Kitchen Gardening for Beginners: A Simple Guide to Growing Fruit and Vegetables

by Simon Akeroyd

Learn how to grow more than seventy types of fruits and vegetables, while finding tips for dealing with weeds, pests, and diseases in this all-in-one gardening guide for growing tastier and healthier fruits and vegetables. Kitchen Gardening for Beginners takes readers through ten steps to preparing a garden plot, providing need-to-know techniques, such as sowing, planting, feeding, mulching, watering, and weeding, as well as easy projects including making a compost bin and planting a fruit tree.

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2013

About the author

Simon is an author having written over 30 gardening books, and contributes to national gardening magazines and newspapers. He has also featured as a TV presenter and on radio. He was previously Garden Manager for both RHS and National Trust. He was also a BBC producer.

He currently lives in South Devon.

Reviews

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This will be my reference book for as long as I garden. It is so easy to understand, is packed full of great ideas and is inspiring.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

It had enough useful information for me to learn a good number of things! Like - uh oh, I better go prune that blueberry bush that's in my new house's backyard. But at the same time, it tried to spread itself a little too thin. I'd rather more than a page for each new thing - in fact, my preference would be if they had one book focused on prep and another focused on plans. A girl can dream, right?

[Simone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent reference book worth owning. Not just for beginners! You can always count on DK publishing for creating books with excellent photography and precise wording. This book has double page layouts on each fruit, vegetable and herb, including some easy DIY projects and a photographic glossary of pests and diseases. I thought I had my garden all planned out, but after reading this book I'm inspired to add a fig tree, peach tree and currants to what I might try this year.

[Amberwench · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent beginning to end! Learn how to site, build, plant, and maintain a traditional defined-bed kitchen garden. Plants have their own entry (so you don't have to read about kale if you don't plan to grow kale), and good photos of pests and diseases help identify problems.
Perfect for the urban homesteader who's starting from scratch and knows sweat equity saves money!

[Melissa Shreve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes!!! Another DK book. Did I mention I will read almost any book with the DK printed on the side. Yep lots of info and Lots and lots of information about gardening. Would add this to my must haves to own in my library.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good beginners guide. Keep in mind the growing recommendations are for his growing area (in the UK I believe). Good references but definitely not organic focused

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great book of info for anyone starting a garden. Too bad I don't have room.😑

[Gale Penton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great reference for gardening.

[Jasmine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Concise, but still jam-packed with practical and useful information. Makes gardening seem so approachable!

[OurageSam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great reference for learning where to beginning

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent resource for beginners especially regarding the set-up of a garden and compost pile, etc. with some great idea's for recycling old materials for use in decoration and garden beds. Also includes some pages particular about some of the popular garden plants and trees, and a fabulous page on what is good for home growing and what is better to simply buy at the store so as to get the best use of your garden plot!

[Shellie (Layers of Thought) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice book with loads of pictures and gardening projects. It's also well organized. However, there is not a lot of information on how to actually garden. It's really an overview. Great book to pick up from the library or possibly for teens or older kids.

[Missy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book would be great for a beginner. Full of pictures and a sentence or two about each stage in the growing cycle. But not much in depth information if your a seasoned gardener.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really great information in here but some parts were strangely written and there were some questions left unanswered.