Listific: The Toplist Resource

Pruning, clipping, planting, digging, sowing – these are the things that you have to do on a regular basis if you have a garden to maintain. No matter how small or big your home garden is, what’s important is for you to learn about the basic skills on how to properly tend to your garden.

Naturally, your goal should be to make the plants grow healthy as they thrive in an environment where the soil is rich and there’s plenty of water and sunlight to ‘feed’ them.

If you’re one of those who consider gardening to be a chore, you might just change your mind when you learn about the benefits of this activity, which includes the following:

• Gardening is an activity which allows both the young adults and the elderly to get some
  serious workout through the lifting, digging, sowing and pruning that they need to do
• For those who are suffering from any illnesses, you can use gardening as a therapeutic activity to cure whatever is ailing you.
• From the fresh air that you will be breathing in, to the sense of being one with nature – gardening is an activity that will calm your mind and soothe your senses.
• If you’re planting herbal plants with a medicinal purpose, herbs for cooking or fruits and vegetables that are easy to grow, you will have a regular supply of fresh greens that will keep you healthy.
• Finally, gardening is an activity which helps develop your patience. In a world where everything seems to be almost instantaneous, it’s refreshing to know that there is an activity like gardening wherein you would need to wait for quite a long time before seeing the actual fruits of your labor. But once you see that first fruit, flower or when you see that your entire garden is healthy and continuously growing, the sense of satisfaction that you will feel is priceless.

The Top 5 Best Books for Tending to Your Garden

Now that you already have an idea about the many benefits that you will enjoy from gardening as an activity, let us countdown the top 5 best books for gardening:

• 5. “The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year-Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses” by: Eliot Coleman

  Okay, the title of the book may be a mouthful – but every word contained in the succeeding chapters of this comprehensive gardening book is worth a read. Even homemaker goddess Martha Stewart herself has only good things to say about Eliot Coleman’s book.

  It’s chockfull of tips on how to choose locally grown organic food and grow them even during the harshest weather of the year: winter. Growing a garden may not be something that a newbie at this activity will attempt, but that’s exactly where the charm of the book comes from.

  Once you successfully manage to grow a garden in the harsh of winter, you will be able to do it during the milder seasons of the year.

• 4. “Creative Vegetable Gardening” by: Joy Larkcom

  Despite the fact that you are planning to grow a food-producing vegetable garden, there is absolutely no need to sacrifice its aesthetic beauty. That is exactly what Joy Larkcom’s “Creative Vegetable Gardening” book is all about.

  The author believes that no matter what size of a vegetable garden it is that you wish to grow, it can be as pretty as a conventional flowering garden. Like an artist, you will be able to combine beautiful textures with a slew of lovely colors in growing a gorgeous beautiful garden, without compromising the productivity of the vegetables that you will plant.

• 3. “On Guerilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening without Boundaries” by: Richard Reynolds

  If you live in a small apartment, you might not even consider growing a garden in your home, but reading Richard Reynold’s book might just convince you otherwise. “Let’s fight the filth with forks and flowers” is an apt description of how the author manages to convince the readers to make a pastime out of gardening other people’s plots.

  It’s literally a book about guerilla gardening which delightfully guides you through a guerilla gardening movement which was started by the likes of Mao Tse-Tung and Che Guevarra. Whether your goal is to grow food or grow plants to beautify your surroundings, you can definitely do so – and do it beautifully, no matter how shabby the place you are planning to convert into a garden.

• 2. “Salad Leaves for All Seasons: Organic Growing from Pot to Plot” by: Charles Dowding

  The cover of this book looks green and sumptuous enough to eat, but wait until you get to read its content. In “Salad Leaves for All Seasons: Organic Growing from Pot to Plot”, Charles Dowding will teach you how to live a healthy and beautiful life by eating a serving of salad a day – which you have grown yourself.

  Whether it’s a windowsill or a full-fledged garden, the book will teach you how to grow the greenest of leaves which are used for salads. There’s even a bonus of some excellent recipes so that you can truly produce and consume your own food. Dowding’s garden book deserves a spot in our list because it is well-written and the advice is as practical as you can get.

• 1. “The Garden Primer: Second Edition” by: Barbara Damroch

  It all starts with the basics – and whether you’re already an expert handling the shovel or if you haven’t touched garden soil ever before, Barbara Damroch’s “The Garden Primer” book is the best gardening book to help develop your gardening skills.

  It’s basically a gardening encyclopedia minus the fancy terms. Chicago Tribune calls Barbara Damrosch an author who “delivers the goods”, and she really does. The 820-page book tells you about the principles of landscape design, what your plants really need, which gardening gear you should be wearing and how to choose which plants to grow in your garden.

  There you have it, our top 5 list of the best books for tending your garden. These are all great reads that will make you forget the fact that you think of gardening as a chore. Instead, this almost therapeutic activity will be something that you’ll grow to love, because of the gardening skills and knowledge that you will develop along the way.