I have had great fun reading C. L. Fornari's practical and interesting book entitled Coffee for Roses and 70 Other Misleading Myths About Backyard Gardening.
One quote from this book that I enjoyed is:
People love gooseneck loosestrife because the flowers are really lovely. That's the plants strategy to get invited into the garden. Consider that those beautiful flowers just might be a disguise. Once planted this perennial behaves like Romans conquering the ancient world.
As well as wonderful quotations, this handy book contains a lot of useful advice. For example, I was relieved to learn that daffodils do not need to be dead headed as many are actually sterile and don't produce seeds at all. Even those that do produce seeds, I discovered, don't need dead heading either.
I was also relieved to learn that suckers on tomato plants don't siphon off the plants' energy.
Another nifty piece of advice I learned from this book is that one does not need to cut a rose's stem above a set of five leaves when dead heading or harvesting roses. For years I have religiously done this, but now I discover, unnecessarily so!
If you are looking for a book for a gift for this Mother's Day for a gardening mother, I highly recommend Coffee for Roses.
Notes: Coffee for Roses…and 70 Other Misleading Myths About Backyard Gardening by C. L. Fornari, 2014.