Promoting a holistic ecological view, Tammi Hartung encourages you to invite wildlife into your garden. You'll be amazed at how a variety of natural pollinators, pest predators, and soil enrichers can promote vibrant and healthy vegetables. Discover how a slug problem disappears once you've introduced a pond housing bullfrogs, how wasps can take care of tomato hornworms, and why skunks aren't so bad after all. Learn how to garden with animals, rather than against them, and reap your most bountiful harvest yet. Learn to create growing spaces that mirror nature's habitats and reap the rewards of welcoming wildlife into the garden, from pollination to natural pest control.
Tammi Hartung is the author of Cattail Moonshine & Milkweed Medicine, Homegrown Herbs, and The Wildlife-Friendly Vegetable Gardener. She has been growing and working with herbs for more than 40 years and is a frequent teacher and lecturer. She and her husband cultivate more than 1800 varieties of herbs, heirloom food plants, and perennial seed crops on their organic farm in Colorado.
"Into a world of shrinking habitat and increasing concern about food safety comes a book that addresses both concerns, allowing readers to construct and maintain vegetable gardens that help preserve our population of native insects, butterflies, and birds."
Contents
Preface
Introduction
1 Rethinking Our Relationships with Nature
2 Encouraging Friends in the Underground
3 Garden Elements That Welcome Wildlife
4 Attracting Pollinators and Beneficial Predators
5 Creating Habitats for Wildlife
6 Smart Strategies for Peaceful Coexistence
7 Blocking Access to Unwelcome Guests
8 Designing Wildlife-Friendly Food Gardens
Appendix: Quick Reference Chart for Remedies
Resources
Index
"Novice and expert vegetable growers alike will find Hartung's well-presented advice both revelatory and warmly reassuring."-Phoenix Home & Garden
"Hartung issues a call for gardeners to work with varmints and critters rather than view them as hostile combatants and offers a delightful guide for how to undertake the challenge simply and organically."-Better Homes & Gardens Country Gardens
"Easy to read and colorfully illustrated with charming drawings, this title will inspire you to get your hands dirty and to rethink your relationship with nature."-Bookpage
"The Wildlife-Friendly Vegetable Gardener is part how-to book, and part philosophical treatise on life, imploring us to 'embrace imperfection and impermanence, and maybe even a bit of chaos at times, as part of working with natural processes.' No matter what you're doing, this is sage advice."-The Napa Valley Register
"Tammi Hartung offers smart strategies for peaceful garden coexistence...Gardeners can design a wildlife-friendly garden, all with one beautifully illustrated book."
"From her successful organic herb farm, Tammi Hartung has learned that edible plants can be grown in harmony with wildlife. Her message is not that everything wild is good, but that we can tolerate it all without turning our gardens into a killing field. By carefully observing not just the individual plants but the entire ecosystem in which they grow, we can better appreciate all the roles that wildlife play in our gardens."
"Lovingly, sweetly, intelligently, the book opens up new physical and spiritual ground, on which our gardens will grow best on account of the presence of insects and animals, not in spite of them. From the management of manure to proper protection from real pests, no garden stone is left unturned."
"One of the most charming new gardening books is The Wildlife-Friendliy Vegetable Gardener"
