front cover of Dear Dirt Doctor
Dear Dirt Doctor
Questions Answered the Natural Way
By Howard Garrett
University of Texas Press, 2003

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.

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Discriminating Taste
How Class Anxiety Created the American Food Revolution
Finn, S. Margot
Rutgers University Press, 2017
Winner of the 2018 First Book Prize from the Association for the Study of Food and Society

For the past four decades, increasing numbers of Americans have started paying greater attention to the food they eat, buying organic vegetables, drinking fine wines, and seeking out exotic cuisines. Yet they are often equally passionate about the items they refuse to eat: processed foods, generic brands, high-carb meals. While they may care deeply about issues like nutrition and sustainable agriculture, these discriminating diners also seek to differentiate themselves from the unrefined eater, the common person who lives on junk food.

Discriminating Taste argues that the rise of gourmet, ethnic, diet, and organic foods must be understood in tandem with the ever-widening income inequality gap. Offering an illuminating historical perspective on our current food trends, S. Margot Finn draws numerous parallels with the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, an era infamous for its class divisions, when gourmet dinners, international cuisines, slimming diets, and pure foods first became fads.

Examining a diverse set of cultural touchstones ranging from Ratatouille to The Biggest Loser, Finn identifies the key ways that “good food” has become conflated with high status. She also considers how these taste hierarchies serve as a distraction, leading middle-class professionals to focus on small acts of glamorous and virtuous consumption while ignoring their class’s larger economic stagnation. A provocative look at the ideology of contemporary food culture, Discriminating Taste teaches us to question the maxim that you are what you eat.
 
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Edwin J. Cohn and the Development of Protein Chemistry
With a Detailed Account of His Work on the Fractionation of Blood during and after World War II
Douglas M. Surgenor
Harvard University Press

“Blood,” Goethe observed in Faust, “is a very special juice.” How special it is and how complex as well is revealed in Douglas Surgenor’s Edwin J. Cohn and the Development of Protein Chemistry.

As Surgenor aptly shows, what began as a modest program in basic research at the Harvard Medical School in 1920 with the establishment of a small laboratory for the study of the physical chemistry of proteins, suddenly and quite unexpectedly took on immensely practical proportions twenty years later when the onset of World War II made requisite new sophisticated blood techniques and blood substitutes for the treatment of military casualties.

The knowledge and expertise gained by Edwin Cohn and his laboratory associates in the study of proteins, amino acids, and peptides in blood after 1920 put them in a unique position to carry out the search for new blood products. Edwin J. Cohn and the Development of Protein Chemistry discloses how the wartime emergency called into play Cohn’s talents as a leader who drew together chemists, clinicians, pathologists, immunologists, and others in the attainment of a complex goal. The revolution Cohn started has still not run its course.

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Organic Management for the Professional
The Natural Way for Landscape Architects and Contractors, Commercial Growers, Golf Course Managers, Park Administrators, Turf Managers, and Other Stewards of the Land
By Howard Garrett, John Ferguson, and Mike Amaranthus
University of Texas Press, 2012

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).

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front cover of Plants for Houston and the Gulf Coast
Plants for Houston and the Gulf Coast
By Howard Garrett
University of Texas Press, 2008

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.

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Texas Gardening the Natural Way
The Complete Handbook
By Howard Garrett
University of Texas Press, 2004

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.
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