Gaias Garden A Guide to Home Scale Permaculture
Gaias Garden A Guide to Home Scale Permaculture
Hemenway, a permaculture expert and associate editor of The Permaculture Activist, explains how gardens can function as ecosystems, describes the basic parts of an ecological garden (soil, water, plants, and animals), and shows how to create backyard ecosystems through guilds. Guilds, the author tells us, are groups of plants that function as an ecosystem to provide products for humans, create cover and food for wildlife, nourish the soil, conserve water, and repel pests. A simple example of a guild is the “three sisters” (corn, beans, and squash); corn stalks provide a trellis for beans, the beans supply nitrogen to the soil, and the squash leaves inhibit weeds and conserve water. While Hemenway’s ideas are intriguing, creating guilds specific to an area involves extensive research, which involves either observing plant communities in the wild or using books or university contacts. In addition, the author doesn’t sufficiently explain how to incorporate the many sun-loving vegetables and flowers into guilds, which are often shade-oriented. Recommended only for botanical and academic libraries. Sue O’Brien, Downers Grove P.L., IL
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars Old Idea… new to me!
I found this book to be a delightfully inspirational blend of stories, facts and a common sense approach to the home garden environment, although, I would not use this book as a definitive “how to guide”.
I think this books main value is in its provocative manner. I read it, and two weeks later have started a plethora of mini permaculture experiments. I searched around my home to find my “micro-environments” and have started to identify my “weeds” to see what they can tell me about my soil conditions. I even found a “weed” growing plentifully in my backyard, was actually an herb!
I recommend this book especially for those new or just beginning to explore the wide world of the home garden.
5 Stars Great Read
I haven’t made my way through the whole book yet, but what a great start - good organization, fabulous ideas and examples, nice mix of philosophy and method, more than ample motivation and inspiration to start my own food forest!
5 Stars Eye-Opening
Maybe I’m naive and uninformed, but I found this book eye-opening. I did read it a couple years ago now, but its ideas and principles were fascinating to me. Much of what it recommends, I was already doing, because most of my gardening techniques come from foggy memories of my grandmothers and their gardens. Because both my grandmothers were pretty poor (dirt poor?), they couldn’t afford pesticides or herbicides or irrigation or manicured lawns. So, they built up beautiful gardens with crush planting and recycling of resources and careful siting of particular plants. They knew their space and their plants, and they never wasted anything. I try to do what they did and expand on it through what I can learn from books. This book gave me a lot in terms of principles for what I do and why I do it. What I maybe understood on an intuitive level or didn’t understand at all but just did, this book provided a foundation for and then built further on that foundation. I’m always in search of more books of this type — that address how a home-owner can use some of the principles of permaculture and ideas for minimizing work and human input in the garden through more “natural” methods of gardening. Too few books seem to try to tackle such issues on a small scale for single homes. This book was a great start. So, if you didn’t have grandmothers like mine but you’re interested in learning how to make the most of your garden with the least human input, start with this book.
5 Stars got my money’s worth in one season, for just one technique from this book
The Library journal review does a huge disservice to this book.
Imagine a beautiful, highly productive, virtually weed-free,
drought-resistant, inexpensive, low-maintenance and ecologically sound
garden bed in your yard. It sounds impossible, but it is very simple
and only requires a few hours to create this fall, no digging required.
You can put to use the bounty of leaves and/or pine needles that are
provided for free to almost every suburbanite in the fall. This
is the ideal time, as the bed is better if it can break down over the
winter.
I have been gardening for about 25 years, and wish had I had heard of
this method sooner. It is perfect, especially for those who are not
physically able to dig, till or do a lot of weeding or simply have very
little time for gardening.
It involves piling up and wetting down 8 -12 inches of layers of
organic matter (we used leaves and some manure) on top of a thin layer
of newspapers or cardboard, with a small amount of amendments such as
greensand, lime and rock phosphate and manure underneath the paper. On
the top is a 1-2 inch layer of mulch (we used white pine needles), to
keep in moisture and suppress weeds. Come spring, you simply push aside
the top mulch and plant seedlings.
This ’sheet mulching’ method came from this wonderful book by Toby
Hemenway. We have several sheet mulch beds this
year, and they are outrageously productive. For example, one 4′ x 9′
bed in a very sunny spot, contains 6 large tomato plants, 3 sweet
pepper plants, 3 cucumber vines on a trellis, a short row of
sunflowers, one summer squash plant, and 7 winter squash plants. I
find this amazing considering that the ground underneath is very poor,
sandy and barely supported grass.
With apologies to Mae West, I have learned a big lesson, it’s not the soil
in your life, it’s the life in your soil!
I bought this book in January and have many times over saved the price in
time, mulch and bought amendments using ONLY the sheet mulch idea.
5 Stars Gaia’s Garden
An excellent book and resource. At the time I purchased this book, I also purchased Bill Mollison’s seminal work on permaculture. I intended to read Mollison’s book first and Gaia’s Garden second. After reading the first few pages of Mollison’s book, I set it aside to “look through” Gaia’s Garden just to familiarize myself with its contents. I discovered that I could not put it down because it is so well written and informative. I recommend this book to all persons interested in the subject of permaculture.
Home Landscaping Northeast Region Including Southeast Canada Home Landscaping
Home Landscaping Northeast Region Including Southeast Canada Home Landscaping
“There is nothing like it! This idea-filled book takes the guesswork out of landscaping so you can focus on the fun. Designs that work, great plants you can find, accurate instructions, and detailed drawings will help you succeed.”
Nancy Beubaire, editor, Organic Gardening
— Review
Like many books coming on the market these days, Home Landscaping presents a simple yet sophisticated look at putting plants together in a variety of settings.
Planing a shady hideaway? Looking to color the area around your mailbox? Need a street-smart planting? How about a round garden?
Books like these offer a practical alternative to the glossy coffee-table tomes that show off beautiful gardens but offer little help deciphering what all those massed plants really are.
What sets Home Landscaping apart from any other how-to-book, however, is the publishing company’s commitment to serving a variety of regions. Home Landscaping is actually a series, comprising editions for the Southeast, the Mid-Atlantic, the Northeast (including Southeast Canada), and, coming next year, the Great Lakes region (including Southern Canada). Other titles are planned as well. (Mitch Whitten, Editor in Chief, Garden Center Merchandising and Management) REVIEW: The Home Landscaping Series promises to make your particular gardening situation easier because it’s created to suit your regional needs, and it is one of the best this reviewer has ever seen. Beautiful garden designs, illustrations, and photos, as well as plant selections created by a team of landscape professionals in the region, are included.
The series also includes detailed descriptions of plants used in the designs, with advice on their selection and care and step-by-step instructions for garden projects such as paths, walls, patios, fences, trellises, arbors, and small ponds.
All of the books in this series are perfect for first-time home owners and novice gardeners, but more experienced gardeners will find them useful too. These books consider far more than just winter hardiness zones when making plant recommendations. They address the full range of growing conditions in each region of the United States.
The series addresses the Mid-Atlantic Region, the Northeast Region (including Southeast Canada), the Southeast Region, and the Great Lakes Region (including Southern Canada). Keep the entire series on your bookshelves…you never know when you’ll be moving. — Pat Regel, Book Page
The Home Landscaping series takes the fear out of gardening by skillfully combining a wide range of attractive, dependable plants with clear, concise information on the techniques of gardening and easy-to-follow plans. — Thomas Fischer, Executive Editor, Horticulture
This gardener’s gallery of plants, plans, and techniques can help you turn a humdrum yard into a work of art. — Steve Silk, Managing Editor, Fine Gardening
Whether you’re contemplating major landscaping or minor additions and fix-ups, you’ll turn to these beautifully rendered design possibilities again and again. And you’ll find the regional focus indispensable. — Eleanore Lewis, Editor, Woman’s Day Garden Planner & Product Guide
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Love this book!!
I have so many landscaping books that I never opened again after the first week I bought them. This is not one of those books. It’s by far so much better than most of the other ones out there. It’s well organized for info, and the plans are numerous and easy to follow. Not just for beginners. a really great book!
5 Stars Curb appeal made easy
It’s great the way these books are customized for each individual climate area here in the U.S. Saves a lot of wasted planning with the wrong plants and materials.
5 Stars One of my favorites
I recently became interested in gardening (now that I have a yard in which I can plant). This is one of my favorite books on gardening and landscaping. Great resource for those of us living in the northeast. Full of wonderful photos, explanations and illustrations. It gives many ideas for addressing certain areas of your yard (i.e. front entryway, patio, rock wall). Explanations are excellent; I learned a great deal from this book. Very well written. Highly recommended.
5 Stars Have my own and now purchasing for a neighbor!!
A neighbor showed me her copy and I had to get one for myself. Great layouts, great plant selections, this book offers great ideas and variations and is FULL of information! I showed another neighbor the garden I am planning and now I’m buying her a copy as well. We are going to have a GREAT looking street!!
5 Stars This book is wonderful
Home Landscaping: Northeast Region is a very informative book filled with beautiful photos. I don’t think I will need another book while doing our landscape planning. Landscaping designs, expected sizes of plants and trees and shrubs, different colors and species, how to’s, this book will cover all your landscaping needs if you live in new england.
Baraka Blu ray
Studio: Mpi Home Video Release Date: 10/28/2008 Run time: 125 minutes Rating: Nr
User Ratings and Reviews
1 Star Freezes on Sony Blue-ray player
Really disapointing. This is the third time I bought Baraka movie! first VHS format on 96, than DVD and now Blue-ray format. I was one of the first to receive, I believe, because I have pre-ordered on Amazon. Came with problem, and I have returned, than received another copy. But same problem, in my opinion think this problem was spread out on the very first release, so better to wait a couple more months to get a better release. Don’t buy now.
4 Stars BARAKA Blu-ray Movie
This is one of those movie either you love it or hate it.
I liked it for excellent image quality and pretty decent audio.
In some scenes, it would be better to have subtitles showing
where shot was taken.
I think this movie was shot more than 15 yrs ago?
Maybe they can do Baraka 2 and improve on few things.
5 Stars EXCEEDS EXPECTATIONS
I’ve seen this film before on vhs, and as well on dvd, but nothing compares to the awesome quality on this blu ray disc. its like i’ve never seen it before all over again. the detail of the imagery and the clarity of the sound blows away any of the previous releases. i caught myself noticing things i’ve never seen before with this blu ray release, even though i have seen this film about 10 times. it is a must have for any collection, and can be appreciated by all !
2 Stars a hodge-podge of striking images without a theme
Well, no, maybe there was a theme: we stink.
We are wasteful (hundreds of military aircraft sitting in the Arizona desert), brutal (Cambodia’s killing fields, Auschwitz), ephemeral (Egyptian ruins), vain (Amazon and African tribes in the most colorful dress), exploitive (numbing assembly lines, cigarette factories, prostitution), and cruel (chicken factories, public cremations, scavenging in trash heaps).
We’re also religious (countless scenes). Was that the director’s message? That for all our faith and devotion, we’re despicable?
And that nature is magnificent? Waterfalls, volcanoes, springbok enjoying the first rains, pensive monkeys soaking in hot springs?
I love the beauty of nature, too, but densely crowded cities also bring us schools and colleges, symphony orchestras, and hospitals. Not too many of those in the Amazon jungle or African plains, huh.
The photographer’s skill and effort is obvious. I wish he’d had a director with a vision of what to photograph.
Finally, the resemblance to Koyaanisqatsi is not in this film’s favor.
5 Stars Around The World On 1 Disc!
Breathtaking is one word I use when telling people about this movie. I put this in my Blu Ray player and from the very first menu image I was blown away!
Being able to see these cultures and they way they live is something you wont forget. Most of us get up in the morning, have coffee, read the paper, etc…well scrap all that and head to the most remote areas on earth, where ritual dances and ceremonial cremations are still performed!
I was a huge fan of Planet Earth, but this movie with no Narration is top notch! The BD is a real treat with stunning visuals, and incredible sound (watch the special features, the sound guy did some pretty amazing stuff!) If you want to see how things are outside your own backyard you owe it to yourself to purchase this movie.
Also on a side note, they did away with the cardboard sleeve and gave us an actual blue BD case! ENJOY!
American Lawn Mower Company SK 1 Reel Mower Sharpening Kit
American Lawn Mower Company SK 1 Reel Mower Sharpening Kit
The American Lawn Mower Company reel mower sharpening kit is an easy way to keep reel blades in top cutting form. This do-it-yourself kit allows users to sharpen their own mowers at home. The kit contains everything you need for safe and effective sharpening, including a detailed instruction manual, grinding compound, application brush, and a special back-lapping crank. The kits is designed for use with 1705-16 and 1815-18 push mowers. Cutting down on mowing time, this sharpening kits gives you an environmentally-friendly, perfectly cut lawn.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Must Have!
I haven’t had to use it yet, but I’m glad to know it’s there when I’ll surely need to use it one day.
4 Stars good product
The kit is good and did the trick. I would have liked more complete instructions on how to disassemble the lawnmower wheel in order to fasten the cranking tool.
3 Stars Annoying…
Honestly it was really annoying for me to sharpen the blades on my mower. I thought it’d be straight forward but apparently I’m pretty retarded when it comes to this mower and not making a mess. =P
5 Stars Awesome
This is a great product. The sharpening instructions where very easy to understand, and after I figured out that the hand crank could be replaced with a 1/2 inch chuck electric drill, I was able to sharpen my used, garage sale mower in about 5 minutes.
5 Stars reel lawnmower sharpening kit
This product is the standard kit for sharpening push reel lawnmowers manufactured by the American Lawn Mower company (a.k.a. Great States mowers). It does the job of sharpening the blades as expected. With this kit, I sharpen the five blades on the mower in about ten minutes.
David Haas
Lawn Care
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Gaias Garden A Guide to Home Scale PermacultureGaias Garden A Guide to Home Scale Permaculture Hemenway, a permaculture expert and associate...
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