What's Wrong With My Vegetable Garden?


Book Description

From the bestselling authors of What’s Wrong with My Plant? comes the perfect companion for the edible gardener We seek the satisfaction of nurturing amazing plants that become our platter of gourmet vegetables. We crave that moment when the flavor of a freshly picked tomato explodes in our mouths. Above all, by growing our own food, we know it is safe, clean, and chemical-free. The authors offer detailed plant portraits of popular vegetables complete with growth habit, growing season, planting techniques and temperature, soil, light, and water requirements. Rounded out with problem identification and organic solutions to these common problems, What's Wrong With My Vegetable Garden? will quickly become one of your most essential garden tools.




Plant Partners


Book Description

Companion planting has a long history of use by gardeners, but the explanation of why it works has been filled with folklore and conjecture. Plant Partners delivers a research-based rationale for this ever-popular growing technique, offering dozens of ways you can use scientifically tested plant partnerships to benefit your whole garden. Through an enhanced understanding of how plants interact with and influence each other, this guide suggests specific plant combinations that improve soil health and weed control, decrease pest damage, and increase biodiversity, resulting in real and measurable impacts in the garden.




Starter Vegetable Gardens


Book Description

Develop your green thumb as you learn to grow your own food. In this introductory guide to growing vegetables, Barbara Pleasant addresses common problems that first-time gardeners encounter. Using simple language and illustrated garden layouts, Pleasant shows you how to start, maintain, and eventually expand an organic vegetable garden in even the tiniest backyard. With handy tips on enriching soil, planting schedules, watering, fighting pests, and more, you’ll quickly discover how easy it is to enjoy your own homegrown vegetables.




The Vegetable Grower's Handbook


Book Description

Garden efficiently and grow more food - Huw Richards shows you how. Following the success of Veg in One Bed and Grow Food for Free, in The Vegetable Grower's Handbook Huw shares his tried-and-tested approaches from his own garden so you can unearth your garden's potential. With simple yet effective methods, such as nurturing healthy soil, optimizing space, and following a planting plan, anyone can be a productive vegetable grower while working in harmony with nature. As well as Huw's recommendations on good planning and infrastructure, he has tips for plenty of quick wins too, such as how to attract beneficial pollinators. You'll be amazed at what you can achieve by setting goals, planning ahead, and trialling new ideas. Every successful business has a strategy. Why not apply one to your vegetable patch?




Grow Food For Free


Book Description

Huw Richards set himself a challenge - to grow his own fruit and veg for free for a year. He succeeded and now wants to help you do the same. Can't afford a raised bed? Try repurposing an old wooden pallet. Don't want to spend money on buying plants? Look in the fridge and your kitchen cupboards for food that you can plant. Need a particular tool? Barter or borrow from a neighbor. Don't have a garden? See if someone in your area has an untended patch you can turn into a well-loved veg plot. Huw's Grow Food for Free has the inspiration and practical advice you need to start, grow, love, propagate and harvest your own fruit and veg organically and at zero-cost. This is real sustainability!




Organic Gardening for Everyone


Book Description

If you want to grow healthy vegetables at home, but have hesitated because it seems too hard and time consuming, Organic Gardening for Everyone is your perfect hands-on guide—an “if I can do it, you can do it” case study that addresses your concerns and gets you started. Loaded with practical advice and step-by-step guidance, Organic Gardening for Everyone takes a very personal and friendly approach to a subject that can be intimidating. It is a first-class primer on organic vegetable gardening, and an inspirational story about how anyone can balance the rigors of gardening with the demands of a modern, family-oriented lifestyle. In 2012, a California mom decided to start an organic vegetable garden. But she went about it in an unusual way: she crowdsourced it by launching a YouTube channel under the name "CaliKim" and asking for help. And then she started planting. As questions came up, she turned to her viewers and subscribers and they replied with answers and advice. As she learned, her garden grew successfully—even in the hot, harsh California climate. Her expertise also grew, and now she answers many more questions than she asks and has become a very accomplished home gardener. And CaliKim has a great story to tell: growing healthy organic vegetables for your family is not difficult, even for today’s time-challenged lifestyles. She provides complete step-by-step information on growing the most popular edibles organically, and also gives sound advice on how to take on the challenges of balancing a hectic lifestyle with successful growing—and how to involve the whole family in the process. You'll be rewarded for your effort every time you place a plate of natural, organic vegetables on the family dinner table knowing exactly what they are, what is in them, and where they came from.




What's Wrong With My Plant? (And How Do I Fix It?)


Book Description

Dealing with a sick plant is one of the most frustrating situations a gardener can face. More often than not, we have no idea what is causing the problem, or how to fix it. Fortunately, help is at hand. What's Wrong With My Plant? (And How Do I Fix It?) provides an easy system for visually diagnosing any problem, and matching it to the right cure. This innovative and easy-to-use guide is split into three parts. Part One presents easy-to-follow, illustrated flow charts — organized by where on the plant the symptoms appear — that allow readers to accurately diagnose the problem. The format is so simple it doesn't even require knowing the name of the plant; all you need to know is whether the problem is affecting its roots, stem, flowers, or leaves. It does not matter whether the plant is a houseplant, perennial, vegetable, tree, or shrub. Part Two offers a 100% organic way to fix the problem. From improper growing conditions and environmental factors, to molds, pests, and diseases, every problem has a safe, natural solution. Part Three shows photographs and drawings of stressed, damaged, and diseased plants that help with accurate comparison. Whether your garden consists of herbs on a kitchen windowsill, a vegetable garden, an elaborate backyard border, or a container on a patio, What's Wrong With My Plant? is an indispensable resource. If you can see it, you can fix it. Curing a sick plant just doesn't get any easier.




Rodale's Vegetable Garden Problem Solver


Book Description

Combining a troubleshooting approach with encyclopedic coverage and drawing on the most up-to-date research on biological and non- or low-toxic controls, Rodale$1 (Bs Vegetable Garden Problem Solver features: more than 60 vegetables, organized alphabetically from asparagus to zucchini individual pest entries on the 30 most common insect pests and how to combat them individual disease entries on the 30 most common vegetable plant diseases$1 (Bincluding symptoms and causes and ways to keep plants disease-free a problem-solving approach to such favorite gardening topics as seed-starting, soil, weather, watering, crop rotation, fertilizing, transplanting, and season extension "Beyond the Basics" sidebars for those willing to go the extra mile to eradicate a problem in the garden in a safe and natural way.




Veg in One Bed


Book Description

Gardening YouTube sensation Huw Richards shows how to inexpensively grow year-round vegetables from just one raised bed. Keyed to a temperate coastal climate but adaptable to variations in temperature and rainfall, Huw's clear, practical advice will help you produce a bountiful harvest with minimal space and effort. In just one raised bed, green thumb wunderkind Huw Richards shows you how to grow vegetables easily, organically, abundantly, and inexpensively so you have something to harvest every month of the year. Month by month, discover what you need to do and how to do it. Try it in your yard, a small garden, or even on a roof terrace. Everything is explained in clear, photographed steps: building your bed, growing from seed, planting, feeding, and harvesting. Huw shows how to guarantee early success by starting off young plants on a windowsill. He suggests what to grow in each part of the bed and provides alternative vegetables to swap in or out depending on what you like eating. No-dig gardening methods remove most of the back-breaking work, too. Veg in One Bed goes beyond the inspiring demonstrations on his YouTube channel Huw's Nursery. In this book, he organizes all of his ideas and suggestions into a blueprint for growing your own vegetables month by month. Very little growing experience? Only a small space? No matter--with Veg in One Bed, you can still eat food you have grown throughout the year.




No Dig


Book Description

Work in partnership with nature to nurture your soil for healthy plants and bumper crops - without back-breaking effort! Have you ever wondered how to transform a weedy plot into a thriving vegetable garden? Well now you can! By following the simple steps set out in No Dig, in just a few short hours you can revolutionize your vegetable patch with plants already in the ground from day one! Charles Dowding is on a mission to teach that there is no need to dig over the soil, but by minimizing intervention you are actively boosting soil productivity. In fact, The less you dig, the more you preserve soil structure and nurture the fungal mycelium vital to the health of all plants. This is the essence of the No Dig system that Charles Dowding has perfected over a lifetime growing vegetables. So put your gardening gloves on and get ready to discover: - Guides and calendars of when to sow, grow, and harvest. - Inspiring information and first-hand guidance from the author - “Delve deeper” features look in-depth at the No Dig system and the facts and research that back it up. - The essential role of compost and how to make your own at home. - The importance of soil management, soil ecology, and soil health. Now one of the hottest topics in environmental science, this "wood-wide web" has informed Charles's practice for decades, and he's proven it isn't just trees that benefit - every gardener can harness the power of the wood-wide web. Featuring newly- commissioned step-by-step photography of all stages of growing vegetables and herbs, and all elements of No Dig growing, shot at Charles’s beautiful market garden in Somerset, you too will be able to grow more veg with less time and effort, and in harmony with nature - so join the No Dig revolution today! A must-have volume for followers of Charles Dowding who fervently believe in his approach to low input, high yield gardening, as well as gardeners who want to garden more lightly on the earth, with environmentally friendly techniques like organic and No Dig.