The gift of good reading for gardeners
Garden books and magazines have been some of my best friends over the course of my career in the outdoors. See four suggestions from 2014 that may please the gardeners on your list and you, too. More.
Let's face it--for a northern gardener, the main attraction of a book on four-season growing is the discussion on winter.
Although I have been growing vegetables for more than 25 years and practicing season extension for many of those, true year-round growing raises some questions to which I rarely find complete and satisfying answers. For instance, how do you maintain soil fertility in the winter when biological processes are slow? How do you time winter crop succession? How do you harden-off seedlings for winter planting? How late in the year can you direct-seed winter crops? Do you supply water in the winter? Which winter protection method is most effective?