Starter Vegetable Gardens: 24 No-Fail Plans for Small Organic Gardens Author: Barbara Pleasant | Language: English | ISBN:
B0050AM6BG | Format: PDF
Starter Vegetable Gardens: 24 No-Fail Plans for Small Organic Gardens Description
Home vegetable gardening is all the rage. Millions of Americans have picked up spade and hoe and are digging into the soil for the first time. But starting a garden isn’t always simple. Many hopeful growers find themselves confused by the dizzying array of things to know about soil quality, garden layout, seeds, temperatures, planting schedules, fertilizer, pests, watering, and harvesting. Still other first-time gardeners plant too much, only to find themselves overwhelmed and exhausted by July.
Barbara Pleasant is here to help. In Starter Vegetable Gardens, Pleasant a master gardener and award-winning gardening writer takes the guesswork out of growing food, explaining in simple, straightforward language how to start, maintain, and expand a bountiful vegetable garden in small, manageable spaces.
Pleasant presents 24 no-fail, small-scale garden plans from a simple bag garden (planted right in soil bags!) to an orderly border and from a family food factory to specialty beds for salads, Cajun flavors, and Italian cuisine. For each plan she provides plant and material lists, a plot layout, four-color photographs, and tips for succession planting to keep the garden productive all season long. Her all-organic approach ensures that the harvest is not simply tasty but also chemical-free.
Pleasant anticipates and answers novice gardeners myriad questions, guiding readers through the complexities of assessing site and soil, understanding the climate, choosing the very best vegetable varieties, starting seeds, identifying insect friends and foes, watering, fertilizing, mulching, and harvesting.
The books layout is friendly and accessible, filled with detailed images that bring the concepts to life. Both instructive and inspiring, Starter Vegetable Gardens is an essential one-stop resource for anyone just beginning to cultivate a vegetable-gardening green thumb.
Includes 24 illustrated planting plans including:
- Easy-Care Bag Garden
- Backyard Veggie Border
- Front-Yard Food Supply
- Family Food Factory
- Paintbrush Beds
- High-Value Verticals
- Marinara Medley
- Managed Mulch Garden
- Sweet Corn & Company
- Cajun Spice
- Six-Weeks-Sooner Salad Garden
- File Size: 9693 KB
- Print Length: 180 pages
- Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC (May 18, 2010)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B0050AM6BG
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,306 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #1
in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Landscape Design > Garden Design - #1
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Horticulture > Garden Design - #2
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Horticulture > Techniques > Organic
- #1
in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Landscape Design > Garden Design - #1
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Horticulture > Garden Design - #2
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Horticulture > Techniques > Organic
After weeks of digging sod in my backyard, I had a chance to read this book. I nearly fell out of my chair reading the first (and easiest) garden plan. Bag gardening consists of laying down bags of topsoil, newspaper, and cardboard to smother the sod. ***I have posted photos above so you can see the technique ***
The first year, you actually grow the crop inside the bags. At the end of the season, you gather up the bags and dig the contents into your now-ready bed. Will I be following the total garden plan? Actually, no. But it's one of the best parts about these garden plans, you can adjust then to meet your needs! The second year it mentions that a squash plant will break up the soil for you, and you let it do the work! So I will be following this advice (in my first year), and I will let the squash do all the work!
The bountiful border has a wonderful plan for inter spacing plots of vegetable gardens within your flower bed. And the front yard food supply gives wonderful ideas for using that often overlooked area in your front yard without having your neighborhood send around a petition. It starts with only 43 square feet ...
Since both my backyard and frontyard borders are too shady, I will be focusing on the first plan, but adapting techniques from the other two as well. The larger garden plans are well out of my expertise at this point.
The second part of the book contains a wealth of knowledge for new gardeners. Some of the sections (like deciding what to grow) may be old hat to experienced gardeners, but for those who are new (like me), it is a good overview. The one thing it mentions is finding vegetables you love that love your yard. If I were to put it in my own words, don't try to grow anything your family won't eat!
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