Texas Gardening the Natural Way: The Complete Handbook

by Howard Garrett

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781477310236
Publisher:	University of Texas Press
Publication date:	02/15/2016
Edition description:	2016 Edition
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	411,149
Product dimensions:	11.20(w) x 8.70(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Howard Garrett is a landscape architect, certified arborist, horticulturist, and organic practitioner in Dallas, Texas. He promotes his organic gardening program, The Natural Way, through his WBAP radio and Channel 8 TV shows, weekly column in the Dallas Morning News, monthly Dirt Doctor's Dirt magazine, The Organic Manual: Natural Gardening for the 21st Century, and regional and national speaking engagements. His previous UT Press books are Howard Garrett's Plants for Texas, Dear Dirt Doctor: Questions Answered the Natural Way, Herbs for Texas (with Odena Brannan), Texas Bug Book: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (with C. Malcolm Beck), and Plants of the Metroplex: Newly Revised Edition.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1. TEXAS GARDENING FUNDAMENTALS

Advantages of Organic Gardening

Practical Landscape Design

Planting Techniques

Basic Organic Program

Synthetic versus Natural Fertilizers

Differences between Toxic Chemical and Organic Approaches

CHAPTER 2. TREES

Tree Planting—the Natural Way

Management of Trees

Easy Reference for Trees

The Trees

Worst Trees for Texas

CHAPTER 3. SHRUBS AND SPECIALTY PLANTS

Bed Prep

Easy Reference for Shrubs

The Plants

CHAPTER 4. GROUND COVERS AND VINES

Bed Prep

Easy Reference for Ground Covers and Vines

The Plants

CHAPTER 5. ANNUALS AND PERENNIALS

Bed Prep

Planting

Maintenance

Easy Reference for Annuals and Perennials

The Plants

Seeding Rates for Wildflowers

CHAPTER 6. TEXAS LAWNS

Bed Prep and Planting Techniques for Grasses

Maintenance of Grasses

Suggested Mowing Heights

Easy Reference for Grasses

Turf Grasses, Weeds, and So-Called Weeds

Texas Cover Crops

So-Called Weeds

Texas Native Grasses

Seeding Rates for Grasses

CHAPTER 7. FRUITS, NUTS, AND VEGETABLES

The Plants

Organic Pecan and Fruit Tree Program

Fruit Varieties for Texas

Grape and Pecan Varieties for Texas

How to Prune Fruits and Nuts

Structures for Climbing Vegetable Plants

Common Green Manure Crops

Vegetable Planting Chart

CHAPTER 8. HERBS

Bed Prep, Planting, Maintenance

The Plants

CHAPTER 9. PEST MANAGEMENT

Insects

The Bugs

Beneficial Insects: Habitats and Benefits

Plants That Attract Beneficial Insects

Beneficial Insect Release Schedule

Sources of Beneficial Bugs

Diseases and Other Ailments

Other Beasts in the Garden

CHAPTER 10. APPENDIX

Formulas

Gardening by the Moon

Average First Freeze Dates—Fall

Average Last Freeze Dates—Spring

Organic Fertilizers and Soil Amendments

Pest Control Products

House Plants

Poisonous Plants