Howard Garrett

Compost your old “complete” gardening guide. There’s a new way of gardening in Texas that’s healthier for people and the environment, more effective at growing vigorous plants and reducing pests, cheaper to maintain, and just more fun. It’s Howard Garrett’s “The Natural Way” organic gardening program, and it’s all here in Texas Gardening the Natural Way. This book is the first complete, state-of-the-art organic gardening handbook for Texas. Using Howard Garrett’s new mainstream gardening techniques, Texas Gardening the Natural Way presents a total gardening program: 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.

Can you manage the landscape of a golf course, city park, or corporate campus without synthetic fertilizers and toxic pesticides? Absolutely! Organic landscaping is not only possible on a large scale, but it also makes sense both economically and environmentally. It promotes healthy soils and plants, which require less water and sequester more carbon-a winning combination for both your bottom line and the planet's fight against resource depletion and global warming. Organic programs on a commercial scale have enormous potential to make a difference in the quality of our environment, our use of fuels, and our climate. And as those who have already converted to organics have discovered, they also cost a lot less over the long term. Organic Management for the Professional is the first comprehensive guide to "going green" in large-scale landscaping. Nationally recognized organic gardening expert Howard Garrett, with associates John Ferguson and Mike Amaranthus, not only explains in detail how to manage projects with natural organic techniques, but also presents the material in clear, simple terms so that commercial and institutional property owners can understand what to ask of their landscape architects, contractors, growers, and maintenance people. They give detailed, proven instructions for the key components of organic landscaping-soil building, correct planting techniques, fertilizing, pest control, compost, and mulch. Then they show how to apply these organic methods in large-scale landscaping, commercial growing (orchards, tree farms, nurseries, and greenhouse operations), and recreational properties (golf courses, parks, and sports fields).

Whether you're a first-time homeowner, dedicated gardener, or landscape professional, if you're gardening on the Gulf Coast, you need Howard Garrett's Plants for Houston and the Gulf Coast. Garrett is one of Texas's top organic gardening experts, and gardeners rely on him for accurate, sensible advice about what to plant and how to maintain healthy yards and landscapes without synthetic fertilizers and toxic pesticides. In Plants for Houston and the Gulf Coast, Garrett presents nearly 400 plants, both native and adapted, that grow well in Southeast Texas. Like all of Howard Garrett's books, Plants for Houston and the Gulf Coast is loaded with indispensable gardening information:Nearly 400 trees, shrubs, groundcovers and vines, annuals and perennials, and grasses400 full-color, close-up photos of the plantsExpert information about each plant's appearance, growing requirements, landscape uses, potential problems, and other interesting factsPrecise, easy-to-follow instructions about how to design a garden, prepare the soil, install trees and other plants, grow grass and control weeds, and maintain the landscape and control pestsA detailed gardening calendar for Southeast Texas that lists specific plants to plant and maintenance tasks to perform each monthNo other book currently available provides such extensive and reliable information for Texas Gulf Coast gardeners.

Texas Bug Book is your complete guide for identifying and organically controlling all of the most common Texas insects. Drawing on years of practical experience and research, organic gardening experts Howard Garrett and Malcolm Beck give detailed instructions on how to identify, understand the life cycle of, and control or protect Texas insects, mites, snails, slugs, nematodes, and other critters. They also include striking color photos and black-and-white drawings to help you identify each bug. Garrett and Beck highlight the many useful roles that bugs play in nature and offer proven organic remedies for infestations of pest insects.

Howard Garrett has converted gardeners throughout Texas and beyond to gardening the natural way without chemical fertilizers and toxic pesticides. In this revised and updated edition of The Dirt Doctor's Guide to Organic Gardening, he uses a question-and-answer format to present a wealth of new information on organic gardening, landscaping, pest control, and natural living. The book also incorporates valuable feedback and suggestions from gardeners who've successfully used Howard's methods.

"Herbs are the world's most interesting plants," says Howard Garrett. "They make beautiful landscape choices, are useful for cooking, controlling insect and disease pests, healing wounds, and are effective for improving the immune system." In this fully illustrated, easy-to-use guide, Garrett and veteran herbalist Odena Brannam offer expert advice on growing nearly 150 herbs suited to Texas and Southwestern gardens, along with detailed information on each plant's landscape, culinary, medicinal, and other uses. Individual entries give each herb's common and scientific names and instructions for planting, growing, harvesting, and storing it. The entries also include ideas for using each herb in gardening and cooking (with occasional recipes) and discuss its medicinal uses. A special "insight" section that offers intriguing, often little-known facts about the herb rounds out each entry, as well as a color photo. In addition to the individual herb descriptions, Garrett sets forth the basics of organic gardening, including pest control, and discusses how to design a herb garden and also raise roses, pecans, and fruit trees without chemicals. Of special interest are his instructions for making teas from dozens of herbs and his list of trees, shrubs, vines, and groundcovers with edible and/or medicinal properties. This wide range of information, not available for Texas herbs in any other single source, makes this book the perfect guide for homeowners, gardeners, landscapers, chefs, herbalists, and health care providers.

Covering Texas and beyond, Plants of the Metroplex is the only Texas book available giving practical landscape advice from a landscape architect's point of view. Howard Garrett uses his years of experience as a gardener, landscape contractor, maintenance contractor, and landscape architect to give you clear-cut, money-saving advice on the proper selection, installation, and maintenance of landscape plant material for the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and beyond. Garrett also explains his organic approach, "The Natural Way," which gives gardeners greater success with lower costs and without the risks of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. All of this information has been revised and updated from Garrett's popular Plants of the Metroplex III. J. Howard Garrett has converted several commercial projects to organic programs. They include Frito-Lay National Headquarters in Plano, Johnson and Johnson Medical in Arlington, and Collin County Community College in Plano.