Trowel & Error: Over 700 Shortcuts, Tips, & Remedies for the Gardener
by Sharon Lovejoy
Gardening season is in full swing and that means so are the forces that find no greater joy than in destroying your precious plants! Although it might seem easier to go to your local garden center and buy weed killers and bug sprays, with just a little effort you can care for your garden without breaking your bank.
Allow me to introduce Sharon Lovejoy – artist, author, and gardening expert. Her book Trowel & Error compiles tons of gardening tips and remedies that are easy to use, safe for you and your loved ones, and they work! For example, did you know that cinnamon repels ants? Neither did I until I took Lovejoy’s advice and sprinkled some along the ant trail in my cabinet. How about using old cologne to gently mist visible flies, aphids, or mealy bugs wreaking havoc in your container plants? Knocks them right out! And my favorite tip, leave out a saucer of beer to attract slugs and they’ll die a happy death. Trowel & Error is so much fun to open at random and take in Lovejoy’s illustrations and folksy advice. This is a must read for all gardeners from the casual to the passionate. -crystal
From The Ground Up: the Story of a First Garden
by Amy Stewart
I recently came across this book and had no real intention in actually reading it but once I started glancing through it, I was hooked. It didn’t matter that the location of the garden was in California – gardens everywhere have the same enemies or challenges: weeds, animal life, too much or not enough sun, water, or good temperature.
For all of us who have looked at a bare spot of land and dreamed big only to realize the dream wouldn’t come to fruition for several years, this is the book for you. It had me thinking about all the ridiculous mistakes I made starting my garden – most embarrassing, but now so nice to know that I wasn’t alone.
- Betsy
Wicked Plants: the Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother
and Other Botanical Atrocities
by Amy Stewart, with illustrations by Briony Morrow-Cribbs and Jonathon Rosen
The moral of this story, boys and girls, is: never, ever run willy-nilly through the garden putting vegetation in your mouth! What doesn’t kill you can make you itch, twitch, vomit, or go crazy. Seriously, I knew that Johnson grass was a pest, but I certainly did not know that its new green shoots contain enough cyanide to kill a horse. I swear I will never go outside again without wearing garden gloves.
This fascinating little book is a compendium of nightmare plants, including some very common garden friends such as lenten rose, hydrangea, lantana, and Carolina jessamine. Don’t eat these things. And remember when we were hippies and wore those necklaces made from beautiful seeds and berries? When it started going around that the red berries were poisonous, we all thought it was a conspiracy to make us dress better. Turns out those red berries were the deadly seed of the rosary pea, native to tropical Africa and Asia. Yikes.
Wicked Plants is wonderfully designed, beginning with its printed cover. Inside are beautiful etchings from Briony Morrow-Cribbs and macabre little drawings from Jonathon Rosen. The pages are printed with an all-over schmutz, as if the book has been previously handled by a gardener. Although it suffers from the lack of an index, it’s small enough to be thumbed through when you need to know the name of the Australian stinging tree, a mere brush with which can cause unbearable pain for up to a year (dendrocnide moroides, common name gympie gympie).
As for Nancy Hanks Lincoln, she died of milk sickness from drinking the tainted milk of cows who had been grazing on white snakeroot. –Pam
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