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The Vegetable Gardener's Bible, 2nd Edition: Discover Ed's High-Yield W-O-R-D System for All North American Gardening Regions: Wide Rows, Organic Methods, Raised Beds, Deep SoilPaperback – December 2, 2009
by Edward C. Smith (Author)
4.8 out of 5 stars 627 customer reviews
The invaluable resource for home food gardeners! Ed Smith's W-O-R-D system has helped countless gardeners grow an abundance of vegetables and herbs. And those tomatoes and zucchini and basil and cucumbers have nourished countless families, neighbors, and friends with delicious, fresh produce. The Vegetable Gardener's Bible is essential reading for locavores in every corner of North America!
Everything you loved about the first edition of The Vegetable Gardener's Bible is still here: friendly, accessible language; full-color photography; comprehensive vegetable specific information in the A-to-Z section; ahead-of-its-time commitment to organic methods; and much more.
Now, Ed Smith is back with a 10th Anniversary Edition for the next generation of vegetable gardeners. New to this edition is coverage of 15 additional vegetables, including an expanded section on salad greens and more European and Asian vegetables. Readers will also find growing information on more fruits and herbs, new cultivar photographs in many vegetable entries, and a much-requested section on extending the season into the winter months. No matter how cold the climate, growers can bring herbs indoors and keep hardy greens alive in cold frames or hoop houses.
The impulse to grow vegetables is even stronger in 2009 than it was in 2000, when Storey published The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible. The financial and environmental costs of fossil fuels raise urgent questions: How far should we be shipping food? What are the health costs of petroleum-based pesticides and herbicides? Do we have to rely on megafarms that use gasoline-powered machinery to grow and harvest crops? With every difficult question, more people think, "Maybe I should grow a few vegetables of my own." This book will continue to answer all their vegetable gardening questions.
Praise for the First Edition:
"In every small town, there is a vegetable garden that people go out of the way to walk past. Smith is the guy who grew that garden." — Verlyn Klinkenborg, The New York Times Book Review
"An abundance of photographs . . . visually bolster the techniques described, while frequent subheads, sidebars, and information-packed photo captions make the layout user-friendly . . . [Smith's] book is thorough and infused with practical wisdom and a dry Vermont humor that should endear him to readers." — Publisher’s Weekly
"Smith . . . clearly explains everything novice and experienced gardeners need to know to grow vegetables and herbs. . . . " — Library Journal
"this book will answer all your questions as well as put you on the path to an abundant harvest. As a bonus, anecdotes and stories make this informative book fun to read." - New York Newsday
"In every small town, there is a vegetable garden that people go out of the way to walk past. Smith is the guy who grew that garden." — Verlyn Klinkenborg, The New York Times Book Review
"An abundance of photographs . . . visually bolster the techniques described, while frequent subheads, sidebars, and information-packed photo captions make the layout user-friendly . . . [Smith's] book is thorough and infused with practical wisdom and a dry Vermont humor that should endear him to readers." — Publisher’s Weekly
"Smith . . . clearly explains everything novice and experienced gardeners need to know to grow vegetables and herbs. . . . " — Library Journal
"this book will answer all your questions as well as put you on the path to an abundant harvest. As a bonus, anecdotes and stories make this informative book fun to read." - New York Newsday
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Biography
Edward C. Smith is the author of Incredible Vegetables from Self-Watering Containers. He tends a garden of over 1,500 square feet filled with raspberries, blueberries, flowers, herbs, and nearly 100 varieties of vegetables, including some heirlooms, in his home state of Vermont.
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Arrose23
5.0 out of 5 starsWealth of knowledge for the beginner or experienced gardener.February 21, 2017
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
This book is a wealth of knowledge. It has so many gardening ideas/techniques from A to Z. Truly! I've been gardening for a couple of years now but didn't feel that I was really getting the hang of it as much as I could. I already had put in raised beds. But I like how this book has provided information on how much I could plant in one area (like bunched all together and such) and different schemes of planting. Sure, it says how to plant on the back of the seed packaging, but there is more planning into it than you would think. I will also regularly forget what plants like others and which ones don't. Not anymore! This book has the full list. Watering plants. No brainer right? Wrong! At least if you want your garden to be growing at it's very best. Of course, that's even included in this book. I really like that this book also involves soil and how important it is and how to check it. Moving from another state where some vegetables grew so well to this state where those same plants struggle has been difficult. I'm going to have really invest into the soil this year and I'm grateful that this book explains the steps on what I need to do. There really is so much more about this book but unfortunately I don't have time to write a novel. My favorite part of this book though is the glossary of information about each vegetable you'd ever even think about planting. Each page includes: the name of the vegetable, information about it, where they like to been sown and grown, seed depth, germination soil temperature, days to germination, when to sow indoors (or not to), when to sow outdoors (or not to), growing pH, growing soil temperature, spacing in beds, watering, light needed, nutrient requirements, rotation considerations, and seed longevity. Seriously helpful no matter how short or long you have been gardening.
My only dislikes about this book is that certain parts didn't get more information. Like greenhouse growing. I was hoping there would be more information given on growing and continuing in the greenhouse should I not want to plant outside. If bee's needed to get inside, how that would all work.
I was super happy to see the section on vertical gardening. I have tried it once before but was eager for more information. Sadly, even though it showed 3 examples of vertical gardening (tepees, A-frames, homemade trellises), it only showed how to make a typical trellis. I was hoping to see how to make the A-frame one in particular.
Still love this book though. Highly recommend.
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NtimesN
5.0 out of 5 starsBlack-Thumb Learned to Grow a Self-Sufficient Family Garden with this Book!!October 16, 2014
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
I gotta tell ya... I have no idea what I'm doing. Let me start by saying how I came to find this book; I am a mother of two little boys and lost my mother to breast cancer at a young age. The food I buy at the grocery store, no matter how thoroughly I read the label I know will always have something I don't want in it. I put an exhausting amount of effort into thinking about the food my family eats but sometimes it's just so overwhelming, I give up and just order a pizza. Sounds off topic but that is how I landed on this book, I was exhausted and feeling like nothing I could ever buy would truly be a healthy option to feed my family and steer away from harmful cancer-causing chemicals in our food. So, I went to the internet to search for something to help my black-thumb and figure out how to provide the healthiest food for my family, without breaking the bank. Like I mentioned before I have no idea what I'm doing. I come from the school of thought that if I kill my flowers, I just run down to the store and buy new pretty flowers and throw away the old ones I killed and replace with new said flowers. Happy day. Well, that doesn't really work when you're trying to actually produce a harvest of some kind...
I have been reading this book for months and I started by dog-earing pages that were helpful... Don't do it. I soon realized I was dog-earing every single page. This book has helped me to understand every aspect of starting and maintaining a garden. My dad, who actually grew up on a farm, read some of my book when he came to visit and even he was very impressed. I mention this because I don't think this book is only for idiot-gardeners like myself. He read a lot of the recommendations and theories for wide-row and organic methods and he even learned from this book. I would highly recommend purchasing this book. Great photos, diagrams, illustrations, bullet-points, what to buy, what to reuse & recycle, incredible in-depth bios of vegetable plants (encyclopedia-style, more than you could ever want to know about a plant). The list really goes on and on. The pictures are so helpful!
This book showed me how to start with a 3x3 raised bed, non-permanent, producing vegetable & herb garden (which is great for me because we are in Southern California so any amount of land is tough to come by & we rent). It helped me to not feel overwhelmed or take on too much too soon in my first major gardening endeavor and now I am able to start feeding my family more and more healthy organic vegetables that I grow from seed. I don't even have to go to Whole Foods and spend 50% of our income on our veggie budget each month. I learned how to plan everything out, start my seeds indoors with soilless seed-starting mix, transplanting, soil temp, vertical gardening, composting and how to save my plants organically and relatively simply when something (be it bug, bird or disease) is trying to eat or kill all of my efforts.
In summation, I learned how to grow a self-sufficient garden for my family with this book and it will be my most trusted garden companion for years to come. So well written.
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Crazy Daisy
5.0 out of 5 starsIf you could only have one, this would be it!May 16, 2012
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
UPDATE: I just had to come back a year later to reaffirm just how much I depend on this book. Seriously, it's all that and then some! My poor paperback is so beat up on the outside. But the inside is holding up very well, so is the actual binding. I've tried so many times to put it away, but it ends up coming right back out shortly after. Anytime I get to thinking about growing something or if I want to improve things in the garden, check the PH, nutrients, etc. back to the book I go. I really do highly recommend it to anyone who isn't yet a "master" gardener. Who knows, they might even learn something from it! I think the reason it is so popular, other than the data being dependable, is the layout is so common sense. The whole back of the book has pages dedicated to each vegetable and you just go in alphabetical order to access that page. So my point is, if you are floundering around Amazon trying to pinpoint which gardening book to start with, this is it!
ORIGINAL REVIEW: I started gardening for the first time last year and have used this book to the point that the edges are curled and it looks like it's 10 years old! It tells a little about everything. Whenever I need to know how deep to plant, spacing or what nutrients plants need, it's all right there on one page! I believe it is more focused on northern gardens, but I live in the deep south and it still came in quite handy! I never actually put this book away. If I do, it comes right back out within a few days. It is a great introduction to gardening organically and tells enough to get you started on everything. If you need more information you would need to research further, but this book provides enough to get you going for sure. I give it 5 stars for the layout, pictures, information and ease of use! Happy gardening!
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