Save money and eat fresh with this hands-on guide to home-growing Growing you own produce is the only way to enjoy delicious, garden-fresh fruit and veg all year round. This practical manual gives you the lowdown on everything from finding the right tools and choosing which plants to grow, to nurturing your crops and bringing in your first harvest. The easy-to-follow advice will help you get started straight away and become a confident and successful kitchen gardener. * Get going with growing - discover which plants are best for you and how to make the most of your outdoor space * Prepare your plot - learn how to set up and maintain healthy beds for your fruit and vegetables * Grow tasty veg - choose your favourite veggies from asparagus and broccoli to courgettes, sweet corn and many more * Grow your own fruit salad - get quick results from fast-growing berries and learn to nurture slow-growing tree fruit and exotic greenhouse produce

In this truly innovative book Lucy Hutchings – aka She Grows Veg – proves that vegetable gardening doesn't always require outdoor space.

Through clever uses of space and containers, understanding of growing conditions and a unique, design-led approach, Lucy showcases how anyone can grow pretty much anything in their back garden, courtyard, balcony or kitchen.

Lucy creates 19 projects, from living vegetable walls and hydroponics basics, to indoor greenhouses and hanging herb racks that have all the decorative style and visual interest of ornamental house plants.

With step-by-step illustrations and stunning photography, with Get Up and Grow, you can go from gardening novice to growing pro in a matter of weeks. Lucy is blazing a trail for new-wave gardening with a mantra of anything is possible, for anyone.

A practical back-to-basics guide to achieving food security and financial independence. What if you could really raise or grow all the food your family needs? In this fully illustrated book, you'll learn to create an autonomous, diversified, and sustainable garden and to cultivate and maintain it following the main principles of permaculture. If you want to move towards greater food autonomy and you have sufficient space, you can also grow grains, keep chickens, and have a few beehives. Design and grow a prolific organic vegetable garden Learn how to save seeds from one year to the next Discover techniques for collecting water Read about beekeeping tools and how to use them Learn about chicken breeds and how to keep your birds healthy and happy Gaining food autonomy means depending less on grocery stores and food supply chains. But it is also offers the pleasure of eating healthy and delicious products straight from your land, while respecting the environment.

A kitchen garden, or potager, is a celebration of the seasons: brimming with vegetables, herbs, flowers, and even fruit trees, it's our link with nature and a source for fresh produce. The kitchen garden has always been an important part of life in the rural south, at times meaning the difference between being well-fed or going to bed hungry. In recent times, the kitchen garden has become fashionable, and now more and more homeowners (in cities, suburbs, as well as the country) are reaping the delicious rewards of growing their own food. A kitchen garden needs little more than a small raised bed, so an aspiring gardener with only a modest backyard will have plenty of room to get started. Have a sprawling yard and an appetitie for an agricultural adventure? The kitchen gardener can try his hand at some produce requiring a little more space: fruit trees, corn, or pumpkins. Starting with location and soil preparation (where most gardens thrive or fail), authors William D. Adams and Thomas R. LeRoy will take you ste-by-step into the world of the southern kitchen garden. Planting guides for each fruit and vegetable, useful information on propogation and pest-control, recipes scattered throughout, and Adams' own beautiful photography make The Southern Kitchen Garden truly essential reading for all gardeners ready to bring along their produce from seed to the supper table.

Highly valued for its unique flavors, textures, and colors, recent research has shown berry fruit to be high in antioxidants, vitamin C, fiber, folic acid, and other beneficial functional compounds. The food industry has also widely used berry fruits in beverages, ice cream, yogurts, and jams. With the rapidly growing popularity of this unique crop it is important to have a single resource for all aspects of the industry from production technologies to nutritional and health benefits. Drawing on the knowledge of leading international experts, Berry Fruit: Value-Added Products for Health Promotion is a comprehensive reference on the handling, use, and functional components of berry fruit. Beginning with an introduction to the current state of the industry, the book covers worldwide production and trends specific to each berry including annual, perennial, and off-season systems. The contributors go into great detail regarding the chemical composition of berries including carbohydrates, organic acids, enzymes, vitamins, and minerals; phytochemicals; antioxidants; and the functionality of pigments such as anthocyanins. Chapters address quality and safety concerns during post-harvest handling and storage, deterioration and microbial safety for the fresh market, and techniques to extend shelf-life including cold-storage and controlled atmosphere packaging. Finally, an extensive section highlights processing technologies and the production of value-added foods such as freezing, dehydrating, and canning; preserves, jellies, and jams; and the intelligent use of processing by-products. Presenting scientific background, research results, and critical reviews, as well as case studies andreferences, Berry Fruit: Value-Added Products for Health Promotion provides a valuable resource for current knowledge and further research and development of berry fruit for the food industry.

With over 300 recipe ideas and many wonderful stories from the fruit garden, Tender: Volume II - A cook's guide to the fruit garden is the definitive guide to cooking with fruit from the presenter of BBC One's Simple Cooking. 'When I dug up my lawn to grow my own vegetables and herbs I planted fruit too. A handful of small trees - plum, apple and pear - some raspberry, blackberry and currant bushes and even strawberries in pots suddenly joined my patch of potatoes, beans and peas. These fruits became the backbone of my home baking, the stars in my cakes and pastries and even inspired the odd pot of jam. More than this, I started to use them in new ways too, from a weekday supper of pork chops with cider and apples to a Chinese Sunday roast with spiced plum sauce. The hot family puddings and fruit ices we had always loved so much suddenly took on a delicious new significance.' With over 300 recipe ideas and many wonderful stories from the fruit garden, Tender: Volume II - A cook's guide to the fruit garden is the definitive guide to cooking with fruit from the presenter of BBC One's Simple Cooking.

Drawing directly from his experience as an acclaimed climate-change gardener, and of setting up a kitchen garden from scratch for River Cottage, Mark explains the practical aspects of organic growing, introduces us to a whole world of vegetables we may not have previously considered, and does away with alienating gardening jargon once and for all. Mark begins with a catalogue of vegetables that will grow in this country, explaining for each their benefits, what varieties to go for, dos and don'ts, and popular culinary uses. He then invites us to create a wish list of foods, and shows us his own list from his early gardening days. Next, he explains how to turn this wish list into a coherent kitchen garden plan appropriate for our space, whether it be a patch of acidic soil, a roof-top garden or an allotment, whether we put on our wellies in every free moment or are 'time-poor' gardeners. Then he puts all the theory into practice, showing us how to look after nutrients in the soil, how to resist pests and diseases, and how to make our garden sustainable and organic. In clear, concise sections we learn about seed trays, supporting plants with climbing structures, mulching, composting, companion planting, irrigation and promoting pollination, and there are additional tables showing sowing and harvesting times, plant sizes, and alternative varieties of plants for different sites.About thirty recipes and a directory of useful addresses finish the book, and the handbook is complemented by bright colour photography throughout. Practical and inspiring, with a textured hard cover and an introduction by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, "Veg Patch" is destined to join Handbooks No. 1, 2 and 3 as an indispensible household reference.

Discover how to grow it yourself! Growing your own vegetables is a rewarding venture that's both affordable and delicious, but a novice gardener might not know where to begin. This is your no-fuss guide to vegetable gardening. Do you want to learn how to start and sustain your own vegetable garden throughout the year? This vegetable gardening book for beginners will help you choose and care for more than 40 different varieties, all specially selected for successful growing. From vegetable garden must-haves to less-common crops like edamame beans, this is a one-stop guide to growing vegetables that are easy to grow! Discover detailed information on how to sow, plant, feed, water, protect and harvest your vegetables. You don't have to be a horticulture expert to get started, this indispensable reference book will take you through every single step! It includes: - Tips on how to care for more than 40 different vegetable varieties - Packed with practical, jargon-free know-how and simple gardening techniques - Easy-to-follow format to help grow your gardening knowledge Let It Grow! Gorgeous, full-colour photography provides plenty of inspiration and ideas for your patch! Expert tips and step-by-step instructions on every page help make sure that you care for your vegetables in the right way in order for them to grow. Grow Easy Veg covers everything you need to know about growing herbs and vegetables, while expert tips help you troubleshoot as you go. It's the perfect book for first-time gardeners! Complete the Series: Make your green-fingered dreams a reality with the Grow series from DK. Learn how to brighten up even the trickiest areas in Grow Containers, or discover how to garden more sustainably in Grow Eco-Gardening. Alternatively, there are more titles to explore such as Grow Pruning & Training and Grow Houseplants.

Once again Master Gardener Cheryl Anderson Wright focuses her considerable knowledge on the problems of growing your favorite vegetables in areas with short growing seasons and unpredictable weather. Wright's practical advice and down to earth recommendations will guide you from seed to table, and includes specific recipes for all the veggies you will want to grow and love to eat! As she did in her two previous books, (High Country Herbs, and High Country Tomato Handbook) the author takes the mystery out of growing your own food, offers step by step advice on everything from soil and pests to composting and mulching and encourages you with her mouth watering serving suggestions. Both brand new and experienced gardeners will benefit from Wright's perspective. High Country Tomato Handbook "As the population of the western states inches outward from the cities and upward in elevation, there is no reason to abandon 'flatland' gardening choices, namely tomatoes, especially with the support this book provides." -Ole Abeam, Bloomsbury Review, March/April 2005 High Country Herbs "Anyone interested in the cultivation and use of culinary herbs at high elevations should have a copy of this definitive reference book on their kitchen shelves." -John A. Murray, Bloomsbury Review, March/April 2004

'When I am disturbed, even angry, gardening has been a therapy. When I don't want to talk I turn to Plot 29, or to a wilder piece of land by a northern sea. There, among seeds and trees, my breathing slows; my heart rate too. My anxieties slip away.' As a young boy in 1960s Plymouth, Allan Jenkins and his brother, Christopher, were rescued from their care home and fostered by an elderly couple. There, the brothers started to grow flowers in their riverside cottage. They found a new life with their new mum and dad. As Allan grew older, his foster parents were never quite able to provide the family he and his brother needed, but the solace he found in tending a small London allotment echoed the childhood moments when he grew nasturtiums from seed. Over the course of a year, Allan digs deeper into his past, seeking to learn more about his absent parents. Examining the truths and untruths that he'd been told, he discovers the secrets to why the two boys were in care. What emerges is a vivid portrait of the violence and neglect that lay at the heart of his family. A beautifully written, haunting memoir, Plot 29 is a mystery story and meditation on nature and nurture. It's also a celebration of the joy to be found in sharing food and flowers with people you love.

The perfect season-led book to help you grow the best organic vegetables, fruit and herbs in a small urban space Many of us are trying to be more mindful in our approach to eating by choosing seasonal ingredients, and growing our own fruit and vegetables can benefit our health, the environment and even our wallet. Written over a year, City Veg is the candid account of an urban grower from her productive city plot - the size of two classic 1970s VW camper vans - with all the triumphs and minor woes that come with a small, suburban location. From planning and designing the garden in January to harvesting and using home-grown produce throughout the growing season, Cinead McTernan takes you on a personal journey that will entertain experienced growers and share plenty of practical information with newbie gardeners. With helpful growing advice, harvesting guides, tips and inspiration for garden projects, City Veg also includes quick and easy recipe ideas to help make the most of your bountiful yield.

Today's gardeners want a bit of everything--vegetables, fruit, medicinal herbs, flowers for pollinators, and even chickens for eggs. The dream is to build a diverse landscape that serves multiple functions, but achieving that goal can be intimidating and overwhelming. Homesteader Leah M. Webb shares her strategy for implementing a homestead plan in seven stages by starting small and gradually adding more features each year. The Seven-Step Homestead takes readers through the process with a series of doable steps, beginning with establishing one or two raised beds of the easiest vegetables to grow, and gradually building up to the addition of fruit trees and berry bushes on hugelkulture mounds, a coop full of chickens, and a winter's worth of storage crops. Step-by-step photos from the author's own homestead, accompanied by her hard-earned advice and instruction, make this a one-of-a-kind guide for anyone who aspires to grow more of their own food.

The Ecological Farm is a breakthrough resource for ecological fruit and vegetable growers at every scale who want to go beyond organic. Through a unique ecosystem-balancing approach focusing on reduced tillage, minimising farm and garden inputs and pest control, you’ll learn how to build higher soil quality and fertility by using fewer harmful inputs.   Farmer, consultant, and educator Helen Atthowe (along with her late husband, Carl Rosato) have decades of farming experience which is shared in this essential book. They guide readers on how to reduce or eliminate the use of outside inputs of fertiliser or pesticides – even those that are commonly used on certified organic orchards and market gardens. With clear, easy to action language and colour photography, charts, and graphs throughout, The Ecological Farm emphasizes the importance of managing the details of an entire growing system over the full life of an enterprise. The Ecological Farm features a crop-by-crop guide to growing more than 25 of the most popular and profitable vegetables and fruits, including specific management advice for dealing with pests and diseases. You’ll also learn how to: design a system that establishes a year-round root-in-soil system for microbial health strengthen the “immune system� of a farm or garden supply crop needs using only on-farm inputs such as cover crops and living mulch maximise the presence of beneficial insects and microbes minimise ecological impact in dealing with insect pest and disease problems The Ecological Farm makes complex, sometimes messy, ecological concepts and practices understandable to all growers, and makes healthy farming, in which nature is invited to participate, possible.

Within this book, Barbara Doyen, a real farmer's wife, gives detailed instruction for growing a wide variety of delicious vegetables, along with terrific recipes. From the domestic to the exotic, the Farmer's Wife's expertise is always thoroughly explained and calculated to bring out the best in whatever plant she s working with. Includes growing, storing, freezing, cooking instructions and 200+ recipes and serving ideas for: asparagus, beans, broccoli, sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, corn, cucumbers, lettuce, onions, parsnips, peas, peppers, potatoes and tomatoes.

'An experienced horticulturist's monthly guide to gardening, with wise, clear and helpful advice on tackling the essential tasks and dealing with problems.' Gardens Illustrated One of the keys to happy gardening is knowing what to do and when for the best results. In this handy guide, experienced horticulturist Martyn Cox takes you through the gardening year, month by month, offering wise, clear and helpful advice on the essential tasks and how to avoid problems along the way. No matter the size of the plot, nor the expertise of the gardener, The Gardener's Yearbook is the perfect handbook to return to throughout the seasons, with tips including: - How to get your lawn into shape for the summer - When you should plant lilies, roses and sweet peas - How and when to harvest and store your fruit and vegetables - When to prepare containers for winter - How to fit a water butt and start a compost bin - An easy-to-follow crop planner Featuring specially commissioned linocuts by artist Heather Tempest-Elliott.

Upclose shots capture the distinctive shapes and features of heirloom varieties, including the curling pretzel bean, the vibrant fushcia 'Jackson wonder' lima bean, and the rare 'Nanticoke' winter squash. From the 'Dark Roden' red lettuce to golden beets, green tomatoes, lavender chive blossoms, and purple artichoke flowers, the rich sunlit colours of luscious garden-fresh produce saturate every card. The back of each card features a short description of each variety along with intriguing facts, like how the D'Avignon radish pushes up out of the soil when it's ready to harvest. A flip-top keepsake box completes this perfect gift for fresh-from-the-garden food lovers, gardeners, and nature enthusiasts.

A Produce Reference Guide to Fruits and Vegetables from Around the World: Nature's Harvest answers the many questions consumers have about various fruits and vegetables. Providing basic, clear, and understandable information for each produce item, this reference guide gives you a synopsis of the fruit or vegetable, a short history of the item, the common and uncommon name, what it looks and tastes like, how it is used, and the time of year it is available. Information on nutrition, serving sizes, yields, and optimal storage conditions is also provided. From potatoes to shepherd's purse and from grapes to the Clementine tangor, A Produce Reference Guide to Fruits and Vegetables from Around the World covers both the familiar and the exotic. Other than the obvious fruits and vegetables (such as 12 varieties of cherries and 10 different kinds of squash) you?ll also read about herbs, mushrooms, sprouts, and nuts. A Produce Reference Guide to Fruits and Vegetables from Around the World is packed with useful information. From practical advice to interesting trivia, some of the things you?ll learn include: You should not eat any green parts of potatoes--it will make you sick.How to classify a peach--clingstone vs. freestone and white vs. yellow.The Texas 1015 Supersweet onion is named after its recommended planting date, October 15.Kiwis (originally from China, not Australia) contain an enzyme that tenderizes meat.Women in China once made a dye from the skin of eggplants to stain their teeth black.The famous mutiny by Captain Bligh's crew was caused by breadfruit.Gourds may have spread between continents by floating in the ocean, as they can float in sea water for 220 days without losing seed viability.The two nuts mentioned in the Bible--almonds and pistachios.As new methods in farming, storing, and shipping are allowing exotic fruits and vegetables unheard of a few years ago to become available, consumers are coming up with more and more questions that many professionals are unable to answer. A Produce Reference Guide to Fruits and Vegetables from Around the World is the tool you can use to find answers. The guide is especially useful for specialty produce outlets and wholesalers, importers/exporters of fruits and vegetables, produce brokers and buyers, supermarket and independent food store produce departments, military commissaries, and the general public.

The Fruit Tree Handbook is a clear, practical guide for both amateur and expert. It explains all you need to know in order to grow delicious fruit, from designing your orchard and planting your trees to harvesting your produce. Apples, pears, plums, cherries, apricots, peaches and nectarines, as well as less common fruits such as mulberries, medlars and figs, are covered in detail, with recommended varieties of each. The book describes all the pest and disease problems you may encounter and advises on how to deal with them. It explains about choosing rootstocks and suitable varieties for your needs, and illuminates the mysteries of pruning with step-by-step instructions and detailed diagrams. It features beautiful pictures throughout. The Fruit Tree Handbook conveys a deep respect for the natural world, showing how to cultivate healthy trees through good management, and also includes chapters on restoring an old orchard and setting up a community orchard. Whether you are planting a few trees in your garden or 50 trees in a field, this book provides the expert guidance you need to look after your trees - and be rewarded with basketfuls of luscious fruit at harvest time.

Grapes are the most popular and widely grown fruit in the world. From the tropics to Alaska, grapes will grow successfully in almost every climate. Whether you raise them for fresh eating, or for making wine, juice, or jellies and preserves, the right grapes will reward you with abundant crops for a modest investment of time and effort. Now for the first time comes a book for grape growers who wish to use organic growing methods to raise healthy, thriving vineyards in the backyard or on a small commercial scale. The Grape Grower distills the broad knowledge and long-time personal experience of Lon Rombough, one of North America's foremost authorities on viticulture. From finding and preparing the right site for your vineyard to training, trellising, and pruning vines to growing new grapes from seeds and cuttings, The Grape Grower offers thorough and accessible information on all the basics. The chapters on grape species, varieties, and hybrids are alone worth the price of a college course in viticulture. Technical information on the major (and minor) insect pests and diseases that affect grapes, as well as their organic controls, makes this book an invaluable reference that readers will turn to again and again. Rombaugh also provides a wealth of information on hardy but little-known grapes that are native to North America, and on a wide range of topics, including: pruning neglected or overgrown vines growing grapes on arbors and in greenhouses controlling animal pests in the vineyard bunch grapes and muscadine grapes for the South winter protection, and how to increase the hardiness of grapes creating your own new varieties

Grow Your Own Fruit and Vegetables is Lawrence D. Hills's ground-breaking book on all aspects of fruit and vegetable growing. It was widely praised on its publication and remains a classic text in the world of organic gardening. 'Its great merit is that one feels that every operation described has been personally carried out by the author and selected as the most satisfactory after due consideration of traditional methods. The treatment of each plant is described from start to finish with sense, relish and humour; there are many fascinating analyses of vitamin and mineral contents and nutritional values, of different vegetables and fruits; and there is excellent advice on picking, harvesting, as well as on cooking ... it is the best practical guide to the subject that has appeared for years, and the author is not concerned with argument or philosophy, only with growing produce well.' Country Life 'There is no better guide to non-chemical gardening than Lawrence D. Hills ... He is exceptionally well read and a good practical gardener into the bargain, not a very common combination, and no doubt because of his wide-ranging knowledge he is more balanced in his views than some advocates of all-organic gardening ... Where I find Mr Hills most stimulating is in his highly personal approach to fruit and vegetable varieties and his recommendations based on such commercially unfashionable criteria as flavour and food value. There is a wealth of information here which would be difficult to find in any other single book.' A. G. L. Hellyer in the Financial Times

For beginning gardeners and homeowners, this handbook shows you exactly how to plan, build, and plant a simple raised bed. Fully illustrated step-by-step instructions make it easy and ensure success! In just a weekend, using a few basic materials and minimal building skills, you can set up a complete garden bed adapted for vegetables, flowers, or herbs.