Connected with Composting. Growing Mushrooms. Cover Crops. Compost and Insect Pests. Sulphur, Ashes and Superphosphate. Sunflower Seeds. Tree Stumps.
21. W HY ?
Why Does the Advocacy of Organic Methods Arouse Such Emotional Opposition?
A PPENDIX . T HE T RACE E LEMENT E NIGMA
The Maze in Which the User of Trace Elements becomes Lost. The Natural Way Out.
G ARDENER S G LOSSARY
I NDEX
ILLUSTRATIONS
Portrait of the author, and his peas
The Lima bean of America is the butter bean of the grocer. The 12-foot high variety Mr. Wickenden is picking is not hardy in Britain, but The Czar, a 6-8 footer, is easy; you can grow your own with a gain in flavour
A small grandchild and a large potato. The superior flavour of compost-grown potatoes, especially baked with butter, is one of the most striking rewards for gardening with nature
The only pests in Mr. Wickenden s organic garden in New England in 1955 were two hurricanes and the usual summer drought. It is only the moisture-holding power of compost that grows good summer lettuce in his soil and climate
A perfect specimen of Calabrese, with the first of many green cauliflower-heads with an asparagus flavour, ready for cutting
These strawberries are mulched with low-grade hay, and the compost heap in the background has used the surplus of the load. In England, where farmers burn less straw, buy it by the bale as mulch and compost material
Mr. Wickenden s home and part of his garden in summer, with more strawberries in the foreground, to supply the canning programme that balances shorter seasons
The Salad Bowl lettuce is about three times normal size, and like the American doughnut, it has a hole in the middle by nature . It is easy to grow in Britain, very slow to bolt and of excellent flavour
Compost-grown tomatoes (Stonors Exhibition) on one of the many English nurseries where organic methods replace expensive soil sterilization and produce fruit that leads in quality and flavour
INTRODUCTION
Mr. Leonard Wickenden s Gardening with Nature is an American classic, but to the British amateur gardener it would be, in its original form, a mixture of sound and practical advice, and utterly misleading information. It takes very much more than an English binding to translate any gardening work written to cover all the climates from Florida and California to Washington and Maine so that it will fit our small islands in the latitude of Labrador, but warmed by the Gulf Stream and richer in keen gardeners to the square mile than any other country in the world.
What has stayed unchanged is Mr. Wickenden s forceful prose, for unlike the British compost addict or organic gardener writing for the converted, he is extremely practical, marshals his facts, and when he argues it is with a transatlantic simplicity and punch that is unusual in this particular field. My task has been not only to adapt his principles so that they apply to Nature as we have it in Britain, with almost every pest different and the gardeners friends shorn of the praying mantis, but to make this also a book on American gardening.
I have had the assistance of Miss Katherine Hunter of Callestick, Truro who, in partnership with the late Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, was the foremost pioneer in growing unusual vegetables, in selecting the best varieties and the growing methods so that the adventurous gardener, in any part of Britain, can grow squashes, pole beans, snap beans, sweet corn and many other American vegetables, which are new flavours and well worth adding to any garden after trial on a small scale. By avoiding the problems of digging the information out of a wilderness of burlap, hardware cloth, Mexican bean beetles and chickadees, and trying to guess whether Pennsylvania is near enough to Aberdeen for the same sowing dates to apply, we hope that we have given these vegetables a fair chance in the British garden. Those which are possible in a cool greenhouse are also included and those which have not a chance, or are not worth the trouble, have been excluded. Someone in Britain has tried these methods and they work.
Very many things that we do in England are impossible in America. As an example, broccoli, savoys, brussels sprouts and leeks will all stay in the winter-locked garden until wanted, while across the Atlantic these must be preserved by canning or freezing. We do not need their preoccupation with shading against scorching sun, the reverse side of the medal to the ease with which they can grow so many things which are part hardy with us. We can envy them the grape as a fruiting trellis-coverer, the easiest of all fruit, but it is more than mowing and rolling for five hundred years that makes a perfect British lawn; it is simply not having the sort of summer in which Heat Slays Hundred followed by fifteen feet of snow and frost that strikes deep into the ground. Therefore many parts of this book are straight from the experience of British organic gardeners so that we, Mr. Wickenden and myself, hope that the Anglo-American result will be helpful not only to the experimental and the organic gardener, but to the American in Britain who is homesick for pumpkin pie, okras, or Chinese lettuce.
I should like to take this opportunity of thanking Miss Hunter for the very great help, without which this book could not have been fitred into our conditions, and Mr. Cyril Cowell, who drew the weeds, the pests and the garden friends that have replaced the Japanese beetles, stink bugs, corn earworms and potato leafhoppers of the orginal.
L AWRENCE D. H ILLS
PREFACE
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
If you have bought this book, or if it has been given to you, obviously it is your property to use as you see fit, but since the author has lived with it since its early infancy perhaps he will be forgiven if he offers a few hints in the hope of increasing its usefulness.
It is largely a how to book and most of the chapters are an attempt to pass on to you what the author has learnt from many other gardeners and from years of practice and experiment. But it is something more than that. It tries to set forth, in non-technical language,