Granny's Green Thumb - Part 1

sand. King goes on to discuss heat gain and loss in plants, and why, like animals, they can survive much longer without a source of food than without water.

King continues to explain to readers what environmental components plants need, not just for survival, but for strong life. For example we learn that plant respiration is not breathing without lungs but the release of energy that plants need to manufacture their life components. In addition, some readers will be surprised to find out that nitrogen limits where and how well plants survive.

The bulk of this information-dense book sets out to focus on minutia of a plant's normal daily life. Final chapters deal with reproduction, surviving stress and overcrowding, the grisly aspects of chemical warfare and finally senescence or the processes of getting dead.

This is certainly not a book to be read like a novel, but most gainfully, slowly and carefully, a section at a sitting. One big drawback to this excellent book is the lack of diagrams, drawings or photos.

Science and the Garden: The Scientific Basis of Horticultural Practice by David S. Ingram, Daphne Vince-Prue and Peter J. Gregory is published by Blackwell Publishing for the British Royal Horticultural Society(RHS) and distributed in the U.S. by Iowa State Press. Although it is not a textbook, this slim volume was written mainly for horticultural and gardening students. However, because it examines the why, the science triggering gardening practices, and the how, the bases behind practical gardening advice, it will be interesting to curious gardeners and professional growers as well.

Science and the Garden with twelve chapters plus a glossary and index is even more information-dense than Reaching for the Sun. However, it is wonderfully organized with specific chapters authoritatively written by the main authors and a host of specialty co-authors. In addition, it is skillfully illustrated with charts, line drawings, and color photographs that enhance the written word.

Science and the Garden also refreshingly explores plant genetics especially in the area of Designing Plants, as well as Storage and Postharvest, the ultra practical area of extending the usable life of all those great items that gardeners grow. There are also sections about Gardening in the Greenhouse and Controlling the Undesirables.

Now, for the modern explanations of why the biblical plants mentioned at the beginning of this article may have behaved as they did.

Amos slashed (pierced

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