Winter Reading for the Gardener
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This is the time of year when so many gardeners are starting to button things up for the winter months. Not so much in the Southwest. I'm pulling out the last of the summer vegetables and prepping for a small winter crop. We are keeping in the Hubbard squash vines as long as we can because the fruit – as freakishly large as they are – are turning out to be the hit of the season and we have a couple more ripening. I have hit on a squash soup recipe that makes Frank always ask for seconds. He always enjoys my soups but that second bowl makes this recipe a keeper.
A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal published a list of gardening bestsellers. I wasn't familiar with any of them so it was interesting to see the list. It got me thinking about my gardening bookshelf. This is one of those times when not having that winter respite from gardening is sorely missed. I can't spend the winter reading books, leafing through seed catalogues, and dreaming of what spring will bring.
[image error]My favorite book by far isn't my primary source for vegetable growing but it is by far the most used book in my collection. It is so well regarded in this area that you find it in almost all garden centers. When I go out and about as a Master Gardener, this is one of the references we always carry with us. The Sunset Western Garden Book.
I wonder how far and wide the Garden Book is known. Sunset magazine is the parent of the Garden Book, a periodical first published in the 1890s as a kind of publicity vehicle for Southern Pacific Railroad's Sunset Route. It was nearly wiped out by the 1906 earthquake, was saved, but didn't come into its own until it was purchased by the Lane family in 1929. Over the sixty-plus years they owned it, they steered it to its famous and current Western lifestyle emphasis.
From this magazine (to which I still subscribe), the Lane Publishing Company began a whole series of other publications. Through the 1930s, excerpts from the magazine were published as [image error]Sunset's All-Western Garden Guide. I have one from 1934. It is a wonderful and funky 100 pages of stuff from the magazine. I think I like best the one page cartoon of a Dahlia telling its own first-person story, ending with it this: "Well, here I am at the Dahlia Show and look what I'm wearing! No wonder I got first prize: I came from good stock, and I had intelligent care!"
This pamphlet has other features but the most notable was Dictionary-Encyclopedia, the detailed list taking up more than half the booklet of plants grown in the west including the characteristics of the plants, specifics of subspecies, propagation, and culture. It was that exhaustive list that in 1939 became The Complete Garden Book.
[image error]This was followed by The Western Garden Book of 1954, which for the first time included different climate zones in the West. At the time, there were 13 zones, distinguishing the different climates up and down the California coast, inland to the deserts. I have this Garden Book and I find it interesting because it has a section on native plants. I was describing the book to a gardening friend who was shocked to learn that nearly sixty years ago, gardeners were considering natives for landscaping here in the West.
The zones described in that book were expanded in later editions to 24. The precision of the zones carves my county into about ten different areas. San Diego is unique because we literally can drive from the beach to the snow and beyond to the desert in just a couple of hours. The USDA Zones don't quite do it for me here and I have always relied on the Sunset system.
Both of the books are dominated by updated versions of the Encyclopedia. My latest edition (2007) includes "More than 8,000 Plants," or so the cover tells me. Unlike the awkward 1954 version, which broke out the plant listings by category (bulbs, perennials, etc.), all plants are listed together, alphabetically by Latin name. I have a bad memory for Latin names so, conveniently, it has included common names for many of the plants. It also has a couple hundred pages of great tips and very valuable information but it is the Encyclopedia that everyone uses. The plant descriptions are so reliable for information about traits, culture, propagation, pests, and diseases that it is irreplaceable.
I don't know where the Sunset is going in the future. I did find where they had assigned zone numbers throughout the country, including Sharon Springs (Zone 42). Perhaps Sunset has plans for an Encyclopedia in your neck of the woods.
These are the other books I use most:
The Vegetable Gardener's Bible by Edward C. Smith, and I just bought the same author's The Vegetable Gardener's Container Bible. Though it is not regionally specific to me (Mr. Smith hails from northern Vermont), the information is complete enough that I can apply it to my California garden.
The Victory Garden Cookbook by Marian Morash. Strangely enough, I get really good information about harvesting and storing from this cookbook, better than I get from most. My copy of this book is nearly 30 years old and falling apart so I am tempted to pick up a new copy. It was reissued by Random House last year but already seems to have sold out. If you can get your hands on it, buy it.
The Truth about Garden Remedies by Jeff Gillman. As a professor and a scientist, Jeff Gillman brings a little sanity and lots of unexpected humor to the subject matter. Whenever I go out into the public as a Master Gardener, I come up against people who swear by beer traps for snails and vinegar-based herbicides. Gillman sifts through the fact and fiction and helps me to understand what works, what doesn't, and the why of both.
Happy reading!
