Key features

• •How to plan, plant, and maintain beautiful landscapes without using chemical fertilizers and toxic pesticides.
• •Gardening fundamentals: soils, landscape design, planting techniques, and maintenance practices.
• •Includes more native and adaptable varieties of garden and landscape plants than any other guide on the market.
• •Trees: 134 species of evergreens, berry- and fruit-bearing, flowering, yellow fall color, orange fall color, and red fall color.
• •Shrubs and specialty plants: 85 species for sun, shade, spring flowering, summer flowering, and treeform shrubs.
• •Ground covers and vines: 51 species for sun and shade.
• •Annuals and perennials: 136 species for fall color, winter color, summer color in shade and sun, and spring color. Also seeding rates for wildflowers.
• •Lawn grasses: 10 species for sun and shade, with additional information on 16 native grasses, seeding rates for 32 grasses, and suggested mowing heights.
• •Fruits, nuts, and vegetables: 58 species, with a vegetable planting chart and information on organic pecan and fruit tree growing, fruit varieties for Texas, grape and pecan varieties, and gardening by the moon.
• •Common green manure crops: 29 crops that help enrich the soil.
• •Herbs: 66 species for culinary and medicinal uses.
• •Bugs: 73 types of helpful and harmful bugs, with organic remedies for pests, lists of beneficial bugs and plants that attract them, a beneficial bug release schedule, and sources for beneficial bugs.
• •Plant diseases: organic treatments for 55 common problems.
• •Organic methods for repelling mice, rabbits, armadillos, beavers, cats, squirrels, and deer.
• •Organic management practices: watering, fertilizing, controlling weeds, releasing beneficial insects, biological controls (including bats and purple martins), and recipes for Garrett Juice, fire ant control drench, vinegar herbicide, Sick Tree Treatment, and Tree Trunk Goop.
• •Average first and last freeze dates for locations around the state.
• •Organic fertilizers and soil amendments: 61 varieties, including full instructions for making compost.
• •Organic pest control products: 30 varieties.
• •Common house plants and poisonous plants.
• •Instructions for climbing vegetable structures and bat houses.
• •833 gorgeous full-color photographs.