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Vegetable Gardening: From Planting to Picking: The Complete Guide to Creating a Bountiful Garden
Learn how to create and maintain a garden of fresh vegetables, from choosing and planning your plot, preparing the soil, selecting seeds or cultivating seedlings, proper watering, harvesting, and storing, along with planting guides and quick tips.
Nothing beats the taste of vegetables from a home garden, and with Vegetable Gardening it's never been easier. With over 80 varieties of vegetables to choose from, eating delicious, just-picked produce is a snap. Learn every step of creating and maintaining a cornucopia of garden-fresh vegetables: from choosing and planning your plot, preparing the soil, selecting seeds or cultivating seedlings, proper watering, harvesting, and storing.
From composting and mulching to caring for and harvesting vegetables, it's clear that most gardeners want to use organic methods and avoid chemical fertilizers and pesticides. But what happens when things go wrong and organic solutions don't seem to be working? The two authors of this book have different answers to this question.
Jane Courtier takes the view that organic methods are the "first, best choice," but she occasionally uses chemical fertilizer and will resort to chemical pesticides if a serious problem arises. Fern Marshall Bradley writes from the viewpoint of a longtime organic gardener who's chosen to never use any chemicals in her garden. Together they've created a book that looks at vegetable gardening from both points of view. There are substantive issues on both sides-and in the end, it's an individual choice. Let them help you make up your own mind!
Special-feature sidebars provide problem-solver tips, including:
Planting Guides with problem-solver tips on what and how much to plant, site preparation, and when to plant
Temperature alerts for the best growing temperatures
Quick Tips that give additional tidbits of information such as health tips, how to mark the crops, how deep to plant certain seeds, and more
Best of the Bunch provides information about the varieties available, how they produce, growing time, annual or perennial, and more
Guide to Vegetable Yields, Sowing to Harvest Times, A Guide to Seeds, and many more graphs and charts
Nothing beats the taste of vegetables from a home garden, and with Vegetable Gardening it's never been easier. With over 80 varieties of vegetables to choose from, eating delicious, just-picked produce is a snap. Learn every step of creating and maintaining a cornucopia of garden-fresh vegetables: from choosing and planning your plot, preparing the soil, selecting seeds or cultivating seedlings, proper watering, harvesting, and storing.
From composting and mulching to caring for and harvesting vegetables, it's clear that most gardeners want to use organic methods and avoid chemical fertilizers and pesticides. But what happens when things go wrong and organic solutions don't seem to be working? The two authors of this book have different answers to this question.
Jane Courtier takes the view that organic methods are the "first, best choice," but she occasionally uses chemical fertilizer and will resort to chemical pesticides if a serious problem arises. Fern Marshall Bradley writes from the viewpoint of a longtime organic gardener who's chosen to never use any chemicals in her garden. Together they've created a book that looks at vegetable gardening from both points of view. There are substantive issues on both sides-and in the end, it's an individual choice. Let them help you make up your own mind!
Special-feature sidebars provide problem-solver tips, including:
Planting Guides with problem-solver tips on what and how much to plant, site preparation, and when to plant
Temperature alerts for the best growing temperatures
Quick Tips that give additional tidbits of information such as health tips, how to mark the crops, how deep to plant certain seeds, and more
Best of the Bunch provides information about the varieties available, how they produce, growing time, annual or perennial, and more
Guide to Vegetable Yields, Sowing to Harvest Times, A Guide to Seeds, and many more graphs and charts
- GenresGardeningNonfiction
288 pages, Paperback
First published February 16, 2006
1 person is currently reading
43 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 9, 2022
I have been reading a lot of gardening books recently and I like the way that this book is split into more general information and more specific information pertaining to specific veggies and plants. I think it's really comprehensive but would love it if it included more picture examples or picture step-by-step guides. There were some throughout the book but a few more would have really helped to break up the text. Overall is such a great book and resource to have on hand if you are just starting a garden or have been gardening for a while now.
March 12, 2016
Fantastic reference work. I got it from the library, but I'm seriously thinking about buying a copy to keep on hand. I skimmed or skipped some of the sections that didn't apply to me (container gardening, descriptions for specific vegetables I don't like, etc.) but the sections I did read are full of excellent information on starting and maintaining a garden, and there is even some basic information about preserving what you've grown - that's really a subject deserving of its own complete book, but it's good to have some of the basics in mind beforehand, so I appreciated its inclusion. I also liked the section of descriptions of each individual type of vegetable and herb. Although they obviously couldn't cover every single type of plant in existence, they had everything I'm interested in growing, plus several things I never knew I needed. It was very useful for deciding what to grow now, what to prepare for growing next year, and what I really don't want to bother with at all. As a complete novice, I now have a plan and feel much more prepared for starting my own garden.
April 9, 2018
This book is fantastic for the new gardener. I read this every spring as I plant my garden and take it with me to the garden. It was easy for my elementary children to read and understand and apply as they started their garden. I would highly recommend this book.
June 12, 2019
This was a great and thorough reference book. The pictures were of great value, direct and easy planting instructions. I checked this out from the library but I think I need to purchase a copy to keep at home.
June 19, 2022
Good basics for a lot of things, but not in depth enough for each thing.
March 30, 2009
I am putting in a garden for the first time this year and this book was extremely helpful. It explains gardening briefly but in enough detail to get you started. Then you learn if you want to know more about a certain aspect (like growing from seeds indoors, building raised beds, using pesticides, etc) so you can do more research. Everything is explained in very easy to understand terminology with helpful pictures and diagrams. Both sides of the organic/pesticide debate are presented without being pushy so you can make your own decision.
The second half of the book has a two-page spread for each garden vegetable. Each spread includes information about planting, feeding, watering, harvesting, storing, etc. It is a fantastic and visually pleasing book that I would recommend to anyone who is starting from ground zero and those who are still learning vegetable gardening. I'm not sure this has a wealth of information for those who have been doing it for years because it covers a TON of information with limited depth.
The second half of the book has a two-page spread for each garden vegetable. Each spread includes information about planting, feeding, watering, harvesting, storing, etc. It is a fantastic and visually pleasing book that I would recommend to anyone who is starting from ground zero and those who are still learning vegetable gardening. I'm not sure this has a wealth of information for those who have been doing it for years because it covers a TON of information with limited depth.
June 1, 2008
This is a very handy book, and I've now checked it out from the library on two different occasions. A good balance of colorful pictures and sound advice, this book has been more helpful to me than any other this year, as I'm learning to grow some vegetables that I have never tried in the past (potatoes, cucumbers). I may have to shell out the money for my own copy.
Note: This book is aimed at the entire United States (especially the Northeast and Midwest, which seems to be the focus of most vegetable gardening books out there, probably because it's more popular in those areas), so we Californians must judiciously ignore much of the advice regarding frost, etc. But it's arranged in a much more helpful format than many west-coast centered books, so it's perfect for the basics.
Note: This book is aimed at the entire United States (especially the Northeast and Midwest, which seems to be the focus of most vegetable gardening books out there, probably because it's more popular in those areas), so we Californians must judiciously ignore much of the advice regarding frost, etc. But it's arranged in a much more helpful format than many west-coast centered books, so it's perfect for the basics.
January 17, 2010
Really good overview for beginners as well as in-depth information on specific plants. Will probably check out again when I'm ready to get going!
July 23, 2015
great book for beginners
September 11, 2011
Great resource! Learned something new about why my weeds keep coming back. Going to try some tricks now to help me for next season.
February 19, 2014
This year will be my first garden! I found this book answered a lot of basic questions I had and has a lot of good information on specific vegetables. A good read for new to gardening.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews