Whats Happening at Ploughshares this December
We are closing to help prevent the spread of Covid during this surge. We hope to be open again on January 5th. Reading the news it looks like we just had a day in this country when 3000 people died from this horrible disease. I learned when I went to take my test that 10% of people coming in to be tested are positive. Luckily I was not one of those who tested positive.
The vaccines are coming and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Please everyone wear masks and follow the advice of the medical professionals.
I want to see every one of you shopping here this spring, healthy and safe from year 2020.
Virtual Hugs and Elbow Bumps
Jeff Bridge
Ploughshares Nursery
December 14th 2020
Papa the Cat Recommends these Books for Winter Interest
‘The Wizard and the Prophet’
From the best-selling, award-winning author of 1491 and 1493–an
incisive portrait of the two little-known twentieth-century scientists,
Norman Borlaug and William Vogt, whose diametrically opposed views
shaped our ideas about the environment, laying the groundwork for how
people in the twenty-first century will choose to live in tomorrow’s
world.
In forty years, Earth’s population will reach ten billion. Can our world
support that? What kind of world will it be? Those answering these
questions generally fall into two deeply divided groups–Wizards and
Prophets, as Charles Mann calls them in this balanced, authoritative,
nonpolemical new book. The Prophets, he explains, follow William Vogt, a
founding environmentalist who believed that in using more than our
planet has to give, our prosperity will lead us to ruin. Cut back! was his mantra. Otherwise everyone will lose!
The Wizards are the heirs of Norman Borlaug, whose research, in effect,
wrangled the world in service to our species to produce modern
high-yield crops that then saved millions from starvation. Innovate! was Borlaug’s cry. Only in that way can everyone win!
Mann delves into these diverging viewpoints to assess the four great
challenges humanity faces–food, water, energy, climate
change–grounding each in historical context and weighing the options
for the future. With our civilization on the line, the author’s
insightful analysis is an essential addition to the urgent conversation
about how our children will fare on an increasingly crowded Earth.
The bible of vegetable gardening in the San Francisco Bay Area has been revised and updated Packed with more than 400 pages of reliable information, Golden Gate Gardening offers encyclopedic coverage of gardening principles and practices specific to the Bay Area and the Northern California coast. Author Pam Peirce explains strategies for growing common favorite vegetables and herbs, plus unusual ones that bring variety to the garden. She includes information on organizing a garden, dealing with pests, assessing a microclimate, cultivating fruit trees, gardening on a rooftop, harvesting the crop, and creating delicious gardener’s dishes. This third edition also contains new or updated information on resources for specific seeds, tomato planting, organic gardening, and vegetables not included in previous editions, including amaranth, shell beans, Chinese broccoli, broccoli raab, Florence fennel, oca, okra, and quinoa. Charts, sidebars, maps, and online resources help make the vegetable gardening experience easier and more fun.
Bay Area Gardening
edited by Barbara J. Euser
If you are more the engineer type you might not appreciate this
collection of thought provoking and instructive essays on gardening in
the Bay Area’s amazing micro-climates. But I could be wrong, why not
give this book a shot?
-Jeff B.
Plougshares
Coffee and Tea
The most comprehensive and informative book on the subject of coffee and tea ever written. This is the book they gave to PEETs baristas back in the day. History, horticulture and miscellania galore, never talks down to the reader, yet always engaging. If I gush, it’s because I love this book.
-Jeff Bridge
Ploughshares Nursery Manager
Ploughshares Nursery trains and employs residents of the
Alameda Point Collaborative supportive
housing community. Ploughshares Nursery is a non-profit social enterprise of the Alameda Point Collaborative supportive housing community.
100% of our sales of drought tolerant, native and edible plants support
housing and services for formerly homeless families and individuals
living on the old Alameda Naval Base in Alameda CA