Growing Under Cover: Techniques for a More Productive, Weather-Resistant, Pest-Free Vegetable Garden

by Niki Jabbour

Increasingly unpredictable weather patterns and pest infestations are challenging today’s vegetable gardeners. But best-selling author Niki Jabbour has a solution: Growing Under Cover. In this in-depth guide, Jabbour shows how to use row covers, shade cloth, low tunnels, cold frames, hoop houses, and other protective structures to create controlled growing spaces for vegetables to thrive. Photographed in her own super-productive garden, Jabbour highlights the many benefits of using protective covers to plant earlier, eliminate pests, and harvest a healthier, heartier bounty year round. With enthusiasm, inventive techniques, and proven, firsthand knowledge, this book provides invaluable advice from a popular and widely respected gardening authority.

• ISBN13: 9781635861310
• Publish Date: 22 December 2020
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Storey Publishing LLC
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 216
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

To be published on my blog closer to release: Nonstop Reader.

Growing Under Cover is a fact filled really useful treatise for extending and protecting garden harvests by Niki Jabbour. Due out 22nd Dec 2020 from Storey, it's 216 pages (print version) and will be available in paperback and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

I've reviewed several other books by this author and have found that they've become staples of my gardening library. This one promises the same. As a gardener in a northern climate, if I ever want peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, or other such garden goodies (and I do, always) I have to extend my growing season and stack the deck a bit in my favor. Ditto with late-season hailstorms. This book is absolutely full of good usable advice and techniques for extending the season, protecting the garden from predation by insects/animals and environmental factors.

I liked the layout here, chapters are arranged thematically around two ideas: Semi-permanent structures and coverings with a really good sub-chapter on hoop tunnels and cold frames, and an herbarium with specific plants and varieties which do well under cover. The book is well photographed throughout. The photos are clear and understandable and (for tutorial photos) logically sequenced and followable.

The selection of plant profiles is comprehensive and includes lots of intriguing possibilities beyond the standard fare (eggplant, peppers, tomatoes). I confess I'd never really considered growing artichokes under cover before, and I will definitely find some space to increase our yields - they're monstrously expensive locally, and my family loves them in dips, salads, and everything in between. I'm also contemplating fennel (which we normally grow outdoors in limited quantity) as well as squash and watermelon (they just take up so much *space*).

This is a nice volume full of usable gardening advice, and a good addition to the author's oeuvre. It would be a nice selection for the allotment library, gardener's home library, public / school library, or gift for a gardening friend.

Four and a half stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.