July 16, 2023

A pair years in the past, Austin gardening knowledgeable Colleen Dieter handed me a “DIY zine for DIYers” she’d written and printed in booklet type. Titled Let’s Look after Texas Crops, the 3-part collection distills Colleen’s 12+ years of expertise as knowledgeable gardener into an easy-to-digest format for the house gardener in Central Texas.
I put the booklets in my towering to-read pile, and there they sat — till I heard her point out her zine on the call-in radio present that she co-hosts with Leah Churner, Horticulture Hangover on KLBJ (which I hearken to by way of the duo’s partaking and informative podcast, The Horticulturati). Oh yeah!, I believed. I dug the booklets out of the pile and sat down with them over lunch. And I instantly needed to share them with native readers as a result of they’re full of helpful and easy details about caring for gardens in our uniquely difficult local weather.
Let’s Look after Texas Crops consists of three volumes. Quantity 1 is about sustaining and bettering soil, turf, and bushes. It contains fundamental gardening information, together with Colleen’s must-have instruments, her compost tea recipe, and instructions on when and find out how to unfold compost and mulch. Within the introduction she pithily solutions the query lots of people have about caring for native vegetation:
“Gardeners usually ask me why we should always look after…vegetation which might be alleged to be native or well-adapted and low-maintenance. ‘Low-maintenance’ shouldn’t be the identical as ‘no upkeep’. Of their native properties in Texas, these vegetation would have been trampled by…herds of buffalo or burned by the common wildfires that had been part of this area’s ecosystem for eons. I don’t find out about you, however my yard lacks wildfires and herds of buffalo. So our jobs as gardeners is to mimic these forces of nature. These vegetation gained’t die with out trimming, however they gained’t look good with out trimming.”

Quantity 2 covers perennial care, with upkeep ideas for round 30 generally grown perennials in Central Texas. Colleen factors out that in our local weather, some perennials go dormant in summer time as a substitute of in winter, like columbine, and others stay evergreen year-round, like damianita: “This little plant can go away you scratching your head as you determine find out how to preserve it. It’s evergreen, making it onerous to know when to chop it again….[A]s it ages it begins to get ugly….It’s additionally complicated as a result of it doesn’t appear to bloom on the identical instances yr after yr.” So true!

Quantity 3 is in regards to the care of decorative grasses, bulbs, succulents and different xeric vegetation like nolina and dyckia, groundcovers, and roses.

Whereas there aren’t images within the booklets, Colleen contains easy shade illustrations. I significantly like those in Quantity 2 exhibiting the place on a selected plant to make pruning cuts relying on the season. Illustrations in Quantity 3 exhibiting find out how to divide grasses and different vegetation are additionally useful.
Colleen’s zine is on the market by way of her web site, the place she sells print copies and a digital model. I don’t know if any native nurseries carry it, however they need to. One suggestion although: within the subsequent printing, a clearer, easier design for the covers, particularly for volumes 2 and three, could be higher. With the collage-style covers, I had problem understanding what every quantity was about. A easy illustration and constant title font and elegance could be simpler to understand at a fast look.
Colleen’s plant care zine is the how-to that each new gardener in Central Texas wants — or new house owner, if you happen to’ve inherited a bunch of vegetation you don’t have any thought find out how to look after. As Colleen factors out, “In the event you learn dozens of books about choosing vegetation to your yard and punctiliously selected them from the nursery, then dutifully adopted exacting planting directions whereas putting in your vegetation, it’s possible you’ll be shocked and bewildered, as I used to be, how little data there’s about what to do subsequent.”
Let’s Look after Texas Crops fills that void. It’s essential for any gardener in Central Texas, particularly newbies. However even skilled gardeners will study one thing new.
Disclosure: Colleen Dieter gave me a duplicate of Let’s Look after Texas Crops, and I reviewed it at my very own discretion and with none compensation. This publish, as with every thing at Digging, is my private opinion.
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