The Michigan Gardening Guide

by Jerry Minnich

It's all here---step-by-step guidance for gardening success in Michigan's varying soil types and often difficult climate. Veteran garden writer Jerry Minnich presents detailed directions and practical tips for growing vegetables, herbs, flowers, landscaping plants, and house plants, as well as dependable advice on hundreds of garden operations. Minnich begins where gardening begins---in the soil---as he tells how to build a healthy and productive soil, and how to solve soil problems. In subsequent chapters he reveals composting and mulching techniques, and what to do when the weather is less than congenial for gardens. Minnich describes more than sixty Michigan vegetables, tells how to grow them, and lists recommended varieties for each. There are also chapters on growing fruits, berries, and nuts, and on food storage. Minnich devotes a chapter to growing annuals and perennials, another on lawns, trees, and ornamental woody plants. He tells how to deal with insect and animal pests without using harmful chemicals, and he includes a major section on houseplants. Throughout, Minnich approaches the subject with experience, wit, and style. Readers will learn how to deal with weeds in the lawn, how to surf the landscape for com-posting materials, and how to grow mulch at home. He explains intercropping, companion planting, seed saving, cover cropping, strip composting and other techniques. He tells how to raise unusual crops such as tomatillos and radicchio, as well as the standard favorites. He explains how the science of phenology can help the gardener, how to take a soil test, how to use earthworms to turn household wastes in to compost, and how to attract birds and toads to the garden. And he lists more than a thousand varieties of vegetables, herbs, fruits, and ornamentals that can be trusted to grow in the Michigan climate. The Michigan Gardening Guide is the one backyard guide that Michigan gardeners can trust. It is a tool as indispensable as the hoe and the shovel. Jerry Minnich has written about gardening for more than twenty years and has been commended with a Certificate of Merit by the Garden Writers Association of America. His interest in gardening began when he joined the staff of Organic Gardening in the 1950s.

328 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 1998

Reviews

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's the beginning of March, the Great Lakes are 91% frozen over, the snow fall has been of record amounts this year, and I am dreaming of getting out there, clearing away, pulling up, digging out, cutting down, dividing, refashioning, dicarding, mulching, composting, and all those things that are parts of gardeners' dreams of hard work until mid-June. I love it, and even though I am slower and less active, I hope to die in my garden after many more decades of enjoying it.
This guide had some good illustrations and charts, but it did have some things that I felt untrue to my experience of gardening in what is really a Zone 5B (the book says Zone 6, but I disagree), which enjoys the Lake Effect climate of the Lake Michigan shore, along that Michigan fruit belt. Read it and feel enriched.

[Khristiey · Rating 3 out of 5]

just okay. pretty basic. good for michigan specific planting guides. better for those just getting started in their garden.