What do you think?
Rate this book
My Vegetable Love
On an August day in 1994, Carl Klaus stood with his basket overflowing, gazing at his large vegetable garden.
Several times each year, Klaus asks himself why he does it. But none of the obvious answers convey what he goes through in the garden or why he goes through it, day after day, month after month, year after year. In an effort to make sense of it, he resolved to take stock of his garden and his gardening every day during the gardening year of 1995.
The result is this completely delightful memoir of life in the back yard, a new gardening classic. But this book is about more than a garden - it's about all of the things that influence this the weather, the neighborhood, his wife's possibly recurring cancer, the changing nature of the academic community, his impending retirement, his children, his grandchildren; about the last months in the life of his twenty-year old cat; about his dog, his gardening friends, and all the other human and animal inhabitants of his gardening world.
A love of good food and of cooking is a special and delicious feature of this memoir. (Klaus spices things up in the kitchen as eagerly as he tends things in the garden.) Both he and his wife are clearly imaginative and impassioned cooks, turning everything he grows into memorable meals that he vividly describes throughout the book.
Several times each year, Klaus asks himself why he does it. But none of the obvious answers convey what he goes through in the garden or why he goes through it, day after day, month after month, year after year. In an effort to make sense of it, he resolved to take stock of his garden and his gardening every day during the gardening year of 1995.
The result is this completely delightful memoir of life in the back yard, a new gardening classic. But this book is about more than a garden - it's about all of the things that influence this the weather, the neighborhood, his wife's possibly recurring cancer, the changing nature of the academic community, his impending retirement, his children, his grandchildren; about the last months in the life of his twenty-year old cat; about his dog, his gardening friends, and all the other human and animal inhabitants of his gardening world.
A love of good food and of cooking is a special and delicious feature of this memoir. (Klaus spices things up in the kitchen as eagerly as he tends things in the garden.) Both he and his wife are clearly imaginative and impassioned cooks, turning everything he grows into memorable meals that he vividly describes throughout the book.
- GenresGardeningNonfiction
344 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1996
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 8, 2025
If you're a gardener who likes reading about what a regular guy is doing in his vegetable garden, you might enjoy this book. The author taught nonfiction writing at the U. of Iowa and his prose is a pleasure to read, so much so that I found myself reading parts of it aloud to my husband. Highly recommended.
April 29, 2021
This would be an excellent book to read one gardening entry per day. I'm enjoying it too much to ration it! Fortunately it's worth reading again. So maybe next reading I'll find the restraint to read only one entry for each day.
November 25, 2012
Possibly one could read on in My Vegetable Love and not like I did; one entry a day. I suppose it would lead to a completely different reading experience of this daybook.
I slowly found myself reading with bifocal vision: the season's growing process on one side, and the 'how' of this daily record on the other. He is so good at the 'how', Carl Klaus. So versatile. As one has to be when day after day the 500 to 600 word piece is about the same vegetable plot, the weather, the proceeds, the harvesting and the eating. Could I summarize My Vegetable Love, A Journal of a Growing Season I'd say it is about connecting and inter-connectedness and I loved reading it.
I slowly found myself reading with bifocal vision: the season's growing process on one side, and the 'how' of this daily record on the other. He is so good at the 'how', Carl Klaus. So versatile. As one has to be when day after day the 500 to 600 word piece is about the same vegetable plot, the weather, the proceeds, the harvesting and the eating. Could I summarize My Vegetable Love, A Journal of a Growing Season I'd say it is about connecting and inter-connectedness and I loved reading it.
December 22, 2014
I found Klaus's project of recording his gardening activities on a daily basis really tedious and self-indulgent. I liked his passion for gardening and food and at times found his cooking descriptions quite inspiring. However, life distilled to such pursuits is really a tedious one. There wasn’t much urgency in the book even though some urgent threads did run through it – aging and cancer of Klaus’s wife whose character I found annoying in her self-righteousness.
August 26, 2009
I read this college before I even knew how to water plants. I loved it anyway. Now that I have my own garden I'm reading this again for inspiration.
October 29, 2007
What fun to read the trials and joys of gardening from one who really know how! Also insight into people, family and life in general.
September 2, 2009
It was slow going at first, but I'm really getting into it now. And I've really been into food/veg books this summer.
February 22, 2013
When I am an old man I think I will enjoy this journal far more than I do now.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews