Garden Wisdom: Lessons Learned from 60 Years of Gardening

by Jerry Apps, Steve Apps (Photographer)

Overview

Step into the garden with writer and rural historian Jerry Apps. In this treasure trove of tips, recollections, and recipes, Jerry combines his hard-earned advice for garden success with a discussion of how tending a garden leads to a deeper understanding of nature and the land. From planning and planting to fending off critters and weeds, he walks us through the gardening year, imbuing his story with humor and passion and once again reminding us that working even a small piece of land provides many rewards.

Gardening has always been a group endeavor for the Apps family. In Garden Wisdom, readers will learn gardening basics along with Jerry’s grandchildren as they become a new generation of gardeners. They’ll devour Ruth’s recipes for preparing and preserving fresh garden veggies—from refrigerator pickles to rutabaga pudding. And they’ll savor son Steve’s beautiful color photographs, capturing the bounty of the family garden throughout the growing season.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780870204944
Publisher:	Wisconsin Historical Society
Publication date:	01/25/2012
Edition description:	1st Edition
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	3 Months to 18 Years

About the Author

Jerry Apps has been a rural historian and environmental writer for more than forty years. He has published books on many rural topics, including Every Farm Tells a Story, Living a Country Year, Horse-Drawn Days,Barns of Wisconsin, and Old Farm. He is a former county extension agent and professor at the University of Wisconsin College of Agricultural and Life Sciences and a lifelong vegetable gardener.

As chief photographer for the Wisconsin State Journal, Steve Apps has covered a wide range of assignments, including the Green Bay Packers and University of Wisconsin-Madison sports. In 2008 he received the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Dave Boss Award of Excellence; his photo “First Down” was selected Photograph of the Year for 2007. In his time off Steve loves to travel the state documenting Wisconsin and all its beauty.

Ruth Apps has a degree in home economics education from the University of Wisconsin-Stout. She has worked for the University of Wisconsin as a county home economics agent and for Madison Area Technical College. Ruth has canned, frozen, and otherwise prepared garden produce since she and Jerry were married. She makes pumpkin pie from real pumpkins.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction 1

Part 1 Gardening Roots

1 Why I Garden 5

2 Gardening at the Home Farm 10

3 A Garden of My Own 15

Part 2 Planning and Planting

4 Seed Catalogs 23

5 Favorite Varieties 28

6 Picking a Garden Spot 32

7 Town Gardens 38

8 Planning 45

9 Planting 52

10 The Busy Month of June 62

11 Hoeing 67

12 Keeping Out the Critters 72

Part 3 Enjoying the Harvest

13 Early Spring Harvest 81

14 June Specials 91

15 Strawberries 97

16 The Joys of July 105

17 Peak Season 117

18 Late Summer Harvest 131

19 Fall Harvest 150

20 Food Preservation and Storage 189

Notes 193

Bibliography 196

Index 199

Editorial Reviews

Rural historian Apps (Barns of Wisconsin) continues his chronicling of rural life with a folksy memoir of his six decades of vegetable gardening. The material is arranged to follow the growing season and includes some growing tips and advice on preserving and cooking the garden’s bounty, but it is not a methodical how-to guide for the novice. For him, the garden is a place of “mystery, awe, anticipation, patience, surprise, disappointment, and elation.” The terrain will be familiar to readers of gardening memoirs, but those who have also grown to love the slow rhythms and quiet satisfactions of growing one’s own food will enjoy the company of his recollections. The collection is filled with humorous anecdotes and quiet observations of the cycle of life in the humble vegetable patch—plus an unexpected recipe for sorghum cookies. The pleasures he discovers in the garden come through on each page. 65 color and b&w photos and illus. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"Whether sharing boyhood memories, the times he spent gardening with his children and grandchildren, or his knowledge of growing vegetables and fruits, Apps combines memoir, useful information, and gardening philosophy with warmth and humor." (Library Journal)

"Those who have also grown to love the slow rhythms and quiet satisfactions of growing one's own food will enjoy the company of his recollections. The collection is filled with humorous anecdotes and quiet observations of the cycle of life in the humble vegetable patch—plus an unexpected recipe for sorghum cookies. The pleasures he discovers in the garden come through on each page." (Publishers Weekly)

"Want to know how to transplant tomatoes, hoe a row of rutabaga, or put up a peck of pickled peppers? There's an Apps for that!. . . . As informative as it is entertaining, Apps' heartfelt chronicle transforms the standard gardening guidebook into a deeply personal appreciation for nature’s bounty." (Booklist)

“Jerry Apps has tapped into the wisdom of five generations of family—from his grandparents to his grandchildren—to create a richly personal and practical guide to growing, storing, and using foodstuffs in the Badger State. This is a wonderful book for all Wisconsin gardeners.” (Jerry Minnich, author of The Wisconsin Garden Guide and The Rodale Book of Composting)

“Jerry Apps sets the stage and draws readers in for a crop-by-crop, season-by-season saga as old as home vegetable gardening itself. He weaves the tale using the perfect balance of experience, folklore, and science. The UW Extension background of this husband and wife team lends added credibility to their gardening methods and recipes alike. In the end you feel more a part of the society of gardeners everywhere and a little bit a part of the Apps family.” (Sharon Morrissey, UW Extension Consumer Horticulture Agent and cohost of Milwaukee FOX6-TV’s Wake-up News gardening segments)

"Winner, Midwest Independent Publishers Association Midwest Books Awards (Nature)

From the Publisher

Bates's (The Wars We Took to Vietnam: Cultural Conflict and Storytelling) chronicle of an April to October voyage along the Bark River in southeastern Wisconsin—actually a composite of many trips taken over many years—moves at a canoe's pace, a compliment reflecting both his physical movement on the river and his own meandering thoughts. He strikes a timeless and intimate tone that Minnesotans, Michiganders, and Wisconsinites (or even fans of Garrison Keillor) know well. Readers learn about ice harvesting, the Black Hawk War, local scandals and legends, a gigantic little circus, mobsters, murders, and a gifted local poet, Lorine Niedecker—an Imagism-influenced poet of whom Bates, himself a Wallace Stevens scholar, paints a lovely portrait. VERDICT This book will reward insightful readers. Certainly for regionalists, this also will be popular with any reader with a fond place in their heart for Wisconsin.—Ben Malczewski, Ypsilanti Dist. Lib., MI

Library Journal