So many books, so little time!

It has been way too long since I posted to this blog. I intend to change that.

My most enjoyable, inspiring, uplifting, hopeful book this week is not a book from our store. I’ll tell you about it anyway.

The first gardening book that turned my gardening world upside down maybe fifteen years ago was Jeff Ball’s Sixty–Minute Garden, Rodale Press, 1985. I incorporated his creative and fresh ideas in my garden immediately and have enjoyed continuing to use his ideas over the years. I just love those authors who take a fresh look at what we all know how to do, or all know “what is,” and give us new methods to try. The changes that Jeff Ball encouraged were so different and thoughtful that I couldn’t wait to utilize them those many years ago. His ideas result in working in my garden less than sixty minutes a week. He eliminates the continual battle with garden hoses for water and other tasks like weeding. And, they work! They have been working in my garden for about fifteen years.

Now Mel Bartholomew has a new book, The All New Square Foot Gardening, Cool Springs Press, 2005, paperback, $19.99. Each page has refreshing new ideas about gardening that are thoughtful, reasonable, and I can hardly wait to try them. I have been reading a page or two at every opportunity, avoiding continual reading because I may forget one of the nuggets on each page. Bartholomew’s enthusiasm spills over into other parts of my life with creative ideas that are “outside the box.” One example from this book: instead of using a lot of heavy dirt to grow the garden plants the author offers a mixture of peat moss, vermiculite, and compost that results in no weeds, no fertilizer, and very little watering. At first it sounds strange but stick with the author and he shows you how and why it works.