Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2342382 in Books
• Published on: 1996-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 128 pages

Amazon.com Review
Imagine heading out to your garden to pick succulent tomatoes, flavorful herbs, crisp beans, and sweet strawberries bursting with juice, instead of having to trek to the market. Fresh food straight from the garden adds a new dimension to your cooking that store-bought vegetables can't even touch, and you can save a fortune by growing your own shallots, asparagus, and artichokes. All techniques are fully described in this authoritative volume, which contains seasonal charts to help you keep your garden in peak condition throughout the year.

From Publishers Weekly
The kitchen garden is back in favor, and while fashion and fantasy enhance today's versions of the old vegetable patch, these family-size potageres continue to nourish bodies and nurture souls. Successfully adapted from the original British publication to accommodate American climates and gardeners, this Wayside Gardens edition leads readers through the steps of planning, prepping, maintaining and harvesting the veggies and fruits, herbs and flowers typically grown in the backyard plot. Color photos and line drawings illustrate a variety of kitchen garden designs (e.g., square or narrow beds) and approaches (raised or on sloped ground). Soil maintenance, crop rotation and seasonal chores are covered, while extensive chapters detailing vegetables and fruits offer a wealth of advice and tricks of the trade?e.g., growing celery in a trench, forcing rhubarb through a pot, training an apple tree to grow flat as an espalier against a fence or wall and starting fruit trees from hardwood cuttings. This pointed and clear combination of text, charts, drawings and photos, anticipates and answers concerns likely to be raised by both first-timers and experienced gardeners.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Garden Basics with Picture Pizzazz
This book from the Wayside Gardens Collection belongs on the shelves of those who decide they must have a Kitchen Garden as part of their landscape. While some books of this type (such as 'Herbs: Gardens, Decorations and Recipes' by Emelie Tolley and Chris Mead) hybrid recipes and food related chapters with garden information, Andi Clevely's 'The Kitchen Garden' is one book that actually sticks to the gardening aspect of growing food for the kitchen. Kitchen gardens are a bit different from the usual veggie patch and Clevely's book well illustrates that fact. In fact, the illustrations are a real asset of owning this book!

With beautiful pictures of well designed examples, hand drawn ornamentation and how-to directions, 'The Kitchen Garden' is spiced with the colorful additions which make many of today's garden books such a delight to the eyes. The format begins with garden basics and moves into specific plant profiles for vegetables, fruits, and herbs. I liked the clear directions and information given.

If you have many garden books, you may find the coverage of the basics repetitive for you, but I thought this was well done, both easy to access and well-written. The helpful hints and tabled information are added in throughout the book in a visually accessible and pleasing way. It is subtitled as "A Practical Guide to Planning & Planting" and I think that is exactly what it is, with the added value of those lovely photos and illustrations.

If you aren't interested in growing food, or if you need something highly detailed in the practice of improving your produce, or understanding organic gardening methods, you might not fully appreciate the simplicity this book offers. Sometimes, though, clear, to-the-point information garnished with attractive pictures is the perfect garden guide.

crossposted from "Ilona's Garden Journal"