What gardeners want most is a bigger and better return on their investment of time and money—maximum yields and superior flavor for edibles, long-lasting blooms for flowers. Derek Fell's Grow This! features expert advice for choosing and growing the top-performing plants (and avoiding the ones that disappoint). Derek Fell has grown hundreds of varieties and annually visits gardens and test plots across America, so he's qualified to guide gardeners to the best of the best—more than 600 vegetable, flower, herb, and lawn grass all-stars. He offers honest feedback about plant performance, even when it contradicts favorable public opinion or a grower's claims. Seed racks may be filled with ‘Kentucky Wonder' snap beans, but he dismisses that variety as too fibrous and needy and instead recommends ‘Blue Lake' beans for tenderness and high yields. Fell's firsthand experience means the difference between choosing plant winners and losers. Packed with insider evaluations from seedsmen, growers, and nursery retailers that readers won't find elsewhere, Derek Fell's Grow This! explains industry lingo and debunks marketing hype to help gardeners select the best-performing plants for all garden conditions and goals.

The twentieth anniversary paperback edition, updated with a new preface Winner of the International Bluegrass Music Association Distinguished Achievement Award and of the Country Music People Critics' Choice Award for Favorite Country Book of the Year Beginning with the musical cultures of the American South in the 1920s and 1930s, Bluegrass: A History traces the genre through its pivotal developments during the era of Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys in the forties. It describes early bluegrass's role in postwar country music, its trials following the appearance of rock and roll, its embracing by the folk music revival, and the invention of bluegrass festivals in the mid_sixties. Neil V. Rosenberg details the transformation of this genre into a self-sustaining musical industry in the seventies and eighties is detailed and, in a supplementary preface written especially for this new edition, he surveys developments in the bluegrass world during the last twenty years. Featuring an amazingly extensive bibliography, discography, notes, and index, this book is one of the most complete and thoroughly researched books on bluegrass ever written.

Sustainability is a key framework for analyzing biological systems—and turfgrass is no exception. It is part of a complex that encompasses turfgrass interactions with different environments and the suitability of different turfgrasses for specific environments. In addition to its biological role, turfgrass—in the form of lawns, green spaces, and playing surfaces—brings beneficial sociological effects to an increasingly urbanized society. This book presents a comprehensive overview of current knowledge and issues in the field of turfgrass research and management, including the genetics and breeding, the diseases and pests, and the ecology of turfgrasses, and will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers.