4.11.10



Starter Vegetable Gardens, by Barbara Pleasant,
Storey Publishing, 179 pp., $19.95

Like all great gardening books, Starter Vegetable Gardens is about potential. There are a variety of different gardens featured in this book--from the simple yet fruitful beginner's garden--to family gardens and long-season gardens. Many of the gardens offer 3 year plans that build on skills and help the reader understand how their hard work will pay off in the future years--a helpful exercise for beginner gardeners who might overextend themselves, hoping for the one-season "wondergarden", and being disappointed with the results.


Starter Vegetable Gardens, offers promise for the patient, practical mind. Strongly illustrated with a mixture of hand drawn pictures and simple color photographs, its ideas are concise and well presented. There are numerous "tips" scattered throughout the book which help whet the reader's appetite for further study and at the end of the book there are 46 excellent recommendations on which vegetables to grow and tips on their cultivation and use. Its larger paperback format is lightweight and the pictures and text feel open and clean, easy to glance through and study in detail. Highly recommended.

-Reviewed by Tom



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