BACK TO THE NEW BASICS
In March of 2023, I wrote my magnum opus, "Back to the NEW Basics" [of gardening].
It was/is, in a sense, everything I knew about gardening that I thought needed to be in such a book on gardening basics.
But there is, of course, more. The book didn’t include everything I know about gardening; it was just the “basics.” Plus there’s the so much more I've discovered just in the months since I wrote this book.
Hence this website. It's where I can update, expand, enhance, elaborate, polish, and add some related bits.
More…
In addition to “Back to the NEW Basics,” which is aimed at gardeners throughout our country, I have written two other books, both aimed at gardeners in the Pacific Northwest.
Available through Amazon:
Available through Amazon:
Available through Amazon:
Being a biologist-horticulturist, I have written these three books — and this website — from a scientific standpoint. Yes, I use the dreaded scientific names regularly and yes, I occasionally use some 5-dollar words. But I’m of the belief that gardeners are brilliant and open to learning the deeper parts of gardening. Plus I’ve done my best to balance such “scientific jargon” with down-to-earth, dirt-gardener common sense. Heavy on the common sense.
More…
more “books”…
I’ve also produced several eBooks (digital books to use from your desktop computer, laptop computer, or any device that opens pdf files. These eBooks are available for sale exclusively through the INFO STORE (see the page on this website).
For website readers in the Pacific Northwest, I’ve created a companion volume to “Selecting Plants for Pacific Northwest Gardens’ (mentioned above). Where ‘SPfPNWG’ covers all ornamental plants, ‘Native Plants for Gardens and Landscapes in the Pacific Northwest’ focuses on and expands on the PNW native plants that are suitable for garden use.
and more eBooks to come
and finally … “About Me”…
One of the “pages” within this website combines my love of gardening with my passion for cooking. During my years as a restaurant chef, restaurant consultant, and culinary arts instructor, I collected, created, and tweaked literally thousands of recipes. That included bringing classics up to date, translating recipes from many foreign languages, rewriting very badly written on-line recipes, and doing my best to write down my Sicilian grandmother’s unwritten recipes. I created new recipes for my culinary arts classes and special gardening+cooking classes when I needed a recipe to better fit the assignment or class theme. I also created plenty of new recipes for my own enjoyment in my home kitchen. From those now 7,000+ recipes, I selected and edited over 1,000 and sorted those into five books, four by ethnic cuisine and one limited to vegetarian and vegan dishes. All of my collected/created recipes have been set in a uniform format, one that I think is easy to read and follow.
ABOUT ME…
I'm Joe. After more than 40 years of teaching horticulture and gardening (as well as culinary arts) to children and adults of all ages, both amateur and professional, it's time to share my written notes and mental notes as well as all my personal experiences (from earliest to today) with all of you.
My degree is in Environmental Horticulture. During my college years, I worked for a Landscape Architect, managed a retail nursery, managed greenhouses for a wholesale nursery, and dug lots of holes for landscape contractors and architects.
After that, I spent some wonderful years with Sunset Magazine and Books before moving to Los Angeles to work, again, with another wholesale nursery and another retail nursery. This is also when I started teaching, with a lecturing/teaching stint at UCLA. In 1984, I landed in Northern Wisconsin to start my own mail-order seed, plant, and bulb company, "the Country Garden."
Leaving Wisconsin, I became Director of Product Development for the newly created cut-flower department at Ball Seed Company (now Ball Horticultural) in West Chicago. During this time, I founded the "Association of Specialty Cut-flower Growers," an international organization dedicated to networking hundreds of growers and allied companies throughout the U.S.
After Ball, I took the position of Director of Product Development for Seeds with Park Seed Company in South Carolina. Next step was Burpee Seeds in Warminster, PA as their Director of Product Development, Seeds, and their company Horticulturist.
Then back to California, where I joined Environmental Seed Producers (growers and sellers of wildflower seed) as their Director of Sales & Marketing.
During that corporate period, I designed and installed gardens and continued to write (freelance) for industry and amateur magazines. Eventually, I would find myself teaching again.
Currently, I live in the Pacific Northwest. While here, I've taught a few more gardening classes, lectured on horticultural sciences and history of food plants, and even offered quite a few cooking classes (yes, I'm also a retired chef; but that's another story).
I've lived and gardened in the four corners of the United States -- from the "perfect gardening climate" (not really) of California (actually several "climates") to the northern climes of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Pennsylvania, to my humid-summer, clay-packed garden in South Carolina, to the desserts of Arizona, and — finally — to my newest home in the Pacific Northwest. [How many corners was that?]
I'm 99.9% retired now. I think. So, I've plenty of time to write books and share, via this website and social media, some expanded thoughts on my experiences, my research, and, maybe most importantly, my newest discoveries.
Which brings me to a revelation. I've always had the habit of questioning why certain things are done the way they're done. Too often, I bump into answers that make little sense. And worse is the answer: "Because we've always done it this way." So, I wrote the book: "Back to the NEW Basics,"* the same title I've given to this website. That book is the spirit within my website.
With this website, especially the blogs within, I'd like to help gardeners get back to the basics of gardening, back to a simpler way of doing things, and back to reality. All of this with SCIENCE as the emphasis.
If after reading a few of my articles, you haven't recognized my special view of gardening and horticulture, I'll spell it out: I look harder at these subjects, I question a lot of what's out there, I stick to the sciences always, and maybe because of these points, I often go against the grain.
*For gardeners in the PNW, I've also published a guide to selecting ornamental plants and a handy-sized guide for selecting fruits, veggies, nuts, herbs, mushrooms, and other edibles. Take a look at the section above.
