Product Details
3-Step Vegetable Gardening: The Quick and Easy Way to Grow Super-Fresh Produce

3-Step Vegetable Gardening: The Quick and Easy Way to Grow Super-Fresh Produce
By Steve Mercer, Sally Roth

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Product Description

Many people would love to enjoy eating super-fresh homegrown produce but don't know how. Starting with what varieties to plant through how to tend their garden and when and how to harvest the fruits of thei labors, this book is the complete vegetable gardening system for busy people. The book breaks things down into three simple steps: sow, grow, and harvest.
Readers will learn how to set their garden; how to install raised beds and a watering system; and why the time spent getting ready to sow will be repaid many times over during the summer. They will find out how to grow, learning all about mulches and weed covers, garden sites, and planting plans. Then day by day through the growing season, they will see how to make their garden grow. And finally they'll learn how to tell when it's time to harvest and how to store vegetables they can't eat right away.
By spending growing their own vegetables, readers will enjoy crops harvested at the peak of perfection, bringing food from garden to table in minutes flat. And they'll be eating the freshest home-grown vegetables, herbs, and fruit available instead of the underripe or limp, sickly offerings so often found in supermarkets.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #384303 in Books
  • Published on: 2008-11-01
  • Released on: 2008-11-01
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 224 pages

Features

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Sally Roth has lived and gardened in three distinct climates, Pacific Northwest, Midwest, and Northeast and has visited gardens around the country. Because of this experience, Sally avoids a shortcoming of many garden writers who become so focused on conditions in their garden that they don't take account of problems gardeners experience in other parts of the country.
 
Sally is the co-author of Rodale's Successful Organic Gardening: Companion Planting (1994) and has also co-written Taylor's Guide to Fruits and Berries (1996). She wrote The Successful Herb Gardener: Growing and Using Herbs--Quickly and Easily (Country Living Gardener, 2005). She has written many other gardening books and currently lives in New Harmony, Indiana.
 
 
Steve Mercer has worked for the past 25 years on one of the UK's leading gardening magazines (Garden: Which), researching, testing, and writing about all kinds of vegetables, techniques, and equipment. He has run two large vegetable gardens and is just about to start a third from scratch. Despite this, he can’t resist growing vegetables and herbs in pots and in the back garden, too, for extra fresh produce. Steve lives in the United Kingdom and is a member of the RHS vegetable trials committee.
 

Customer Reviews

Great reference4
I bought this book from a local book store and it's a great reference for the beginner gardener. It goes into detail about how to make raised beds, container gardening, and exactly how to raise a variety of fruits, herbs, and vegetables. It specifically states when to plant certain crops, how to plant them, and all the details you need.

I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 because of a few things. First, in certain plants, it states the type of fertilizer that the plants need, but it doesn't recommend an N-P-K ratio to use. Second, it doesn't give container sizes for all plants. I know some don't grow well in containers, but I don't think they gave enough detail in this area. Third, although this happens in a few books I've read, they don't specifically say what tomato suckers are, they just say to get rid of them. I had to do a search on what they were to find out. There are a few other things, but they're minor.

Despite it's shortcomings, it's invaluable for the beginner. Some of the things it talks about are: plant spacing, planting depth, transplanting, intercropping, double sowing, how to make raised beds, how to grow the plants, how to train them, how to harvest, when to harvest, and more.

Before this book, I knew next to nothing about vegetable gardening, but I feel this book is a great starting point for anyone interested in gardening.

Confidently recommended for personal and community library Gardening/Horticulture reference collections5
First time gardener or expertise. In either event, learning to sow, grow and harvest vegetables and fruits can be a frustrating task if you aren't receiving the results you want or don't know the best way to grow your fruits and vegetables. In "3 Step Vegetable Gardening", aspiring gardeners will learn how to grow and harvest dozen of popular vegetables and fruits. Step by step photographs show important gardening tasks and green tips tell you how to help the planet while watching your garden grow. Author Steve Mercer, with the assistance of Sally Roth, U.S. Consultant, provide a beautifully rich text with step by step instructions, frequently asked questions, gardening tips, and hundreds of photos, making "3 Step Vegetable Gardening" an essential 'how to' guide for horticultural efforts ranging from small gardens in pots to large gardens in a landscape. Easy to read and thoroughly 'user friendly', readers will follow their green thumbs each step of the way with instructions on sowing, growing and harvesting. A must have for anyone wishing to grow vegetables and fruits, "3 Step Vegetable Gardening" is confidently recommended for personal and community library Gardening/Horticulture reference collections.