Grow Carrots in Your Boots! Book Review of: Growing Stuff

Growing Stuff  An Alternative Guide to Gardening will charm anyone with a sense of fun and a love of gardening.  The book contains creative projects on growing vegetables, herbs and flowers.  Most gardening projects in this book require few tools, are easy to do and inexpensive.   Both novice and experienced gardeners can discover numerous innovative ideas in the short and original articles.

The Projects

The projects presented are extremely creative and will delight experienced to novice gardeners.  Northern gardeners will find a wide variety of projects that can be used for indoor winter vegetable gardens such as growing carrots in boots, growing vegetables in containers and raising herbs in teapots.  For teachers there are easy classroom projects like “Cartoon Cress” and “Mini Window Garden”, using recycled containers and fast sprouting seeds like water cress or sprouting seeds.   Instructions are short; one or two pages, easy to understand and nicely illustrated.

The book begins by offering a basic explanation of soils, plants, containers and composting. A third of the book is really a vegetable gardening planting guide on starting a vegetable garden indoors.  The balance of the book touches on growing herbs, flowers and unusually plants like living stones and carnivorous plants.

Conclusion

Growing Stuff is one of the most enjoyable gardening books I read in years.   This book is a standout in terms of creativity, layout and illustrations.  Its simplicity is refreshing.  The ideas presented are practical and can be used for gardening indoors, on balconies and in containers.  Flipping through the projects, I kept thinking “What a great idea, now why didn’t I think of that?”   And… it’s a lot of fun – especially with the two feet of snow at my doorstep.

Fighting Plant Enemies

(1) those used to afford mechanical protection to the plants;

(2) those used to apply Insecticides and Fungicides.

Of the first the most useful is the covered frame. It consists usually of a wooden box, some eighteen inches to two feet square and about eight high, covered with glass, protecting cloth, mosquito netting or mosquito wire. The first two coverings have, of course, the additional advantage of retaining heat and protecting from cold, making it possible by their use to plant earlier than is otherwise safe. They are used extensively in getting an extra early and safe start with cucumbers, melons and the other vine vegetables.

Simpler devices for protecting newly-set plants, such as tomatoes or cabbage, from the cut-worm, are stiff, tin, cardboard or tar paper collars, which are made several inches high and large enough to be put around the stem and penetrate an inch or so into the soil.

For applying Insecticides and fungicides, the home gardener should use a spray bottle for small gardens. For larger gardens get a small tank sprayer, as this throws a continuous stream or spray and holds a much larger amount of the spraying solution. Whatever type you use, they do succumbs very quickly to corroding action so do rinse them out after each use.