{"id":553,"date":"2009-04-07T08:10:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-07T08:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbicmsblog.reedbusiness.com\/elogic_660000266\/2009\/04\/07\/it-takes-more-than-thumbs\/"},"modified":"2009-04-07T08:10:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-07T08:10:00","slug":"it-takes-more-than-thumbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=553","title":{"rendered":"It Takes More Than Thumbs…"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t have a green thumb or<\/em> a black thumb when it comes to gardening. I have a thumb busy doing other things. I’m a Jew originally from New York City; we don’t garden. Toiling in soil rife with bugs has never been my idea of fun. But for some reason this year, I have decided that I’m going to have a garden, damn it. I am approaching this venture with the usual vigor one has at the start of some new project that might become a lifelong hobby. I am reading books on how to garden.\"\"<\/p>\n

Apparently, you can’t just throw seeds in the ground, pray for water and get tomatoes, corn and green beans. So, I’ve got some books. T<\/em>he Garden Primer<\/em> by Barbara Damrosch:  fabulous, chock-full of ways to garden organically and a dense 820 pages. Then there’s Lasagna Gardening: A New Layering System for Bountiful Gardens: No Digging, No Tilling, No Weeding, No Kidding!<\/em> by Patricia Lanza. This book assumes that some people don’t have hours to spend toiling in the garden. A great book and only 244 pages. At least the page length is getting better. But you know what? I don’t like reading gardening books. Not that these and other books aren’t gorgeously written and beautifully illustrated and exactly what every real gardener is craving. I, however, don’t care about all the detail. I just want things to grow. So, I started looking at the kids’ section.\"\"<\/p>\n

Now we’re talking! I found a great little sleeper book from last year, from Good Year Books: Ready, Set<\/em> Grow! A Kid’s Guide to Gardening<\/em> by Rebecca Spohn.   Full of pictures, simple ideas explained: just h<\/em>o<\/em>w<\/em> does a seed grow? There’s no soil analysis, no lengthy discussion of what goes best with what, but a very simple credo: tall things in back, shorter things up front. This I can handle.<\/p>\n

A new release from Lorenz,  The Ultimate Step-By-Step Kid’s First Gardening Book: Fantastic Gardening Ideas for 5–12 Year Olds, from Growing Fruit and Vegetables and Having Fun with Nature Projects<\/em> by Jenny Handy promises to be just my speed. Do-able activities that promise success and fun things to do in the garden. And when I get confused about just what the row is supposed to look like, there are 900 photos to help guide me.<\/p>\n

I live in Vermont and we aren’t supposed to plant anything until Memorial Day—theoretically, the chance of \"\"frost has finally passed by the end of May, and until then, things can die. And I’m not going to go cover plants with blankets, so I’ll wait. But I’m not a patient person, so to get me excited about the gardening idea, I’ve taken home the new kit from Chronicle:  Sprout Your Own Sweet Scents: Complete Mini-Garden Kit with Seeds, Peat Pellets and Planters<\/em>. They sprout in 3–10 days and I’ll have scented leaves in two weeks. I’ll post again when things start smelling good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t have a green thumb or a black thumb when it comes to gardening. I have a thumb busy doing other things. I’m a Jew originally from New York City; we don’t garden. Toiling in soil rife with bugs has never been my idea of fun. But for some reason this year, I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}