The Complete Guide to Growing Your Own Fruits and Berries: Everything You Need to Know Explained Simply

Karen Szklany Gault

Nov 2010 · Atlantic Publishing Company

About this ebook

There is nothing better than a freshly picked apple or raspberry from your own backyard and yet many homeowners lack the resources or the necessary gardening acumen to effectively plant and harvest their own fruit. While some fruits, like apples, grow in almost any climate (as many as 35 of 50 states providing perfect conditions), others like blackberries and blueberries are incredibly hard to grow without the right soil, weather, and care.
This book will guide every man and woman out there who has ever wanted to grow their own crop of fruits and berries or who has tried and failed. From the simplest fruit tree to the most fickle berry bush, this book will be your one and only guide. You will learn how to select your fruits and berries of choice, using a combination of climate information that matches the best possible bushes, trees, and vines to your home and how these plants will grow there. You will learn how to maintain your plants in your climate with the right sunlight, location, soil, and fertilizer and what each different kind of fruit or berry needs to be most effective. You will learn the planting conditions and the maintenance that each fruit or berry needs, from pruning and picking, to maintaining a pest free environment around your plants.
Starting with the most basic aspects of your planting sequence, you will learn everything possibly needed to grow and have your very own fruits and berries every year. Additionally, the top gardeners around have contributed, through interviews, their own tips and tricks to effectively growing and maintaining the lives of your new fruit and berry trees and bushes. With this book, any prospective gardener can start enjoying the sweet fruits of their labor.
Atlantic Publishing is a small, independent publishing company based in Ocala, Florida. Founded over twenty years ago in the company president s garage, Atlantic Publishing has grown to become a renowned resource for non-fiction books. Today, over 450 titles are in print covering subjects such as small business, healthy living, management, finance, careers, and real estate. Atlantic Publishing prides itself on producing award winning, high-quality manuals that give readers up-to-date, pertinent information, real-world examples, and case studies with expert advice. Every book has resources, contact information, and web sites of the products or companies discussed.

Ratings and reviews

“The Complete Guide to Growing Your Own Fruits and Berries” by Karen Szklany Gault is for those who want to add some edible landscaping to their home. Ms. Gault starts off the book by breaking down geographical regions (Pacific Ocean, Mountains, Southwest, Plains, South Central, Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, Great Lakes and New England) and discusses the climate and what types of fruits/berries each region can support. On page 50 she has a guide for planting and harvest seasons where she lists a fruit or berry and next to it when the best time to plant and the best time to harvest are. Ms. Gault also goes in depth on soil conditions and when/how you may need to enrich your current soil. There is also a section about what basic gardening tools you will need. This is a good section that you should carry with you when you go to your gardening store so that you will get what you need. Once you have your tools, then you can go to the chapter about cultivating and planting. The author describes what you need to do to prepare the ground, watering, and other things that will help you have a successful crop. Ms. Gault does a fine job of introducing how to grown fruits and berries. She gives the reader enough information to feel confident about their choices and how successful they will be. I do wish that she had included colored pictures such as the ones in Back to Basics “The Complete Guide to Growing Healing and Medicinal Herbs”. But that is a minor disappointment compared to the rest of the material in the book.

My father built our house on my grandparent’s farm and so I grew up with lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. I would get on my bike and ride down the lane to pick the cherries right off tree. My aunt had also planted raspberries that I loved to have on my cereal. She even dressed my brother, sisters, and I up in long sleeved shirts and pants in the middle of the summer to go into the woods and pick the wild blackberries. I have great memories and reading this book brought back many of them. As an adult, I have owned a pear tree and enjoyed eating the pears and at my old house in the South, I grew strawberries. Atlantic Books has a great series Back to Basics Growing and this is the second book in that series I have read. I was again impressed. The subtitle ‘Everything You Need to Know Explained Simply’ is true. The book is well organized and readable. I would suggest that if you want to start growing your own fruits and berries you read it straight through. For the experienced grower, this book has information on graphing, the latest information on pest and disease control and is a great reference tool. If you want to use container growing or are interested in greenhouse growing there is a chapter for you. There are also Case Study sections throughout the book from people in the field giving tips from their experience. After all your hard work, there are tips on harvesting and great recipes to enjoy the fruit of your labor. Included also are internet resources to help you with each step. The book also has section with the scientific names of the fruits and berries that is helpful when you are looking for specific varieties, a handy glossary and an index that makes it very user friendly. I highly recommend this book if you are interested in growing fruit trees, grapes or berries

About the author

Karen Szklany Gault spent her childhood in Hawthorne, New York and has since called Ireland and several of the United States her home. She holds a B.A. in Psychology from Marist College (1986) and a M.Ed. in Elementary Education from the University of Massachusetts, Boston (1996). She currently resides in Berlin, Massachusetts with her husband and daughter as a member of Mosaic Commons, a cohousing community, where she enjoys creating her own backyard garden and home-schools her daughter, Cosette. When she is not gardening or home-schooling, she makes music, walks labyrinths, sails, cooks, bakes, and makes cross-stitch tapestries."