Grow Your Own Vegetables
Product Details | Similar Products | Customer Reviews | Author: Joy Larkcom List Price: £9.99 Our Price: £6.49 You Save: £3.50 (35%) Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours  |
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 | Product Details: Paperback 384 pages Release Date: 16 May 2002 Publisher: Frances Lincoln Publishers ISBN: 071121963X Rating:   Sales Rank: 1908 | | Look for similar books by subject: | | Customers who bought this item also bought:
| | Customer Reviews: Good start (29 July 2008)Although this book has a lot of 5 star reviews I feel that it is slightly lacking for the modern gardener. This book did not tell me everything I wanted to know such as what to do with crops at the end of the season, and has no photographs, only sketches. Whilst a good book, I feel there are better available! from novice to experienced -worth it (30 March 2008)Bought this book 2 plus yrs ago. Brilliant. I admit was initially sad by lack of colour pictures!! but as time has gone on and have now managed to dig most of my veg. plot (rather than stare at it in hope) and made time to plan, this book has been invaluable. There's loads of info. on the web (some a little confusing and a little conflicting) but Ms Larkcom's info. is steadfast and logical and is my first and sometimes, only, port of call. It's a valuable reference for both new and experienced allotment keepers. I've given away my glossy, pretty, fairly useless allotment books and kept to hand this superbly informative and helpful reference. Cheers Ms Larkcom, it was worth every penny. Beginners guide to reference in one volume. (16 December 2007)Ever wondered how to build a compost heap? a polytunnel? how to store leeks? when to sow Russian kale? Joy Larkcom's not so little volume will tell you. If Hugh and Monty have inspired you then Joy will deal with all the practicalities of turning that inspiration into real produce. She neatly divides her subject into two parts. The first half of her book can be read as beginner's guide or a course on vegetable growing as she covers all the basics one would need to know such as what double digging is, the best way to build compost heaps, what tools you would need and so forth. The second half is a directory of vegetables with detailed sowing, cultivation and harvesting instructions and the occasional hints on using your produce. Throughout the book are a number of very useful tables and charts giving diaries of when to sow, transplant, harvest, etc, suggested garden layouts, green manures and other information which could usually take a long time to gather together. This is not a coffee table gardening book with masses of pretty pictures. This is wall to wall information all packed into a single place which can make it heavy going and it is not a book to read starting at page one and working forward, it is primarily a reference work. The greatest virtue of her book though is that while it will teach you all you need to know it is usable as a reference work and she goes into enough detail that this is a book which you will still find yourself using when you have years of experience. If you've been inspired to create your own vegetable garden then buy this book. It isn't pretty but it is astoundingly useful and comprehensive enough that you will still be using it years hence. If you buy one book about growing veg, buy this one (20 June 2007)As a new vegetable gardener last year, I bought quite a few books to help me get started. Fortunately, this was one of them, and I now realise I need only have bought this one. Although low on colour pictures and other 'glossy' features, it is absolutely packed with useful information and I find I refer to it constantly. It covers a wider range of veg than many other books, too, and has several excellent features, including the value for space ratio mentioned in another review, and several excellent planting plans ('feed a family', etc). I just can't recommend it highly enough. Valuable but not complete (25 February 2006)What I love about this book is the size, like a 'normal', paperback, novel type of book which makes it easier to carry than most other gardening books. It's got a lot of information on lots of subjects. The section on 'soil, manure and compost' alone has over 35 pages. The absence of pictures on every page means there's more information. There are charts on things such as green manures, which is very useful. Also a very useful section on growing Comfrey to use as manure and liquid fertilizer and lots of tips on making your own compost heap, cloches, polytunnels, etc. It's very, very good, and comes highly recommended... HOWEVER, I was surprised and disappointed not to have found any information whatsoever on companion planting. Something I'm very interested in, and for a book that advocates growing organically, I just can't understand why this hasn't had a mention. Perhaps companion planting to some gardeners is similar to how homeopathy stands with scientists, but leading gardeners such as Bob Flowerdew have devoted much of their writing to just this and it's becoming more and more popular (although it goes back to ancient times). At one point, Joy Larkcom suggests growing sunflowers, sweet peas and nasturtiums amongst beans, but merely cites the reason as being for 'decorative effect'. These plants are great to grow together, but for other benificial reasons. It wouldn't have taken much space to provide a chart. There is detailed information on each vegetable, how to grow, how to look after the crop, the type of soil required, etc. Very useful, but if you find it easier to learn visually, to me there is no substitute for the clarity of the Dr. G. Hessayon 'Expert' series. One other point on clarity, the index is not the easiest to read. | |
