favourite five
Forgot i had this as a draft…
FIVE FAVOURITE GARDENING BOOKS
Thought i would do a Favourite Five post on my favourites….
When i first got my Allotment, i couldn’t browse a bookshop without buying anything that had Grow your own or Allotment jump out at me. Amazon should of given me shares for the amount of support i gave them.. Lol
Over time, many of these books have ended up on eBay or after a quick flip through were sent back to Amazon, I have now whittled down my favourite ones, books that id gladly give shelf room ..
I found many of the books i read to be contradictory, not very informative, and well[extremely basic and concise] Yes, even for a beginner, but most of all repetitive.. An example would be to sow broad beans in the autumn or spring with x spacing and x rows ; Ok, but they forgot to mention the mice that gobbled up my first sowing. Also the black fly! Four books later i read about protecting crops… Many of the books could have been the same were it not for the cover, in many of the books there was little information.. [sorry carol Klein but you left me with many unanswered questions] so that went back to Amazon..
Complete vegetable gardener - not only tells you when to sow, how too, but also gives guides on how much to grow per person. A fantastic amount of info in this book, i had no idea what bolting was until i picked up this book..
Organic Salads - Theres a bit more to salads than the icebergs you get in the supermarkets, this book covers everything…
Oriental Vegetables - good listing of the more unusual veg with recipes, now you know how to cook that pak choi
Grow your own - This and the first book would probably be all you need for growing your own, in fact i would go as far as saying if you only want one book then this is it… Pity i read through a load of c**p before i came across this…
Bed systems- If like me you want to grow on a bed system and not traditional rows then this is worth a read. Think theres not much to be said about beds [think again]
TV /Radio Gardeners Books: Iv got my favourites . Thats for another post…
Stumble It!
April 18th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Thanks for your comment, so lovely to connect with others. Your blog is fab!
Your top five was very interesting - I’m going to look on Amazon for the raised beds one and GYO. Went to the library to check out some (more) veggie growing books but there was not one single one. Obviously everyone else had the same idea!
April 21st, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Agree with your choice, and esp comments about Carol Klein. I’ll never forget her TV vegetable growing series last year – in particular the tiniest, mankiest cauliflower you’ve ever seen, which she was crowing about (and - did I imagine this? - admitting that it was the first she’d ever grown. Which begs the question: Why the hell are you on TV telling the nation how to do it?).
April 21st, 2008 at 3:47 pm
I remember her Carrots that she had planted near a Tree
and was disappointed that only half of them grew well..doh
Even im not that daft!!!!
I thought the book would give more details than the series, as it had a few stars on Amazon, it didnt…