Heirloom Country Gardens: Timeless Treasures for Today's Gardeners (Rodale Organic Gardening Books)
Love history as much as you love plants? Interested in resurrecting some nearly forgotten and delicious garden vegetables?Heirloom Country Gardensoffers a wealth of suggestions in a lovely format that mixes gorgeous photos with fascinating text. Author Sarah Wolfgang Heffner begins with an introduction to many types of regionally preferred layouts--traditional Amish, New England, Southern, Victorian, and Southwest Mission are but a few. Whether you're interested in reinventing your entire garden in a particular style or simply incorporating a few elements, you'll find the detailed descriptions and bulleted lists to be helpful companions.The alphabetical listing of vegetables, flowers, herbs, and fruits includes both general notes and specific types of special heirloom plants. Purple carrots? White cucumbers?  Each category offers at least four choices--some, like the Moons and Stars melon, are famous in the move to restore older breeds. Plant history is included in this section--did you know it was once believed that basil could actually turn into a scorpion, if two leaves were left under a rock? Flowers are given the same loving attention, while fruits are treated a bit differently.As local conditions can vary so drastically for optimal fruit growing, Heffner urges you to get recommendations from local nurseries, while including interesting historical facts and a few general suggestions. Organic methods of disease and pests control are emphasized, and the instructions for training plants and retaining seeds excel in their completeness and simplicity.--Jill Lightner