By Janet Jesney
Lone Pine Press has released three new books that are of interest to prairie gardeners. All are in an easy to read and well illustrated format.

The Canadian Edible Garden by Alison Beck has wonderful photographs to illustrate the various plants discussed. While not specific to prairie gardening, she covers not only the basic vegetables such as beans and carrots but also some of the more unusual edible items like artichokes, okra, some herbs and a few edible flowers such as nasturtiums and some fruits such as raspberries and blueberries. At the front of the book is a section on preparing the soil, selecting and starting plants, seeding and the care including some pest and disease control. Growing conditions – light and soil type – are indicated for each of the plants as well as her recommended varieties. This book does not cover “edible” gardening in detail but the beautiful photographs and clear, simple growing instructions are certainly enough to encourage the adventure of planting of edible plants in either a vegetable garden or as part of an ornamental landscape.

Garden Bugs of Alberta by Ken Fry, Doug Macaulay and Don Williamson is a “who’s who” of garden bugs. We all know that bugs do not respect provincial boundaries so the title should not deter you from using this book. The first section of the book deals with bug basics – their anatomy, damage caused by different types of bugs and information on monitoring and controlling them when necessary. I like their advocacy of integrated pest management which will become more and more important with more interest in maintaining biodiversity and decreasing the use of pesticides. The major part of this book is a “bug directory” For each bug described there is at least one drawing of the bug, descriptions of what they do (either negative or positive) and information on locality, and how to control or attract them to your garden. Because of the handy pocketbook size of this book and the excellent reference pictures this would be a handy book to take with you to the garden to help you identify the bugs you find there – before you grab the insect spray!

Herb Gardening for Canada by Laura Peters is another book full of beautiful and inspiring photographs. As in the Canadian Edible Garden book, the first section is devoted to herb basics – garden preparation, what to grow where, how to get your plants and continues on to how to grow, maintain and harvest them and how to use them in the kitchen and elsewhere. The second part of the book is a dictionary of 64 different herbs ranging from the usual such as basil to things we think of as flowers such as roses to things we spend most of our time eliminating – dandelions! It encourages us to take a new look at some of the plants we grow and to consider growing some new ones. The description of each plant includes information on parts used, recommended varieties, preferred growing conditions, harvesting and some information on what to do with the harvest. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in starting a herb garden or increasing the variety of herbs grown.