Publications
“Probably the oldest existing reference to the use of manure in agriculture is to be found on a set of clay tablets of the Akkadian Empire, which flourished in the Mesopotamian Valley a thousand years before Moses was born…Compost was known to the Romans; the Greeks had a word for it, and so did the tribes of Israel.”
The Rodale Guide to Composting
1979, Rodale Press
“Long-time gardeners have learned through experience when each crop is at its peak of flavor and texture: the tomato when it is dead ripe and before its skin begins to take on a wrinkled look; the melon when it can be separated easily from the vine with gentle thumb pressure; the eggplant when it seems fairly bursting within itself and before the black skin has begun to lose its sheen.”
Gardening for Maximum Nutrition
1983, Rodale Press
“More house plants are killed by overwatering than any other cause. This killing with kindness can be avoided, if you learn to understand just when your plants need water and when they should be left alone.”
No Time For House Plants
1979, University of Oklahoma Press
“If the kids are up for a little nightlife, the Fish Creek area offers a couple of great options. If you’re in the mood for the movies, head for the Skyway Drive-in, where you can sit in the car, eat popcorn and hot dogs, watch a first-run movie, and tell your kids about the good old days before VCRs.”
Wisconsin With Kids
Second Edition
1997 Prairie Oak Press
“It is primarily the moderating influence of Lake Michigan that makes possible the highly productive fruit belt of the Lake Michigan watershed, extending about forty miles wide from the Grand Traverse region to the Indiana line. The blazing summer heat that blasts in from the western plains states is cooled by the blue waters of Lake Michigan, gently caressing the ripening apples, cherries, pears, and peaches, some of which would not survive several hundred miles west.”
The Michigan Garden Guide
1998 University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor
“We know that borage attracts bees, so it is a good companion for cucumbers, squash, and other crops that depend on insect-aided pollination. Or, if we wish to believe the startling research that Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird report in their equally startling book, The Secret Life of Plants, plants may even like each other for purely emotional, intellectual, or social reasons. I am not prepared to explain the workings of companion planting, but I do know that a garden is an ecosystem, where every plant has an effect on every other plant.”
The Ohio Garden Guide
1995, University of Ohio Press
Olbrich Botanical Gardens
Growing More Beautiful
Olbrich Botanical Society
2002, Prairie Oak Press, a Division of Trails Media Group
“If ever a way is found to make the weather perfect the year around, we Wisconsin gardeners would be a sorry lot. We love to complain about the weather…In early April, when the books say we should be putting in our peas, we laugh bitterly as we grab our snow shovels, hopefully for the last time that season. Then scarcely a month later, an early heat wave wilts our peas and sends our radishes bolting to seed.”
The Wisconsin Garden Guide
Fourth Edition
2010, Trails Books
“Through history, and continuing to the present day, man’s great food-growing lands have existed only where earthworms are present to till the soil. Relentlessly, by day and night, generation after generation, century after century, through the rise and fall of man’s temporal civilizations, the earthworm has done much to create, till, and improve the soil. The earthworm is great and powerful because it has, by its ceaseless churning of the earth, enabled plants to grow and all the terrestrial animals to survive.”
The Earthworm Book
1977, Rodale Press