Ball Pest & Disease Manual: Disease, Insect, and Mite Control on Flower and Foliage Crops

Book Description

No category of plants works harder than ground covers to help a gardener create a beautiful yet low-maintenance landscape. In this book readers will discover the best plants - to stabilize banks and control erosion - to substitute for turf where grass won't grow or is hard to mow - to line curbs and driveways, where salt will damage ordinary plants - to enhance a landscape with broad, dramatic sweeps.

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Foliage
Nancy J. Ondra , and Rob Cardillo
Manufacturer: Storey Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1580176488

Book Description

Plant foliage brings drama and structure to the garden with color, shape, and texture all its own. Bright, cheerful flowers may have beauty-pageant appeal that gets noticed by passers-by, but where would all those pretty floral faces be without the stalwart presence of foliage? Every garden benefits from an inspired selection of plants chosen for the beauty of their leaves, and the harmony their presence brings to the entire landscape.

Organized by color and texture, each chapter in Nancy Ondra’s eye-opening new guide illustrates the features and requirements of dozens of plants, all chosen for the unique appeal of their leaves. Colors range from brilliant chartreuse to stunning silver to dusky, moody maroon. Surfaces can be rough or smooth, velvety or prickly, and edges can be scalloped, smooth, or saw-toothed.

With the stunning range of color and texture represented in Rob Cardillo’s rich photography, it’s easy to see how much season-long interest foliage can add to a garden. In addition to identifying and discussing beautiful plant possibilities, Ondra draws on her many years of gardening experience to present vivid plant combinations that work together to enhance and extend garden color. Knowing how and where to use foliage to complement flowers and grasses is as important as understanding the plants themselves.

Flowers come and go, weather can kill blooms prematurely or prevent them from ever appearing, but sturdy, reliable foliage can be the gardener’s salvation, year after year.

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Ferns for American Gardens
"Fernishing" information
Review of Ferns for American Gardens
In depth but not a field guide
ferns for everyone

Ferns for American Gardens
John T. Mickel
Manufacturer: John Wiley & Sons Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0025844911

Book Description

Heres the definitive book on the cultivation and ornamental use of hardy ferns and their allies. Written by the Curator of Ferns at the New York Botanical Garden, it describesin an alphabetical by genus formatmore than 400 types of ferns and many more subspecies, varieties, and cultivars. Each entry explains the ferns habit, frond size, color, hardiness zones, and ease of cultivation, and more. There are also chapters on fern structure and propagation, lists of specific ferns suited to varying growing condition, and an extensive source list, bibliography, glossary, and index of common names.Filled with more than 360 full-color photographs, Ferns for American Gardens is the ideal reference for gardeners eager to acquaint themselves with this wide-ranging and adaptable group of plants.John Mickel taught botany at Iowa State University for eight years before coming to the New York Botanical Garden as Curator of Ferns in 1968. Dr. Mickelwho has written extensively on the topic of ferns

Customer Reviews:

Ferns for American Gardens.......2007-09-11

This book has a tremendous amount of information concerning ferns in America.
It is certainly well worth the sixteen dollars I paid for it. It contains a guide for flowering plants that you can partner with ferns. It gives descriptions of the flowering plants as well as their periods of bloom.
Also, in the back of the book is a glossary of terms which is very helpful and an index of common names.
If you need to identify a type of fern, this is the book to use. The pictures are very good and the descriptions are concise. Scientific names as well as common names are given. Propagating ferns is discussed as well as pests and hardiness zones. A list of mail order sources for hardy ferns is listed at the back of the book. Lots of information is given throughout. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about or grow ferns.

"Fernishing" information.......2007-02-25

In this excellent book Mickel furnishes an enormous amount of information about ferns without becoming pedantic or over-bearing. It is reflective of the author's life passion and years of hands-on gardening experience with these plants. The book is nicely organized so that a neophyte such as myself can reference it easily yet it provides enough in-depth information to satisfy the more advanced "fern-aholic". There are great sections on each species detailing origin, ease of cultivation and habit. Although one can tell Mickel never met a fern he didn't like, he makes it engagingly obvious in some cases which are his favorites and why. There is a great section on Matteuccia struthiopteris(ostrich fern) which includes a recipe for preparing and cooking the fiddleheads. Differing from the cook's point of view, the gardener steps in to assure us that cutting the fiddleheads brings no lasting damage to the fern! In another section on the Himalayan maidenhair fern he shares his delight in the accidental discovery that this species is adaptable to indoor cultivation.
The general information on fern structure and reproduction is concise and easily understood. There are a host of new terms in Fern World to be grasped, such as crosier, sori and rachis but Mickel makes them all comprehensible. Gardening with ferns, their prefered habitats, companion plants and even propagation are addressed as this is far more than a field identification book. There are an assortment of good line drawings and small color photographs of the individual fern species, but if this book has a weakness I would say that the photos are undersized and there are not enough of them. However, this is not an opulent coffee-table book but a good solid reference book which is easy to use and full of helpful, practical information for the fern-garderner at what ever level. I still rate it as a solid five star garden book.

Review of Ferns for American Gardens.......2006-11-06

This book has excellent illustrations of a variety of ferns with an description of each. Well worth having for anyone interested in a fern garden.

In depth but not a field guide.......2005-11-14

This book contains descriptions of a very large number (over 500) of ferns organized by genera and focusing on North American species. The horticultural information goes fairly deep and appears to be very sound. Cultural information is provided for most species. If you are an amateur gardener, this is a good reference for ferns already in your garden and ones you are considering obtaining from local nurseries or from catalogs. Be advised, however, that the book is not a field guide. Although there are many color photos, not all ferns are illustrated. If you are seeking to identify ferns in the garden or the wild, there may be other books that would better serve this purpose.

ferns for everyone.......2004-06-18

I love ferns and this is a great book full of usful info on where the plant comes from and how to grow them. The intro sections of the ferns are great, giving general info on the genus. The Photos are just fantastic and not just few but tons of them. Most of the entries have a little cheat sheet that gives the basics on every plant before the description. I especially liked the availability entry. It was all good and it felt easy to read. If I saw a fern in a book or store I could look it up and see if I should get it. A great job.

Southern Living Garden Guide Shrubs (Southern Living Garden Guides)

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A bible for the southern gardener
Southern Living Garden Guide Shrubs

Southern Living Garden Guide Shrubs (Southern Living Garden Guides)
Glenn Morris
Manufacturer: Oxmoor House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0848722434

Customer Reviews:

A bible for the southern gardener.......2006-02-22

I've lived all my life in the north, and so I know northern gardening well. However, I moved to southeastern N. Carolina 3 years ago, and discovered that it's a whole different world for gardening, given the intensity of heat and humidity. Plus, in New England I learned how to make plants grow in rocky soil. Here the trick is to get anything to grow in sand.

This was the first garden guide book I bought, and four more followed - and this is the only one I constantly use. I've landscaped my entire yard based on its advice. It gives all the common shrubs, shows what they look like in color pictures, offers information on the kind of soil they like (acidic, sandy, well drained, etc.), light requirements, which bugs they're vulnerable too... I lost the book when I left it at a garden center accidentally - and I immediately came to Amazon to get another copy.

For information on growing southern shrubs this is the place to go.

Southern Living Garden Guide Shrubs.......2000-06-20

This is a good resource guide for anyone who has questions about shrubs. The planting guides, soil requirements, watering tips, sunlight needs, etc. all play a big factor in the success of any plants, especially the ones that require a little extra care for outside growth.

Tropical Foliage Plants: A Grower's Guide

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Best Houseplant Book Available

Tropical Foliage Plants: A Grower's Guide
Lynn P. Griffith
Manufacturer: Ball Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1883052513

Book Description

Previously illustrated with black and white photographs, this reference now provides professionals with a colorful guide to the production of commercial foliage crops. Featuring updated and expanded information, including cultural changes, new technological advances, and eight new foliage crops, the guide now covers more than 70 species of foliage appropriate to commercial environments—anthuriums, bromeliads, ferns, bamboos, birds-of-paradise, and African violets. In addition to exploring each plant’s natural habitat, varieties, and propagation, this reference also counsels growers on uses, nutrition, pests, disorders, interior care, and the most common problems affecting these types of foliage. Tables also list leaf analysis rating standards for nutrients for many of the crops discussed.

Customer Reviews:

Best Houseplant Book Available.......2003-07-18

Books on houseplants normally give a nice picture a short description of the plant with some cultural hints. I've always been disappointed with the limited information available on these common plants. In my opinion, lack of proper information is why so many people think they have a "brown thumb." Recently, while scanning through the Ball Publishing Catalog, I discovered a wonderful book on houseplants.

Lynn P. Griffith, Jr. Tropical Foliage Plants: A Grower's Guide. Ball Publishing. 1998.

Lynn Griffith, the author, is President of the A&L Southern Agricultural Laboratories, Inc. that does agricultural testing and consulting work for clients in Florida, Latin America and the Caribbean. He has written many articles for technical journals about growing plants based on his trial and error learning and results of the testing he does for clients. This book pulls together his knowledge on the most common foliage plants.

Tropical Foliage Plants: A Grower's Guide is actually written for the grower producing foliage plants for local greenhouses, florist shops, and other stores. Since it is written in easy to understand language, it is also suitable for the hobbyist grower. Griffith provides information on habitat (where the plant originated), uses, varieties, propagation, culture, nutrition, diseases, insect and mite pests, disorders, tricks, and interior care of each plant covered.

The book is organized using the scientific name with the common name given also in the titles. Here is a complete list of the plants discussed:
Aglaonema (Chinese evergreen)
Anthurium
Aphelandra (Zebra plant)
Aralia/Polyscias
Araucaria (Norfolk Island pine)
Asparagus
Bromeliads: Aechmea, Billbergia, Guzmania, Neoregelia, Nidularium, Tillandsia, Vriesa
Caladium
Calathea
Chamaedorea (Parlor/Bamboo Palms)
Chlorophytum (Spider plants)
Chrysalidocarpus (Areca palms)
Cissus (Grape Ivy)
Codiaeum (Croton)
Cordelier (Ti plant)
Dieffenbachia (Dumb cane)
Dizygotheca (False Aralia)
Dracaena deremensis (Janet Craig, Warneckii)
Dracaena fragrans (Corn plant)
Dracaena marginata (Dragon tree)
Epipremnum (Pothos)
Fatsia
Ferns: Adiantum, Asplenium, Davallia, Nephrolepis, Platycerium, Pteris
Ficus benjamina and Ficus retusa (weeping figs)
Ficus lyrata (Fiddle-leaf fig), Ficus elastica (Rubber plant), Ficus maclellandii (Alii)
Gardenia
Hedera (English ivy)
Heliconia
Hibiscus
Howea (Kentia palm)
Maranta (prayer plant)
Peperomia

Philodendron
Phoenix (Date palm)
Ravenea (Majesty palm)
Rhapis (Lady Palm)
Schefflera actinophylla (Umbrella tree)
Schefflera arboricola (Dwarf Schefflera)
Spathiphyllum (Peace Lily)
Succulents: Beaucarnea, Crassula, Euphorbia, Hoya, Sansevieria
Succulents: Cacti
Sygonium (Nephthytis)
Yucca
Other foliage varieties: Acalypha (Copper leaf and Chenille plants), Aeschynanthus (Lipstick plant), Ardisia, Aspidistra (Cast iron plant), Bambusa (Bamboo), Begonia, Caryota (Fishtail palm), Fittonia (Nerve plant), Homalomena (Emerald Gem), Pilea, Plectranthus (Swedish ivy), Radermachera (China doll), Saintpaulia (African Violet), Sinningia (Gloxinia), Strelitzia (Bird of paradise, Tolmiea (Piggyback plant), Zebrina (Wandering Jew).

Strengths

Information is presented in an easy-to-read and well organized format. If necessary, the information is presented in two ways. Example: Temperature is expressed both in Fahrenheit and Centigrade.
Growers will find the technical information needed to grow these plants in a greenhouse setting.
A photographic section shows common problems.
Information is presented on using the plants in interior settings so the hobbyist has enough information to grow them well. This includes giving fertilizer information in terms of "teaspoons per gallon" and light levels needed expressed as foot candles and klux.
References for each plant are included so the grower or hobbyist will have an easier time finding additional information.

Weaknesses
Colored pictures for each plant would eliminate the need of looking up the plant in other identification books.
This book would be even more valuable to the hobbyist grower if a page of abbreviations and their meaning had been provided.
I strongly feel the plants listed under Other Foliage Varieties should have been given more attention. These plants are common in my local florist shops and garden centers.

General Comments

This book will remain on my bookshelves for as long as I grow houseplants! I learned why my effort at growing so many foliage plants has left me less than satisfied with the results. I didn't realize how many plants were sensitive to fluoride in the water or that they were sensitive to alkaline water. As a result of reading this book, I will either select different plant species to grow inside or I will invest in a distilling system. I also learned that most common houseplants need an acidic (low Ph) potting media. Since my local water is very alkaline, all my plants wind up in media with a high Ph. This is something else I must address in order to do my best at growing many common foliage plants.

Book Description

As most gardeners have had the pleasure to discover, there is a hosta for almost every garden situation. The Gardeners Guide to Growing Hostas is a beautiful, practical guide for both gardeners and collectors by one of the worlds leading hosta growers. It features essential advice on cultivation, propagation, and garden uses as well as an AZ plant directory listing over 400 cultivars and forms. Novices will appreciate the many color photographs that make picking the best variety an easy task; committed enthusiasts will enjoy the brief history and botany of the hosta and the information about hosta collections all over the world. World-renowned expert George Smith offers a chapter on how to use hostas in flower arrangements, and information on exhibiting and showing hostas completes the comprehensive, up-to-date account of this fascinating plant.

Customer Reviews:

So Many Hostas So Little Planet.......2000-02-24

Buy this for the plant list. It is easy to spend more than the book price on a modest bunch of Hostas at some garden center, or a lot more, if you are in a big hurry. Grenfell tells us more than those pretty tags do, and even says some of the things they are likely to neglect. I would wish that she had been more explicit about the range of what one is likely to get in the way of plant sizes as one tries to compare garden center, nursery, and catalog prices and outcomes. Hosta "August Moon," p. 99, for example, is a wonderful plant here, pretty much as described, but the late-season potful I got at a garden center in the late 1980's took more than five years to get there; "Large," from what had looked, "Miniature" to "Small" when I bought it. The author may wish to pretend that the people she wishes to address do not haunt the close-out tables at regional garden centers and discount retailers or catalog web sites, but those are places where good information can help you find the good stuff. Likewise for dividing the mature clumps of unlabeled Hostas in the garden of the old house my sister bought in 1998. (Yes! Those purple shoots are Hosta "Patriot," p. 130.) Grenfell grows her Hostas in England, where USDA Zone 6 is thought to be rugged and my Zone 5 is thought to be a howling Russian or alpine wilderness, so she misses out on the strengths that Dr. Rieth was able to deploy so effectively in the cold of Upper Penninsula Michigan, but the advice she gives on growing perfectly awesome Hostas,in Chapter Five, is worth paying attention to.

Grenfell pulls in essays by other experts to cover some of the territory she is not entirely familiar with, but the coordination between the text she wrote and what they wrote is not as tight as I would wish. When Dr. Pollock addresses the H. plantaginea's need for heat and some sun on p.86, he does not contrast North American performance, where long hot summers bloom them right up into Zone 4, to the English performance that Grenfell reports as; unlikely to bloom most years because the growing season is so much cooler. Less careful readers might follow her advice to plant warm, and end up with plants that get frost bitten for coming up too early, and then fried in July and August, or even June.

(Well, it is long and talky. Editing is ok, to be sure, but I do like to put some content in to support my assertions. It would have been helpful to have a word count utility pop up here or in the Perview version so I could get a better sense of how far I have gone here. Paragraphing would be nice too.)

This book covered all aspects of growing hosta........1999-06-26

I read every book on hostas that I could find. When I read Grenfell's book I knew it was one I needed to own, and I purchased it. It covered ever aspect of growing hostas. Elemaniting a lot of bad hearsay advise. The information is consice and easy to read. The technical information is all there as well as information for novice gardners.

There is a well written chapter on propagation that will help any gardener increase their number of plants. Its not just for professionals.

Excellent subject coverage without being too technical........1999-01-01

Just the book I was looking for. After collecting and growing hostas for some years now, Diana Genfell's book zeroed in on the questions I still had. It's a perfect companion to Paul Aden's hosta book, but if I had to own just one--this book would be it.

A GARDENING MUST HAVE!.......1998-03-29

I LIKE THIS BOOK. CLEARLY WRITTEN, VERY INFORMATIVE IN THE AREAS SHE CHOSE TO INCLUDE IN THE BOOK, BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTRATED. CAN'T SAY ENOUGH GOOD ABOUT THE BOOK.

The Time-Life Book of Foliage House Plants (Time-Life Encyclopedia of Gardening)

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The Time-Life Book of Foliage House Plants (Time-Life Encyclopedia of Gardening)
James Underwood Crockett
Manufacturer: Owl Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0805001239

Foliage Plants for Decorating Indoors: Plants, Designs. Maintenance for Homes, Offices and Interior Gardens

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Foliage Plants for Decorating Indoors: Plants, Designs. Maintenance for Homes, Offices and Interior Gardens
George A. Elbert , and Virginia F. Elbert
Manufacturer: Timber Press, Incorporated
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0881921254

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Only if Oasis Designs thought of this.......

Sharp Gardening
Christopher Holliday
Manufacturer: Timber Press, Incorporated
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 088192699X

Book Description

With a keen interest in spiky plants, Holliday argues that gardens don't have to look "nice" — packed with delicate roses and pretty clematis. There is much to be said for a crisp, clean-lined planting style featuring swords, straps, and spikes. This book presents a careful selection of plants that are spiky, sharp, or brittle, whether in their stems, leaves, or flowers, so that gardeners can choose new and exciting plants that work well in their landscape. From xeriscapes to maritime gardens and everywhere in between, all adventurous plantspeople will find fresh ideas for adding a little excitement to their garden.

Customer Reviews:

Only if Oasis Designs thought of this..............2007-02-04

Paul Spracklin of Oasis fame only wished he could have written this book. Next time maybe Paul eh? :D

Its quite an informative guide to growing such dry and xerophytic gardening.

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