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Your Backyard Herb Garden: A Gardener's Guide to Growing Over 50 Herbs Plus How to Use Them in Cooking, Crafts, Companion Planting and More


by Miranda Smith

List Price: $18.95
Price: $12.89
You Save: $6.06 (32%)
Available: Usually ships in 24 hours
Sales Rank: 15405
Studio: Rodale Books
Binding: Paperback
Number Of Pages: 160
Publication Date: January 15, 1999
Publisher: Rodale Books


EDITORIAL REVIEWS

Product Description
Everything you need to know about growing your favorite herbs using safe, natural, all-organic methods!

Practical tips and advice on all aspects of successful herb growing.

A wealth of great ideas and helpful how-to on using herbs in cooking, crafts, cosmetics, health care, insect repellents, and more.

Illustrated herb directory featuring all the most popular herbs-- from aloe to yarrow-- each with complete information on growing, care, harvesting, and uses.


CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 18 reviews)

Complete information  
A very useful book for the home gardener. A quick guide for growing, harvesting and using herbs.
December 17, 2007

Concise, but useful  
This is a relatively small book at about 150 pages, but it manages to pack in a lot of information very concisely. It's beautifully illustrated with color photographs and drawings.

The first 2/3 of the book includes general herb gardening background and use of herbs tips: how to choose plants, pick the location, general design principles, planting instructions (including some nice tips on extending the growing season), propagation, harvesting, drying, pests and diseases, etc.

It also includes suggestions for common culinary uses, such as salads, herbal vinegars, flavored oils, teas, jellies, honeys, and breads. These are not an extensive set of recipes, but more like master recipes with some suggestions for how you can mix them up with variations.

The book also includes suggestions and recipes for health and beauty products (again, not an extensive collection). This section includes potpourri, sachets, bouquets, dried arrangements and insect repellents.

The last 1/3 of the book has individual pages on about 50 different herbs. These individual pages tell you a description, how to grow, harvesting instructions, suggested uses, tips, cultivars, and also includes a quick key on the level of care required (using a 4 glove rating system), if it attracts beneficial insects, whether or not it is ornamental, whether or not it can be grown in a container, how much yield you can expect to get and how easy it is to grow.

The back of the book contains a few pages of resources for laboratories, vendors, herb associations and other books or literary resources.

There are lots of charts and sidebars and overall I found this book to be very useful and easy to access. It doesn't have the level of information needed to make this anything other than a quick reference book though.
June 09, 2007

in love with herbs  
I adore this book! Wow! It has all the things I wanted!
- it's organic
- it very thorougly covers many herbs in different formats, so you know everything from what bugs they attract or repel, how tall they grow, and what zone they can be grown in
- common uses for them: I discovered many herbs I thought were inedible plants that are indeed herbs
- easy to use tables

I wasn't too hip on all the cosmetic and craft uses - I'd rather eat them, but they're short and may come in handy. I know the rest of the book sure will!
January 24, 2007

I LOVE THIS BOOK  
This is a great book for a beginning herb gardener. The first half of the book is a general overview of gardening techniques, designs, and uses for herbs. The second half gives specific information on growing and using many herbs. This has been extraordinarily helpful to me as background and reference for me.

However, it is pretty basic and only covers the most commonly used herbs, so I'm not sure that advanced herb gardeners would get much out of this.
August 23, 2006

"Must Have" for aspiring herb growers  
Great resource book. Covers all of the basics in clear, simple instructions.
July 24, 2006


SIMILAR PRODUCTS

The Complete Book of Herbs: A Practical Guide to Growing and Using Herbs
by Lesley Bremness

McGee & Stuckey's Bountiful Container: Create Container Gardens of Vegetables, Herbs, Fruits, and Edible Flowers
by Rose Marie Nichols McGee, Maggie Stuckey

Little Herb Gardens: Simple Secrets for Glorious Gardens--Indoors and Out
by Georgeanne Brennan, Mimi Luebbermann, Faith Echtermeyer

Burpee : The Complete Vegetable & Herb Gardener : A Guide to Growing Your Garden Organically
by Karan Davis Cutler, Cavagnarok David, Barbara W. Ellis, David Cavagnaro

The Herb Society of America's Essential Guide to Growing and Cooking With Herbs
by Katherine K. Schlosser

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