Reference books on houseplants, gardening and anything else..
tifflj
11 years ago
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brodyjames_gw
11 years ago
flowerpottipper
11 years agoI have a HUGE collection of houseplant books, plus quite a few of container gardening, succulents, orchids, and a few on basic gardening. I love collecting houseplant books besides collecting houseplants themselves...I go to second hand stores all the time to look for them. I find alot of houseplant books from the 1970's, but that's okay, I still love them.
I have:
40 houseplant books
5 binders on houseplants
6 containers (2 are magazines but they still count to me)
2 on sunroom/green houses (I dont have a green house or sunroom, but they still have good info on houseplants)
6 books on succulents and cactus
6 books on orchids
11 books on basic gardeningI could look at them all day, I love reading. And I don't buy a brand new books unless it's one I know is really good and useful. Or else I buy them used because I just don't have the extra money to spend $20-40 on a brand new book. I usually find them used for under $5, I just hunt thrift/2nd hand stores, used book stores, and sometimes yard sales for books, and I find them ALL the time.
And their's still quite a few houseplants books I really want. I also like checking books out of the libary to see if they're a book I really should buy and spend money on. Like I found one recently on weird and unusual plants, mostly houseplants, that I really want.
Here's a picture of 'some' of my books-
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I need a reference book...any suggestions?
Comments (12)Jen, some of the best books are available used, at VERY reasonable prices. Search ABEbooks . . . I HIGHLY recommend Mrs. Keays book. It's one of the books I keep closest to my hand. "OLD ROSES." Everyone ought to have a copy of "A BOOK ABOUT ROSES" by Dean Hole. (You can find this VERY inexpensively, because it ran to so many editions.) For the sheer romance of the thing, look for "IN SEARCH OF LOST ROSES" by Thomas Christopher. (Just don't take everything he writes as gospel.) For warm-climate gardeners, the new book on Tea Roses is an essential. It's "TEA ROSES: Old Roses For Warm Gardens." AND "NOISETTE ROSES: 19TH CENTURY CHARLESTON'S GIFT TO THE WORLD" See if you can find a copy of "LANDSCAPING WITH ANTIQUE ROSES," Druitt & Shoup. That was my Bible, starting out. Of course, there are many more. That's just a start. I have Austins and Beales big books, but they are British-Centric. They don't apply well to Southern CA, so they are banished these days to the less-accessible bookshelves. Jeri...See MoreAre you re-thinking your reference books?
Comments (15)Funny this topic should come up as I have just culled an entire shelf of reference books. I had quite a number of crossword dictionaries that I had never opened, some older but undistinguished dictionaries, a reference encyclopedia that was hopelessly outdated and without charm, and a few other unremarkable volumes. I still have a couple of dictionaries, but those are usually on the coffee table or dinner table, in frequent use by DH. I use the internet for information but am careful about what I find. One subject that is terribly unreliable online is the authorship of songs and music. Often a performer is listed as the songwriter when in fact it was written by a completely different person. And yes, I love Wikipedia and have spent hours browsing there. I would fact-check anything before using the information, though....See MoreWhat is your "go to" gardening reference book?
Comments (2)Lolol - thanks! That we usually go to a book for care instructions about a particular plant is the reason I've never found a book about houseplants that I like, mainly because they all give so much conflicting information (compared to other authors) and they all say the same thing in different words about huge classes of plants w/o really telling you anything specific about individual plants. Books often leave the grower with the impression that every plant requires its own specific care regimen in order to be kept happy, but most of the care instructions are based on the plant's tolerance for adversity, rather than what it actually prefers. We don't need to buy into the idea that plants require very different sets of care instructions ..... because they don't. Cacti are a little different because they are extremely intolerant of wet feet, and a very few succulents are similar in that regard - especially in periods where they enter a situational dormancy; but by and large, a huge % of the plants we grow indoors want and will prosper under exactly the same care regimen, which pivots on our ability to keep the root system happy and providing an appropriate amount of light. I treat everything I grow the same, maybe other than providing some shade for plants intolerant of intense or direct sunlight. They are all in a soil that drains almost perfectly (that means to the point there is no water between soil particles - only air), so I don't need to worry about over-watering (not even the succulents). This also makes fertilizing monkey easy. Once you start experimenting with providing a high quality home for roots, you'll discover that the sweet spot at which houseplants grow best is almost universal, while the limits of what houseplants will tolerate varies widely. Worry about the sweet spot and you'll be able to forget entirely about the plant's ability to deal with conditions at the fringes of what it was genetically programmed to tolerate, which is central to the inability of many growers to keep plants healthy. Valued books: Plant Production in Containers II ~ Carl Whitcomb PhD (fairly easy reading) Water, Media, and Nutrition for Greenhouse Crops ~ a Ball book (easy reading) Botany for Gardeners ~ Brian Capon (very easy reading, gives a basic overview of how plants work. I often recommend it because understanding physiology is a key to growing proficiency) Plant Physiology ~ Mohr & Schopfer (tough sledding if no background in botany/ horticulture) Plant Physiology ~ Taiz & Zeiger (again - tough sledding w/o some background) Mineral Nutrition of Higher Plants ~ Petra Marschner (tough sledding w/o background) Plant Pathology ~ Agrios (tough sledding w/o background) Soils for Ornamental Plants and Turf ~ Handreck and Black (fairly easy reading) Hamiltons Commercial Indoor Plants ~ Hamilton (easy reading - closest thing I've seen to a decent book on houseplants, but the longer it remains out of print and not updated, the more obsolete its information will become. It already has a lot of inaccurate info, i.e. based on today's knowledge. Al...See MoreCould these be anything else?
Comments (14)Erysimum capitatum is as fair a guess as any in that family... Only thing is that the above were photographed well outside the "western" wildflower's eastern-most range. Being a botanical garden, of course, it's possible for it to be Erysimum capitatum. They have lots of other Wallflower cultivars in all different colors within the garden, but most are named hybrids not the yellows and oranges of the wild Erysimum varieties. I may have to go back to the spot I found these next visit and get better shots of the leaves -- which can be seen most clearly in the shot above directly in the center, right above the central flower cluster and look like mini Chrysanthemum leaves (to me). So the leaves are lobed and not narrow and "grass-like" which I was seeing while trying to ID via the web.... Just about every Erysimum I found photos of had the wrong kind of leaves to fit and/or would not be found in the area -- which I don't put a lot of weight on 'cause of the botanical garden setting, however, I have to consider it because I've never seen these growing wild like this in the garden before. Plant ID'ing can be so much fun, eh? Thanks to all who took the time to add their input!! Appreciate it =}...See More
Loveplants2 8b Virginia Beach, Virginia
11 years ago
greenlarry
11 years ago
albert_135 39.17°N 119.76°W 4695ft.
11 years agoalbert_135 39.17°N 119.76°W 4695ft.
11 years ago
Tiffany, purpleinopp Z8b Opp, AL
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11 years agoTiffany, purpleinopp Z8b Opp, AL
11 years agobirdsnblooms
11 years agogreenlarry
11 years agorhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7
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11 years ago
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rhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7