Learn while the weathers bad

Evening all,
I was reading one of the threads we're the question was asked "where do i start" it was ref a new to gardening member who'd got an allotment,

Well after all the years ive been gardening i thougth i'd pass on some info that if taken will answer so many many many hours of what to do and why one is going wrong,
Books and the winter go together very well, We do have a time in gardening when for many reasons we just cant garden, weather being the number one, and for those who have to go to work (im retired now) the weather will not allow for your days off not to rain or snow ect,

So having said this im sure the keen gardener will understand what im about to say is pure common , (Use your time reading)

Now the best place to buy used books is the animal rescue /oxfam shops.

These have books that have been donated by people who for one reason or another no longer garden, ie the person who bought the books may have died,
These places have books that are many times better than some of the modern offerings of so called "garden books" they are thicker and even if these books pictures are in black & white you can be sure that when they we're put to print the publisher had a very firm rule that the books had to be of the best information and the person writing it had to know his stuff.

I seen modern books for sale so thin you could see through them & when a full page is taken up showing a photo of a lettuce?? Well if any future gardener has'nt seen a lettuce! "Say no more"

The other good thing is when you buy from these rescue sort of shops ,
you'll pay a hell of a lot less for a much better book and your payment goes to a good cause.

The keen gardener will always want to learn and what better way to end the day than a 10 minute before lights out

Hope this gives the learning gardener a thought or two.

 

Being a bibliophile myself, I agree you can`t beat a good read. However, I would say there is more gardening knowledge and information on this site than in any gardening book. You also get the shortcuts and "wrinkles" on here which you don`t get in any book. Also, how many gardening books have such off the wall humour as is found on here, Ziggy excepted.:D:D

 

Cheers Lads, never knew I was exceptional

Books are good, Armandii has got an old one.

 

Well, at his age he would have.

 

That thought had crossed my mine too Armandii.

 

See you've all gone off track again.:WINK1:

I have quite a lot of gardening/plant books, and I spent years looking through them.

But I must admit I dont read half as much now I have a computer.
The PC has ruined it for me regarding books, although I still find the odd reference book worth having a look at.

 

I can`t imagine using a Kindle or some such as opposed to the feel and smell of a REAL book.

 

Oxfam and the way they've spent your money

Many thanks for reading my bit ref reading during the bad weather,

But i thought i'd point out what the OXFAM people have done with some of the money they've got via their shops,

It was decided to start a lab type place up to try and re-introduce some of the much forgotten seeds, ie seeds have been donated to this lab to try and get them to grow,These seeds have been donated by all sorts of situations ie one lot of seeds we're sent in by a son who was going through his dead grand farthers shed and found seeds with a name of lettuce he "as a keen gardener himself" didnt know,, It turned out to be a very old lettuce type that after years of storage was sown and its grown to full lettuce and more seeds will come from this testing.

Just think how many other forgotten seeds are waiting to be brought back into our gardens??

The idea being that if we can send seeds to the needy world wide places its cheaper and better than sending food that has a good chance of ending up in the wrong hands as food, the seeds are helping the locals to grow their own foods and at the same time these labs are having succes in getting seeds that have been in storage for years to grow again and this can only result in some of the forgotten foods coming back.

All this from people buying from "OXFAM" shops.

And this info ive passed on to you i read from a book, not from the Inter-net.

 

I thought that when famines happened, it was not through lack of seeds, but disasterous growing conditions, either a prolonged drought, fire, floods etc.

Incidentally, drift off the original topic but related to world hunger. Remember the horrendous famine in Ethiopia in the 1980s? The one that prompted Bob Geldoff to organise Bad-Aid? Well I was a school kid at the time, and we are asked to bring in packaged food to go to Ethiopia. We had to put these packaged foods in great big plastic bins that had been placed in convenient places. We were specifically asked to bring dehydrated foodstuff so that it wouldn't go off in transit, and so that it was light weight and high calorie. Rice and pasta were at the top of the list. It must be about 25 years since then, yet in all the time that's passed since, it is only very recently, while drinking with an old friend, that a thought occurred to me. If severe drought had caused the horrible disaster, then how could it have helped for us to send them dehydrated food?

 

I have a kindle Dai and wouldn't be without it for light reading, but when it comes to reference books it's a no-no. You can't thumb through a kindle like a book. So there's good and bad for both options.