Southern California Organic Gardening, Month by Month
“Pat Welsh’s Southern California Organic Gardening, Month by Month”, Chronicle Books; 2010, takes local gardeners by the hand and helps them grow a beautiful pest-and-disease-free garden while living in harmony with nature, caring for the environment, and protecting people and pets as well. This book is packed with easy-to-follow practical advice on how to amend the soil, feed plants, and control pests using a multitude of organic techniques. Boxes and sidebars throughout highlight tips and hints and step-by-step methods for solving all your gardening problems without resorting to synthetic fertilizers or chemical pesticides. Instead, Pat suggests safe, proven, and effective though often little-known organic solutions. The best commercial organic products are recommended by brand name, but many cost-free substitutes and recipes for inexpensive homemade concoctions are also included. This new, all-organic book written specifically for our area is a compendium of useful ideas that can help you live green and save money as well.
Just like Pat’s other month-by-month books, this one covers correct planting, watering, pruning, fertilizing, and pest and disease control for every plant group we grow, including vegetables, herbs, deciduous fruit trees, citrus, avocados, roses, geraniums, ornamental grasses, bamboo, lawns, pond plants, annuals, perennials, bulbs, wildflowers, native plants, palms, ferns, tropicals, succulents, desert plants; ornamental trees, shrubs, and climbers, and more. The month-by-month format let’s you know how and when to perform all these tasks in accordance with Southern California’s unique garden schedule, which differs from garden timing in all other parts of the country. New sections on desert gardening, fire-resistant gardening, and succulents, plus advice on water conservation throughout make this book especially timely. Golf courses and public parks will always need lawns, so this widely used handbook includes organic lawn care every month, but it also describes new drought-resistant grass varieties and suggests many attractive, practical, and water-wise alternatives to grass.
Like Pat’s other books, “Pat Welsh’s Southern California Organic Gardening, Month by Month” works hand-in-hand with “Sunset Western Garden Book”, the universally accepted plant encyclopedia for our area. There are many other good books on the market, but put these two side-by-side on your bookshelf and refer to them often. They are really all you need.
I am by coastal and my garden in front of my home suffers due to this, the lawn man I have is a mow and blow type guy .Good for lawn not for garden. could you direct me to find a real gardener to maintain my garden and help it thrive. I am looking for someone come regulary and tend my garden. Perhaps a senior citizen, that loves gardening and is looking to make extra money. Putting an add in paper ,had lawn guys calling, but not a true gardner. Thank-You.
I am so sorry but finding gardeners is not within the purview of this site. My suggestion is that you attend a meeting of your local garden club and ask the President or Program Chairman if one of them could ask the members to suggest a real gardener for you, not a blow-and-go guy.