The Complete Guide to Growing Your Own Fruits and Berries: Everything You Need to Know Explained Simply

Front Cover
Atlantic Publishing Company, Nov 15, 2010 - Gardening - 288 pages

There is nothing better than a freshly picked apple or raspberry from your own backyard and yet many homeowners lack the resources or the necessary gardening acumen to effectively plant and harvest their own fruit. While some fruits, like apples, grow in almost any climate (as many as 35 of 50 states providing perfect conditions), others like blackberries and blueberries are incredibly hard to grow without the right soil, weather, and care.
This book will guide every man and woman out there who has ever wanted to grow their own crop of fruits and berries or who has tried and failed. From the simplest fruit tree to the most fickle berry bush, this book will be your one and only guide. You will learn how to select your fruits and berries of choice, using a combination of climate information that matches the best possible bushes, trees, and vines to your home and how these plants will grow there. You will learn how to maintain your plants in your climate with the right sunlight, location, soil, and fertilizer and what each different kind of fruit or berry needs to be most effective. You will learn the planting conditions and the maintenance that each fruit or berry needs, from pruning and picking, to maintaining a pest free environment around your plants.
Starting with the most basic aspects of your planting sequence, you will learn everything possibly needed to grow and have your very own fruits and berries every year. Additionally, the top gardeners around have contributed, through interviews, their own tips and tricks to effectively growing and maintaining the lives of your new fruit and berry trees and bushes. With this book, any prospective gardener can start enjoying the sweet fruits of their labor.
Atlantic Publishing is a small, independent publishing company based in Ocala, Florida. Founded over twenty years ago in the company president s garage, Atlantic Publishing has grown to become a renowned resource for non-fiction books. Today, over 450 titles are in print covering subjects such as small business, healthy living, management, finance, careers, and real estate. Atlantic Publishing prides itself on producing award winning, high-quality manuals that give readers up-to-date, pertinent information, real-world examples, and case studies with expert advice. Every book has resources, contact information, and web sites of the products or companies discussed.

 

Contents

INTRODUCTION
13
W hat Types of Fruits and Berries
37
Best Seasons
49
Soil Texture Quality and Enrichment
57
Creating Organic Soil with
68
Feeding Your Soil
74
Layering of soil with mulch
85
Containers
98
Other bush berries Planting Strawberries
154
Trellis design
165
Planting Rhubarb
172
Ongoing Care
197
Purchasing Healthy Cultivars
211
Caspid bugs Caterpillars
217
Moths
223
General longterm pest
229

Protection from pests and diseases
106
Anatomy of a Fruit Flower
112
Keeping Bees
118
Planting
123
Planting Tree Fruits
127
Planting Melons
137
Completing the planting process Planting Bush Berries
145
E njoying the Feast
241
R esources for Finding
251
Recipes
263
L ist of Scientific Names
277
Author Biography
283
155
286
Copyright

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About the author (2010)

Karen Szklany Gault spent her childhood in Hawthorne, New York and has since called Ireland and several of the United States her home. She holds a B.A. in Psychology from Marist College (1986) and a M.Ed. in Elementary Education from the University of Massachusetts, Boston (1996). She currently resides in Berlin, Massachusetts with her husband and daughter as a member of Mosaic Commons, a cohousing community, where she enjoys creating her own backyard garden and home-schools her daughter, Cosette. When she is not gardening or home-schooling, she makes music, walks labyrinths, sails, cooks, bakes, and makes cross-stitch tapestries."

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