Joy in Your Garden by Joy Bossi & Karen Bastow

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Joy Bossi earned a degree in Botany and went on to teach at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. She followed that career with work in a nursery, television and radio gardening programs, garden consulting and now a book. Here's a link to her website,Joy in the Garden.

Collaborating with Karen Bastow, Bossi summarized her experiences, thoughts and ideas about gardening into a paperback that runs 144-pages.

According to this Utah article, Bastow is a humanitarian gardener who has worked in Kenya. Both are Master Gardeners.

Anyone who wants to garden in the Southwest and Rocky Mountain regions would do well to grab a copy of this easy to read volume.

Even if you aren't in her planting zone, Bossi give really good tips.

"When you cover your soil with 2+ inches of good compost, every time it rains or you irrigate, a mild compost tea is produced. From the plant roots to the microbes, that tea will make every soil body happy!"

"A tree on the north gives your neighbor afternoon shade."

"Whether you choose to corral your raised beds with a structure, or simply mound your soil, you should follow the same simple guidelines.
-A bed should be no wider than 4 feet to be easily reached from both sides, but the length can be as desired......... ." (more tips follow that one)

"The soil used to fill deeper raised beds should not be mixed with any of your garden soil because garden soil can possibly contain disease organisms and will certainly compact too heavily."

"Living at high altitudes (5000 feet and above) can easily cut short the growing season even before the first part of September....So be prepared to cover your garden and protect from the first frost."

And, Bossi includes family recipes for mouth watering Cornish Pasty, Fried Green Tomatoes.

The book is organized by season and is loaded with useful information for short growing season gardeners. If the photos are from her home, it's amazing what Bossi is able to accomplish in the Salt Lake City altitude and U.S.D.A. zone 5 weather.

A quote from the HersUtah dot com article (link above) will give you a feel for the author's approach to time with plants and soil -
"It's a time to have times of reflections in this busy, crazy world that we live in," she said. "And it is really important for the values that can be taught in a family - the work ethic and the law of the harvest - what we sow, we end up reaping."

This title could be a lifeline for anyone gardening in the northern zones and in high altitude. What a great gift it would make. It's $17 and about $13 at online booksellers.

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