Product Description

Explore the world of fragrant and savory herbs and get tips on how to grow them abundantly. Learn how to use herbs in cooking, as well as in blends, herbed oils and vinegars. Over 90 color illustrations.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #152611 in Books
• Published on: 1999-03-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

From Library Journal
A plethora of herb gardening and cooking books is available, some by Creasy herself. But if your collection needs a new one, this work, combining gardening information with recipes, is recommended. The price is a bargain for an attractive, well-designed package with over 70 color photographs and illustrations. Included are sections on growing herbs and designing an herb garden. An appendix addresses pest and disease control, and there is a selection of recipes using fresh herbs. The heart of the book, though, is the "Encyclopedia of Culinary Herbs: From Angelica to Thyme." Here each plant is pictured in color with text explaining how to grow and prepare it. Both Creasy and the "Edible Garden" series are well regarded; Creasy's The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping (LJ 5/1/82) was named one of the 75 Great American Garden Books by the American Horticultural Society. Her new book is a visual treat that also offers useful, well-organized, and well-presented information.?Carol Cubberley, Univ. of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"If any one person can be credited with elevating the status of the vegetable in American gardens, it's Rosalind Creasy." -- Garden Design

From the Inside Flap

Customer Reviews

The Edible Herb Garden
As a beginner to herb gardening, this book is exactly what I needed to get me started, and motivated! It is a valuable reference book as it provides the essentials to a successful garden in a format that is consistent and easy to read. It includes a complete encyclopedia of culinary herbs with beautifully detailed photos that are good enough to eat! The photos make it easy for the beginner to learn the names of herbs and to easily identify all varieties. This book also contains sections on Planting and Maintenance, and Pest and Disease Control. It's an all-in-one tool. I highly recommend the entire Edible Garden series.

For The Person Who Wants to Cook with Herbs
There are many books available to spend time on all the varying uses for herbs (gardens, medicine, etc.) and nothing wrong with that. But for those of us who are into herbs for the sole purpose of the culinary zest they so wonderfully provide, this is significant resource in a small, well done fashion.

Color photos, herb by herb info, as well as recipes and aids with sources, insect and disease problems, this is valuable aid to us herb growers for the table.

From planning to preparing to planting to cultivating to problem cures to harvesting to recipe utilization, this is solid 105 pages of herb wisdom.

Lots of pretty photos......
What's not to like about Rosalind Creasy's garden books? Creasy is an advocate of eating your garden. For years, I went back and forth - Do I grow flowers? Do I grow vegetables? Creasy says you can grow both and she shows you how. Her books are not filled with pages and pages of tedious text on preparing soil, planting, watering weeding harvesting. Instead, she includes several photos of her hired hands doing all that tiresome stuff while she takes pages of photos of plants (a small "encyclopedia") and receipes (a small cook book).

I was inspired by Creasy to try peppers in pots this past summer, and the Goddess must have smiled because all the plants behaved well and furnished a bumper crop of hot peppers for my pepper-loving Senegal parrot. So, for the first time ever - inspired by Creasy - I tried lavender in a clay pot and it worked well. Usually, my lavender plants mold from underneath because although the summers in the Washington DC area are usually hot, they are not dry like those in Provence where lavender excells. Clay pots are a good idea because the lavender plant sits above the ground away from the damp and any moisture falling from a watering can or the sky wicks away quickly. I have grown other herbs in pots - parsley, scented geraniums, basil, but never tried lavender until this year. I also grew several kinds of mint plants in both clay pots and the kind with a water well underneath, which is the only way to grow them as they are so invasive.

I love Creasy's EDIBLE HERB GARDEN because in my estimation a picture is worth a thousand words, and as an experienced gardener, I don't need a lot of instruction. Creasy includes plenty of pictures that are useful to me because they give me design ideas. I can look at a garden photo, recognize plants and judge how much work is involved in realizing the scene depicted. Creasy doesn't really advise you concerning the amount of work involved to maintain a scene. She also grown herbs in a California climate.

I've used other sources to help me learn how to grow herbs (Rodale in particular), and I've used Creasy's book to discover new and beautiful ideas for displaying culinary herbs in the perennial garden, as bedding plants or in pots.

Creasy offers nifty vinegar, oil, and tea recipes using culinary herbs as well as items such as barbecued veggies on Rosemary skewers. Collect her series, but be warned, you will need a good "how to" book or your own personal gardener to achieve her results.