Vegetable Gardening From the Ground Up
by Stephanie Suesan Smith
Genre: How-To, DIY Gardening
Even a beginner can succeed without enduring trial and error methods by following the clear, concise instructions in Vegetable Gardening From The Ground Up. In this book, Dr. Smith explains the keys to:
Understand basic climate factors for your site
Choose a traditional, raised bed, container, square-foot, or lasagna garden
Ready the garden plot
Order the seeds and plants
Start the potential vegetables correctly
Fertilize the plants
Mulch your flourishing plants appropriately
Control pests, diseases, and other problems
Safely use pesticides
Harvesting your bountiful produce
Safely store the harvest
Save seeds and/or trade them
Care for the garden plot between seasons
If you’re ready to discover the joy of growing your own nutritious and delicious food, click the buy button now!
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
Like the Victory Gardens in World War II, more and more vegetable gardens are springing up in back yards and vacant lots across the world. It is possible to grow an abundance of food in a small space. However, just like the recipe for rabbit stew that starts “First, catch a rabbit,” it is necessary to research and plan before the planting. This book guides you through those steps so you can grow food for yourself and your family.
On first glance, setting up your garden by following these steps may seem like a lot of trouble. Keep in mind you only have to do that once to have years of wonderful, flavorful produce. Harvesting the vegetables you grow will be worth the initial hard work. Nothing from a grocery store or vegetable market can compete with fresh, healthy, just picked vegetables from your own garden.
A Quick Overview
Starting a new garden can be daunting. It needn’t be, though. Follow a few simple steps correctly, and you are ready to plant your seeds. What steps, you ask? These steps:
Chose a site
Plan your garden
Prepare the Soil
Add Organic Matter
Irrigation and Drainage
Problem Control
Pesticide Safety
Seed Saving
Cover Crops
Here is a brief discussion of each step. I will discuss them more in depth later in the book.
Review
When I saw the title and description of the book, it sounded like the guide my son and I have been looking for to start a vegetable garden in the backyard of the rural home we moved into two years ago. As lifelong suburbanites dwelling in apartments, townhouses, or mobile homes, we never previously had a place to garden. Now we do, but getting started is daunting, particularly considering my disabilities and Colorado's notoriously bad soil.
This book breaks the steps to growing a vegetable garden down into easy-to-follow steps that make the process less daunting even to a complete newbie. The question about how to deal with difficult soil is answered in this passage about planting in a raised-bed garden.
Raised Beds
At the most basic, square foot gardening is a form of raised bed gardening. A frame that is no more than four feet wide and preferably four-foot (or some increment such as eight or sixteen) long is built. That is placed over some opaque material such as newspaper to retard weed growth and filled with a rich mixture of soil and compost.
The book is practical and written in plain English. With sensible steps to follow, I hope that this may be our year to begin a low-maintenance garden filled with delicious vegetables. We generate a lot of cardboard from necessary deliveries and forays to Costco, so the "lasagna gardening" method sounds like a perfect way to put the excess cardboard to good use.
I look forward to trying out the methods detailed in this well-written beginner's guide to gardening. The book easily earns five out of five stars.
Stephanie Smith, PhD., is a Master Gardener who was born in Dallas, Texas, longer ago than she cares to mention. Stephanie began gardening as soon as she could stick an onion start in the ground. Her father taught her to grow things to eat, and that is her specialty. She is a member of the Texas Master Gardeners Association and the Dallas County Master Gardener Association. She was awarded 2014 Master Gardner of the Year for Hunt County, Texas. Things of beauty are also important, so she grows African violets, is a member of the African Violet Society of America, and a member of the Alpha African Violet Society of Dallas.
Stephanie was first published by a national magazine in 1990 and has since been published in several periodicals. Gardening articles have appeared in Animal Wellness, 903 Magazine, and the Greenville Herald Banner, among numerous other places. Articles and technical papers in psychology make up the balance of her periodical publications.
Stephanie received a B.S. in psychology from Texas Christian University and a M.S. and Ph.D. in psychology from Texas A&M University. Currently, she resides in Dallas with her toy poodle, Jewel.
Visit Stephanie's vegetable website, https://stephaniesuesansmith.com , and read her blog, view her photographs, and participate in the conversations going on there. Feel free to ask gardening questions or leave a comment on one of the blog posts. Her garden content writer website is https://gardencopywriter.com. She has many gardening articles online and her portfolio is at https://gardencopywriter.com/garden-writing/.
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Thank you for the nice review. I hope my book helps you get your garden going.
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