Featured Books & Orcharding Resources

Co-authored by Silver Creek Nursery's own Steph! This book was written for all the wonderful folks who have asked us so many grafting questions over the years! Our online grafting course delves into even more detail, but this book is the ultimate guide to get you started!

This book offers a results-oriented approach to mastering grafting techniques. Whether you’re adding a new branch to an existing tree, crafting a whole new tree from a rootstock, or propagating a beloved heirloom tree, this book is your road map to success.

Susan Poizner, author of Fruit Tree Grafting for Everyone and creator of the online grafting and fruit tree care courses at OrchardPeople.com, is joined by Steph Muma of Silver Creek Nursery to help you transform your garden through fruit tree grafting. In this guide, you will learn:

• How to harvest scionwood in the winter.
• Techniques for cleft, bark, and whip grafting in the spring
• Methods for chip and T-bud grafting in the summer
• Essential aftercare practices for long-term graft success

Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced grower, Fruit Tree Grafting for Everyone will empower you to create productive, diverse, and fruit-filled landscapes in your own backyard and beyond.

If you want this item(s) shipped to you and the shipping fees don't seem right, please contact us directly and we'll get a proper rate for you!

The Holistic Orchard: Tree Fruits and Berries the Biological Way demystifies the basic skills everybody should know about the inner-workings of the orchard ecosystem, as well as orchard design, soil biology, and organic health management. Detailed insights on grafting, planting, pruning, and choosing the right varieties for your climate are also included, along with a step-by-step instructional calendar to guide growers through the entire orchard year. The extensive profiles of pome fruits (apples, pears, Asian pears, quinces), stone fruits (cherries, peaches, nectarines, apricots, plums), and berries (raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, gooseberries, currants, and elderberries) will quickly have you savoring the prospects.

Michael Phillips has been a huge inspiration for how we run things here at Silver Creek Nursery. From considering the principles of orchard ecosystems to the holistic spray recipe we have listed on our website, his knowledge and insight has been an irreplaceable resource for us.

In The Regenerative Grower’s Guide to Garden Amendments, experimental gardener and author Nigel Palmer provides practical, detailed instructions that are accessible to every grower who wants to achieve a truly sustainable garden ecosystem—all while enjoying better results at a fraction of the cost of commercial fertilizer products. These recipes go beyond fertilizer replacement, resulting in greater soil biological activity and mineral availability. They also increase pest and disease resistance, yields, and nutrient density.

Stella Natura Biodynamic Planting Calendar for 2027  Working with Cosmic Rhythms.

The Stella Natura^® Biodynamic Planting Calendar joins in the long ancestral tradition of orienting our work on the land with the rhythms of the cosmos.

Founded on the work of Rudolf Steiner, the approach taken in the Stella Natura Calendar seeks to renew ancestral agrarian wisdom through modern spiritual scientific research.  

The mission of this Calendar is to help awaken human partnership with the cosmos in the service of tending to the farm, garden, and natural world, especially plants! To this end, the
Sun and Moon are the planetary bodies upon which this Calendar places the strongest emphasis, as the rhythms of their relationships and influences are most closely observable and practically applied in relation to plant growth.

The charts in this calendar offer advice for when to sow seeds and best times to cultivate the garden and farm crops to enhance their roots (carrots, beets, etc.), flowers (chamomile, zinnias, etc.), leaves (lettuce, spinach, kale …), or fruits (squash, beans, tomatoes, …). This is based on the Moon’s passage through the constellations of the zodiac. Unfavorable times for sowing are also indicated, to help avoid those inexplicable crop failures.

Initiated by Sherry Wildfeuer in 1978, Stella Natura has been heartfully produced by her since that time. After 46 years at the helm, Sherry identified Alex Tuchman, director of Spikenard Farm Honeybee Sanctuary, as her chosen successor in this work. Alex and Sherry have worked mindfully and joyously together on this transition and have collaborated closely on the last several issues.

Since Steiner’s time, great contributions towards developing this new star wisdom have been taken by Lilly Kolisko, Elisabeth Vreede, Willi Sucher, Maria Thun, as well as contemporary colleagues like Sherry Wildfeuer, Dennis Klocek, Jonathan Hilton, Mary Stewart Adams, Brian Gray, Malcolm Gardner, and many more.