Desert Gardening
by Brookbank
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Book Summary Information
Author: BrookbankEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1991-04-22
ISBN: 1555610021
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Book Reviews of Desert Gardening
Book Review: A Great Find
Summary: 5 Stars
I am so glad I found Desert Gardening. I have tried for years to grow vegetables organically here in Decatur, Texas (about eighty miles northwest of Dallas, Texas). Firstly let me tell you that Desert Gardening is not an organic gardening book, but it has helped me anyway--I'll explain more on that later. I began trying to garden here by looking at the "standard gardening advice" in books I found at the local public library and bookstores, asking for help at the local gardening centers, and reading the backs of seed packages for instructions on how to plant them. At the gardening centers, I found that they wanted to load me up with chemicals, and if I didn't want chemicals they would offer me some weird, expensive organic soil amendments but they couldn't tell me the first thing about what they were for or how to use them. They also never seemed to have seeds, seedlings and trees for sale at the time of year I needed them. The books at my public library and bookstores were completely inappropriate for Texas. They had tips on gardening that were supposed to work anywhere in the U.S.--what a laugh that is! There seems to be a consensus among "U.S. gardening experts" that the Southwest doesn't even exist. It was when I tested my soil pH that I found out I couldn't trust these books at all: they all said to add lime to the soil to raise the pH, and my soil already had a pH of 8.5! I realized that if I wasn't careful what kind of soil improvement advice I followed, I could permanently ruin my soil.
Next, I tried looking for books on gardening specifically for Texas. There weren't many of them out there, but I found two. I bought Neil Sperry's "Texas Gardening" and Howard Garrett's "Basic Organic Program". Sperry's "Texas Gardening" is great for selecting the right varieties to plant in Texas--in fact, for Texas it's an even better source for selecting varieties than Desert Gardening is; but it gives inadequate information on all the other aspects of gardening. Howard Garrett is into using expensive organic soil amendments, the few of which I tried didn't work, and his bug-zapping recipies don't seem to work either.
So, for a couple of years I stopped reading gardening books and didn't add anything to my soil at all except compost. I was able to grow squash, green onions, peaches, and banana peppers, but everything else either didn't grow or else it grew but didn't fruit very well.
Then, last year, I got the idea of searching Amazon for a gardening book for Texas. I was surprised when my search pulled up books on desert gardening. I never thought of myself as being in the desert here. We've got grass, scattered clumps of trees, black dirt, temperatures that stay between 90 and 110F in the summertime, occasionally-adequate rainfalls, and a few streams and lakes. Still, when I read the reviews for Desert Gardening it sounded like a great book, so I decided to give it a try.
When I opened up the book I went straight to the section on soil and how to improve it. I was amazed when I saw that they were describing my soil to a T! Alkaline, white caliche rocks, heavy clay or sand, solid layer of caliche which makes it hard for trees to grow. Some of the photos looked exactly like the soil at my house, with grass growing on the surface. I was still leery of adding soil amendments so I decided to test the soil improvement advice in a few small areas first. In those areas, I planted about six kinds of vegetables which had never grown before. The results were great! Everything grew and produced.
I looked through the book more and more and I realized that this is about the best gardening book I've ever seen. Everytime I have a gardening question, I look in the book and the answer is right there. The advice is all just perfect for my area; I think it would work anywhere in Texas. Soil preparation, fertilizing, watering, water conservation, insects and diseases, pest barriers, variety selection, planting times, seasonal changes, frost and heat protection, growing seedlings, care and harvest of vegetables and fruits (many fruits and vegetables have their own chapters), planting and pruning fruit trees and grapevines, and fall and winter gardening are all discussed in great detail. There's also a chapters on hydroponics and container gardening, for places where there's not enough soil to grow anything in. And unlike other sources, it not only tells you what to do but how you're supposed to go about doing it. For instance, Neil Sperry's book tells you you need to keep strawberries alive and growing all summer and winter--but it doesn't say how to do it. Desert Gardening tells you how! What I like best is this book tells you how to do things in the most practical, affordable, and easy way possible--unlike some people/books who want you to spend to the max and knock yourself out with unnecessary work.
The only problem I can see myself having with Desert Gardening is that sometimes the winters here in north Texas are a bit too cold to carry plants through the wintertime like the book recommends. We have an advantage though, in that the summers here are not quite as hot as they are in Arizona (where Desert Gardening was written), so I'm able to use heavy shade from the west and create a longer summer growing season than the what the book says is possible--some plants can even grow all summer. Another thing is that, since I'm trying to grow organically, I've had to manipulate the soil improvement advice. In the book, chemicals are recommended along with compost, manure, and other organic soil amendments as an overall soil-improvement and fertilizing program. What I do is, I take the chemical soil amendment recommendations and convert them to something organic. For instance, if they say to use ammonium phosphate, I look for an organic fertilizer which contains lots of nitrogen and phosphorus. The bug-killing advice in the book is already mostly organic or poison-free.
If you're not sure that where you live would be a good place to use Desert Gardening, ask yourself these questions: 1) Do you live in Nevada, California, Arizona, New Mexico, or Texas? 2) Do you live below 3500 feet elevation? 3) Is your soil alkaline? Is it either sand or heavy clay? In some areas, you may not have any soil at all, just rocks. If you have soil, you may hit a solid layer of white, crumbly rocks called caliche rocks when you dig, anywhere from 6" to 5' deep. 4) Do daytime high temperatures usually stay above 95F in the summertime? 5) Do you have frequent droughts? Is soil being saturated by excessive rainfall usually not a problem? If you answered "yes" to all of these questions, then you're in the low desert and Desert Gardening is a good book for you to get.
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Summary of Desert Gardening
An illustrated guide to growing plentiful fruits and vegetables in the driest of American climates.
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