Fresh Picks

Protect yourself, your children, your pets, and your home from bugs — without using harsh or toxic chemicals! Herbalist Stephanie Tourles offers 75 simple recipes for safe, effective bug repellents you can make at home from all-natural ingredients. For protection from mosquitos, ticks, and other biting insects, there are sprays, balms, body oils, and tinctures, with scents ranging from eucalyptus to floral, lemon, vanilla, and woodsy spice. There are also recipes for pets, such as herbal shampoo, bedding formulas, and flea-and-tick collars and powders. And Tourles includes repellents for the home, such as sachets that repel moths, carpet powders that repel fleas and ants, and essential oil repellents to keep your pantry pest-free. A detailed ingredient dictionary explains the properties of all the herbs, essential oils, and other key ingredients.

For more than three decades, this best-selling guide to the practice of vermicomposting has taught people how to use worms to recycle food waste into nutrient-rich fertilizer for houseplants or gardens. Small-scale, self-contained worm bins can be kept indoors, in a basement, or even under the kitchen sink in an apartment — making vermicomposting a great option for city dwellers and anyone who doesn’t want or can’t have an outdoor compost pile. The fully revised 35th anniversary edition features the original’s same friendly tone, with up-to-date information on the entire process, from building or purchasing a bin (readily available at garden supply stores) to maintaining the worms and harvesting the finished compost.