Create a miniature tropical rainforest-- with passion flowers, banana plants, and other magnificent exotics-- in your greenhouse or conservatory, and make a home for the most colorful, unique butterflies in the world! Monarchs, Asian swallowtails, and a host of South American species will thrive in this habitat, including some that have become rare in their natural environments. Play a vital role in their conservation, caring for these delicate creatures in every stage of their lifecycle. Set up the right ecosystem (heating, light, water, and plants) for their "paradise"; understand feeding, breeding, and courtship rituals; care for young ones; move and house larvae; and prevent health problems. A guide to butterflies helps you select the right ones, and full-color photographs throughout show what wonders await you!
With a revolutionary new "Climate Battery" design for near-net-zero heating and cooling By the turn of the nineteenth century, thousands of acres of glass houses surrounded large American cities, becoming a commonplace symbol of the market garden and nursery trades. But the possibilities of the indoor garden to transform our homes and our lives remain largely unrealized. In this groundbreaking book, Jerome Osentowski, one of North America's most accomplished permaculture designers, presents a wholly new approach to a very old horticultural subject. In The Forest Garden Greenhouse, he shows how bringing the forest garden indoors is not only possible, but doable on unlikely terrain and in cold climates, using near-net-zero technology. Different from other books on greenhouse design and management, this book advocates for an indoor agriculture using permaculture design concepts--integration, multi-functions, perennials, and polycultures--that take season extension into new and important territory. Osentowski, director and founder of Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute (CRMPI), farms at 7,200 feet on a steep, rocky hillside in Colorado, incorporating deep, holistic permaculture design with practical common sense. It is at this site, high on a mountaintop, where Osentowski (along with architect and design partner Michael Thompson) has been designing and building revolutionary greenhouses that utilize passive and active solar technology via what they call the "climate battery"--a subterranean air-circulation system that takes the hot, moist, ambient air from the greenhouse during the day, stores it in the soil, and discharges it at night--that can offer tropical and Mediterranean climates at similarly high altitudes and in cold climates (and everywhere else). Osentowski's greenhouse designs, which can range from the backyard homesteader to commercial greenhouses, are completely ecological and use a simple design that traps hot and cold air and regulates it for best possible use. The book is part case study of the amazing greenhouses at CRMPI and part how-to primer for anyone interested in a more integrated model for growing food and medicine in a greenhouse. With detailed design drawings, photos, and profiles of successful greenhouse projects on all scales, this inspirational manual will considerably change the conversation about greenhouse design.
The idea of mixing tropical plants with perennials and hardy annuals has been around since Victorian times. It is now enjoying a newfound popularity because tropical plants are more widely available. Gardeners who want to bring the lush beauty of tropicals to an existing garden, or who want to create an authentic vintage garden, will delight in The Exotic Garden. Although tropicals are novelties in temperate climates, they can successfully be grown anywhere. Iversen shows how tropicals can easily be used as annuals to perk up a garden with color during non-blooming seasons. The author's expert advice shows how to grow tropicals in beds, borders, and containers, select and combine plants, and use the tools of color, texture, and form. Plus, there are special overwintering tips and a full color glossary of more than 100 plants.
Enjoy fresh java brewed from your own coffee beans or juice from the orange tree growing in a sunny corner of your living room. Laurelynn G. Martin and Byron E. Martin show you how to successfully plant, grow, and harvest 47 varieties of tropical fruiting plants — in any climate! This straightforward, easy-to-use guide brings papaya, passionfruit, pepper, pineapples, and more out of the tropics and into your home. With plenty of gorgeous foliage, entrancing fragrances, and luscious fruits, local food has never been more exotic.
Adventurous Gardener seeks relationship with Tropical Plant… Tropical plants are energizing. They awaken a tired summer garden with lush, sensuous foliage and fascinating flowers and turn a suburban patio into a sophisticated, late-night paradise. But if you garden in a temperate climate and have been reluctant to commit to what you’re sure will be too much work, it’s time to let Tropical Plants and How to Love Them author Marianne Willburn act as your tropical matchmaker. Using five relationship types to help you understand the different levels of care required for many common (and uncommon!) tropicals, Marianne introduces you to an impressive array of outstanding tropical plants by providing care instructions, easy tips for seeing these tropical beauties safely through the winter, and advice for designing a tropical paradise of your own. Tropical Plants and How to Love Them gives you permission to jump headfirst into: A summer romance that ends with the first frost. A long-term commitment to beautify indoor and outdoor spaces. A friends-with-benefits relationship that yields exotic flavors and fragrances. A breakup with that high-maintenance beauty. A best friend relationship that lasts a lifetime. From the striking red leaves of the Abyssinian banana to the unusual flowers and healing powers of turmeric, there are hundreds of tropical plants worth loving. Find your new sweetheart in the pages of Tropical Plants and How to Love Them.
This book bridges a long-standing gap between obscure references in tropical botany and the gardener's need for an accurate, practical guide. Incorporating the latest advances in plant taxonomy, the book is a rare work of scrupulous research -- and magnificent photography -- that will be as useful to the gardener as it is to the botanist.
Passionate gardeners in cooler climates struggle year after year to overwinter their gorgeous tropical plants. Our new paperback edition is the answer to their problem — practical advice for achieving the tropical look in a temperate garden. The authors, who both live and garden on Long Island, New York, reveal the secrets to creating a lush, flamboyant landscape. Separate chapters cover such topics as principles of design and maintenance, proper plant selection, container gardening, and overwintering. Fantastic color photography throughout will inspire gardeners in even the hardiest zones. With the help of this book, an impressive tropical garden is within any gardener's reach.
The Earth-Sheltered Solar Greenhouse Book is the first to promote the benefits of both passive solar energy and earth sheltering in greenhouse design. This combination results in greenhouses which need no additional heating. The captured sun's energy and that which is stored in the earth is enough for successful year round harvest. It takes you step by step through the construction of an inexpensive greenhouse which may be built with either newly purchased or salvaged building materials for pennies on the dollar. It explains the author's unique Post/Shoring/Polyethylene construction methods and design techniques. The Earth-Sheltered Solar Greenhouse Book has 230 pages with nearly 200 illustrations, photos, diagrams, lists, charts and drawings. It contains all the information you need to free you from the pesticide, herbicide, fungicide, waxed, and E-coli laden, genetically modified and irradiated supermarket produce.
DIVIn Plant by Numbers, author Steve Asbell takes interior container gardening to a much prettier level with 50 original planting projects presented through a fun, witty, recipe-style layout with full-color photos and custom planting diagrams. /div
Donald R. Prothero's science books combine leading research with first-person narratives of discovery, injecting warmth and familiarity into a profession that has much to offer nonspecialists. Bringing his trademark style and wit to an increasingly relevant subject of concern, Prothero links the climate changes that have occurred over the past 200 million years to their effects on plants and animals. In particular, he contrasts the extinctions that ended the Cretaceous period, which wiped out the dinosaurs, with those of the later Eocene and Oligocene epochs. Prothero begins with the "greenhouse of the dinosaurs," the global-warming episode that dominated the Age of Dinosaurs and the early Age of Mammals. He describes the remarkable creatures that once populated the earth and draws on his experiences collecting fossils in the Big Badlands of South Dakota to sketch their world. Prothero then discusses the growth of the first Antarctic glaciers, which marked the Eocene-Oligocene transition, and shares his own anecdotes of excavations and controversies among colleagues that have shaped our understanding of the contemporary and prehistoric world. The volume concludes with observations about Nisqually Glacier and other locations that show how global warming is happening much quicker than previously predicted, irrevocably changing the balance of the earth's thermostat. Engaging scientists and general readers alike, Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs connects events across thousands of millennia to make clear the human threat to natural climate change.
