Texas Gardening the Natural Way

Book excerpt: Compost your old "complete" gardening guide. There's a new way of gardening in Texas that's healthier for people and the environment, more effective at growing vigorous plants and reducing pests, cheaper to maintain, and just more fun. It's Howard Garrett's "The Natural Way" organic gardening program, and it's all here in Texas Gardening the Natural Way. This book is the first complete, state-of-the-art organic gardening handbook for Texas. Using Howard Garrett's new mainstream gardening techniques, Texas Gardening the Natural Way presents a total gardening program: How to plan, plant, and maintain beautiful landscapes without using chemical fertilizers and toxic pesticides. Gardening fundamentals: soils, landscape design, planting techniques, and maintenance practices. Includes more native and adaptable varieties of garden and landscape plants than any other guide on the market. Trees: 134 species of evergreens, berry- and fruit-bearing, flowering, yellow fall color, orange fall color, and red fall color. Shrubs and specialty plants: 85 species for sun, shade, spring flowering, summer flowering, and treeform shrubs. Ground covers and vines: 51 species for sun and shade. Annuals and perennials: 136 species for fall color, winter color, summer color in shade and sun, and spring color. Also seeding rates for wildflowers. Lawn grasses: 10 species for sun and shade, with additional information on 16 native grasses, seeding rates for 32 grasses, and suggested mowing heights. Fruits, nuts, and vegetables: 58 species, with a vegetable planting chart and information on organic pecan and fruit tree growing, fruit varieties for Texas, grape and pecan varieties, and gardening by the moon. Common green manure crops: 29 crops that help enrich the soil. Herbs: 66 species for culinary and medicinal uses. Bugs: 73 types of helpful and harmful bugs, with organic remedies for pests, lists of beneficial bugs and plants that attract them, a beneficial bug release schedule, and sources for beneficial bugs. Plant diseases: organic treatments for 55 common problems. Organic methods for repelling mice, rabbits, armadillos, beavers, cats, squirrels, and deer. Organic management practices: watering, fertilizing, controlling weeds, releasing beneficial insects, biological controls (including bats and purple martins), and recipes for Garrett Juice, fire ant control drench, vinegar herbicide, Sick Tree Treatment, and Tree Trunk Goop. Average first and last freeze dates for locations around the state. Organic fertilizers and soil amendments: 61 varieties, including full instructions for making compost. Organic pest control products: 30 varieties. Common house plants and poisonous plants. Instructions for climbing vegetable structures and bat houses. 833 gorgeous full-color photographs.