A living file on every plant that will grow in the South. What it needs, when to put it in, what kills it down here, and every way you can actually use it once it starts producing. Written for our heat and our sand, not for somebody gardening in Ohio.
Written for zones 8 to 11, checked against UF/IFAS, and photographed in my own yard.
What you are actually getting
A good guide gets you planted. This is the file you keep coming back to for the next twenty years.
I own a shelf of garden books and I still buy them. A good guide is worth every dollar, and it does one job well: it gets you in the ground with confidence. This does a different job. It is the reference you open on a Tuesday in year three when the tree is finally fruiting and you need to know what to do with all of it.
A file follows one plant through its whole life, from where on earth it came from to what it does for your body. Every plant that grows down here has one. Here is what is in every single file.
01Its historyWhere it came from, who carried it across the world, and how it landed in a Southern yard.
02How to plant it herePlanting window, depth, spacing, sun, water and feeding, written for sand and heat.
03What kills it down hereThe Southern failure mode. The part every guide leaves out because it is the part that took somebody a season to learn.
04How to take the harvestWhere to cut, when to cut, and how to make the plant give you more next time instead of less.
05What it does for your gardenIts job in a food forest. Nitrogen, shade, mulch, pollinators, and exactly who to plant beside it.
06How to cook it, dry it and brew itKitchen use, preservation, and a tea preparation with real amounts and steep times on the ones that brew.
07What it does for your bodyMeasured nutrition straight off USDA with the food ID printed, plus comparisons that mean something.
08Who it is for and who should skip itStraight talk on interactions and dietary flags, and when the honest answer is ask your doctor first.
09What it costs at the storeAverage US retail against what one plant actually hands you, so you can see the money.
10Video where I have filmed itGrowing files link out to the episode where I put that plant in the ground and came back to it.
11Photographed in my own yardNot stock. The plants I grow are shown growing, fruiting, and failing, in real dirt.
Every file is included with every plan, and the library gets deeper every week. The catalog stays open to everybody. The files are the membership.
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The catalog tells you what. The files tell you how.
Every file carries how to grow it in Southern heat and sand, what to do with it in the kitchen, the pests that hunt it, what to plant beside it, spacing and soil, the varieties that actually hold up here, and where to get it.