Urban Gardening For Dummies

The easy way to succeed at urban gardening

A townhouse yard, a balcony, a fire escape, a south-facing
window--even a basement apartment can all be suitable
locations to grow enough food to save a considerable amount of
money and enjoy the freshest, healthiest produce possible.

Urban Gardening For Dummies helps you make the most of
limited space through the use of proven small-space gardening
techniques that allow gardeners to maximize yield while minimizing
space.

• Covers square-foot gardening and vertical and layered
  gardening

• Includes guidance on working with container gardening,
  succession gardening, and companion gardening

• Offers guidance on pest management, irrigation and rain
  barrels, and small-space composting

If you're interested in starting an urban garden that makes
maximum use of minimal space, Urban Gardening For Dummies
has you covered.

Auteur

Paul Simon is a nationally recognized landscape architect, public artist, horticulturist, master gardener, and urban designer. Charlie Nardozzi is a nationally recognized garden writer, speaker, and radio and television personality.

Résumé
The easy way to succeed at urban gardening A townhouse yard, a balcony, a fire escape, a south-facing windoweven a basement apartment can all be suitable locations to grow enough food to save a considerable amount of money and enjoy the freshest, healthiest produce possible.

Urban Gardening For Dummies helps you make the most of limited space through the use of proven small-space gardening techniques that allow gardeners to maximize yield while minimizing space.

• Covers square-foot gardening and vertical and layered gardening
• Includes guidance on working with container gardening, succession gardening, and companion gardening
• Offers guidance on pest management, irrigation and rain barrels, and small-space composting
  If you're interested in starting an urban garden that makes maximum use of minimal space, Urban Gardening For Dummies has you covered.

Contenu

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Conventions Used in This Book 2

What You're Not to Read 2

Foolish Assumptions 3

How This Book Is Organized 3

Part I: Urban Gardening 101 3

Part II: Gardening Basics 4

Part III: Places and Ways to Garden 4

Part IV: Growing Plants in the City 4

Part V: Growing to Perfection 5

Part VI: The Part of Tens 5

Icons Used in This Book 5

Where to Go from Here 6

Part I: Urban Gardening 101 7

Chapter 1: Gardening in the City 9

Knowing the Basics of Soil Prep 9

Finding the Many Places to Garden the City 10

Growing All Kinds of Plants in The City 11

Trees and shrubs 12

Edibles 12

Annual flowers 13

Perennial flowers and roses 13

Lawns and groundcovers 14

Exploring the Down and Dirty of Growing 14

Weeding and mulching 15

Watering 15

Pest patrol 15

Chapter 2: Reaping the Benefi ts of Urban Gardening 17

Enjoying Local Produce from Urban Food Gardens 18

Looking at places to grow food 18

Checking out urban food gardening projects 19

Creating Healthy Cities 22

Reducing pollution 22

Making cities more livable 25

Improving the neighborhood 26

Chapter 3: The Urban Microclimate 27

The Sunny City: Working with the Sun and Warmer Urban Temperatures 27

Taking advantage of seasonal solar angles 28

Dealing with solar glare 29

Minimizing the Heat Island Effect 29

The Windy City: Working with Seasonal Urban Wind Patterns 32

Taking Macroclimate and Microclimate Conditions into Account in Your Garden 34

Knowing your hardiness zone 34

Considering your own microclimatic conditions 35

Part II: Gardening Basics 37

Chapter 4: Getting to Know Your Soil 39

Determining Your Type of Soil 40

Understanding the different soil types 40

Figuring out what you have 41

Checking Your Soil's Drainage 42

Performing a percolation test 43

Mastering the metal rod test 43

Discovering Your Soil's pH Level 44

Finding Out What Lies Beneath the Soil 45

Doing a little digging (literally and fi guratively) 46

Protecting yourself from soil contaminants 46

Chapter 5: Feeding and Fertilizing Your Soil 51

Organics 101: Plant Matter 52

Adding a Little Something Extra to Build Soil Fertility: Animal Manure 54

Making Compost and Growing Soil 56

Composting safely in the city 56

Choosing a container 57

Building your pile 58

Troubleshooting common composting problems 59

Composting with worms 60

Giving Your Plants and Soil a Boost with Fertilizers 62

Getting to know the big three in commercial fertilizers 62

Wet versus dry fertilizers 63

Applying a side dressing of fertilizer 65

Chapter 6: Getting Your Hands Dirty: Planting How-To 67

Planting Annual Flowers and Veggies 67

Starting with a raised bed 68

Deciding whether to buy seeds or transplants 70

Making a seed-starting schedule based on frost dates 71

Growing your own seedlings 73

Picking out transplants 74

Planting your annual or vegetable garden 75

Planting Trees and Shrubs 78

Buying a tree or shrub 78

Digging the hole and planting 79

Getting your trees and shrubs off to a good start 82

Planting Perennial Flowers, Bulbs, and Roses 83

Buying and planting perennial flowers 84

Buying and planting bulbs 84

Buying and planting roses 86

Part III: Places and Ways to Garden 89 **Chapter 7: Crea...