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 grasses
• 400 full-color, close-up photos of the plants
• Expert information about each plant's appearance, growing requirements, landscape uses, potential problems, and other interesting facts
• Precise, 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 pests
• A detailed gardening calendar for Southeast Texas that lists specific plants to plant and maintenance tasks to perform each month

No other book currently available provides such extensive and reliable information for Texas Gulf Coast gardeners.

Are some plants aphrodisiacs, or is that just a myth? Garden expert and plant detective Helen Yoest takes us on a romp through history, lore and ethnobotany to find out how 50 of these plants got their "hot" reputation - and what modern science has to say about it. Discover which common garden plants and favorite edibles have that "something extra," and why. Plants With Benefits is filled with lush photography, growing tips, and recipes for preparing teas, potions and tasty treats for your pleasurable use.

Want to do your part in helping your local pollinators flourish? Pollinator Friendly Gardening makes it easy. Are you interested in growing a naturally healthy garden? How about making sure your local environment helps bees, butterflies, and birds survive and thrive? If you are a beekeeper, are you looking for the ideal plants to keep your colony happy? Pollinators such as monarch butterflies and bees are under threat, and more and more gardeners want to do all they can to create a hospitable space for them. That's where Pollinator Friendly Gardening comes in. It identifies the most visible and beloved pollinators: bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, as well as some more unlikely candidates such as ants, wasps, and beetles. It then explains the intriguing synergy between plants and pollinators. This vital information makes it a unique sourcebook to share the ways that anyone can make a yard a more friendly place for pollinators. Plant selection, hardscape choices, habitat building (both natural and manmade), and growing practices that give pollinators their best chance in the garden are all covered in detail. Plant lists organized by category, helpful tips, and expert spotlights make it a fun and easy book to read too.

Grow delicious Portabella mushrooms right on your countertop with this easy to use fruiting kit! Comes complete with instructions to produce up to several pounds of the freshest mushrooms possible in your own home. Brown Agaricus species were the ORIGINAL cultivars grown before the switch to white cultivars in the late 1800s, and in the 1990's the brown varieties experienced a huge resurgence because of their large size and more robust flavors. Portabellas are picked large and the criminis are picked small in the button state, typically on the second flush as the kit runs out of nutrients. Kit typically flushes twice and needs minimal day to day care to produce amazing mushrooms for the grill and smaller ones for salads and sauces! Expect to harvest about 2 to 3 pounds of mushrooms! Kit measures 12x9x6 inches and comes complete with casing soil and directions, just add water and mushrooms fruit in just a few weeks!

More than 90 rare and common oils are comprehensively treated, and Parker provides suggestions on how readers can use them to create their own original recipes.

Have you ever wanted to build your own chicken coop, cider press or herb-drying rack? How about a clever two-bin composter, horse-blanket washing machine or genuine Langstroth beehive? In Practical Projects for Self-Sufficiency, you'll find these projects and a couple dozen more to help you develop and grow your self-reliant lifestyle. Most self-sufficiency books give you pages of words and a couple of small drawings for an explanation, but this book shows you exactly how to do things, employing beautiful photos and complete plans. The projects are organized into four categories: Food Prep & Preservation, Homestead, Garden and Animals. Among the projects are a simple brooder box for chicks, a jumbo cold frame, a basic loom, a large-capacity soil sifter, fencing, trellises and even a solar oven. So, whether you're a longtime do-it-yourselfer looking to complete your skill set or a newcomer taking your first step toward sustainability, Practical Projects for Self-Sufficiency is the book to get you there.

Your neighbors will think you have a full time gardener. If you liked Protilizer’s single-use packets, you’ll love our 6 oz. jar. • Makes 12 gallons of finished product • Handy scoop included for easy, accurate measuring • Use with seeds, seedlings, bulbs, herbs, flowers, roses, vegetables, shrubs, trees and even brown spots on the lawn • Ideal at the time of planting to keep plants from going into shock and to help seeds germinate quickly • Apply when planting and every two weeks thereafter for best plant health • 100% organic (OMRI listed – Organic Materials Review Institute) • Contains billions of proprietary beneficial microbes to grow roots and secure plant health • Drastically reduces shock • Helps roots absorb nutrients within 24 hours • Outpaces soil pathogens and diseases

Recipes and Tips for Sustainable Living is a lavishly illustrated must have book for any novice or well seasoned gardener, forager, hunter, natural food-foodie or for those who want to take their food sources and health into their own hands. Stacy encourages eating as much from the wild as possible and gives techniques to simplify the process of making succulent, excellent meals with simple ingredients. Along with tips for heirloom gardening, canning, preserving, saving seeds, raising bees and chickens, and more, she gives extraordinary simple meals for the family using these natural ingredients brought in from the garden or from the farmer's market. One very important aspect of this book is that Stacy explains how to work with tough, grass-fed foraging animal meats so that when they are cooked, the results are tender, "non-gamey" succulent meat. There are gorgeous, full-color photos for every recipe and tip throughout, and several step-by-step tutorials for a variety of recipes and topics.

Author and herbalist Brittany Wood Nickerson understands that food is our most powerful medicine. In Recipes from the Herbalist’s Kitchen, she reveals how the kitchen can be a place of true awakening for the senses and spirit, as well as deep nourishment for the body. With in-depth profiles of favorite culinary herbs such as dill, sage, basil, and mint, Nickerson offers fascinating insights into the healing properties of each herb and then shares 110 original recipes for scrumptious snacks, entrées, drinks, and desserts that are specially designed to meet the body’s needs for comfort, nourishment, energy, and support through seasonal changes.