The Kew Gardener's Guide to Growing Vegetables: The Art and Science to Grow Your Own Vegetables (Kew Experts)

by Helena Dove

This guide from the experts of Kew Royal Botanical Gardens is filled with tips and advice to help you grow your best vegetable garden ever!

In this book Kew's Kitchen Gardener, Helena Dove, combines practical elements with inspiration and beauty to make a comprehensive and informative guide with all you need to know to master theart of growing vegetables.

She shows how to grow some of the most popular staple crops such as tomatoes, potatoes, radishes and rocket, and also some more unusual and exciting choices such as oca, tomatillo, seakale and yacon.

She gives easy to follow instructions on how to be a successful vegetable gardener, plus 12 exciting projects to try throughout the year including forcing rhubarb, creating an asparagus border and growing in raised beds.

From sowing, to planting young plants, to hardening off and harvesting, find out what you need to do and when, to produce the most magnificent harvests. All the advice is underpinned by the expertise and authority of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and illustrated from Kew's world-famous botanical collection. 

​ With this book, you wil be able to reap a rich bounty of delicious vegetables from just a few packets of seed and some fertile ground!

This book is from the Kew Experts series, in which the top gardeners and botanical scientists from Royal Botanic Kew Gardens offer up advice and information as well as suggesting handy projects on a range of gardening topics. Other titles include: Companion to Medicinal Plants, Guide to Growing Bulbs, Guide to Growing Fruit, Guide to Growing Orchids, Guide to Growing Roses, Guide to Growing Succulents and Cacti, Guide to Growing Trees, Guide to Growing Herbs and Guide to Growing House Plants.

• ISBN13: 9780711242784
• Publish Date: 3 March 2020
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Frances Lincoln Publishers Ltd
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 144
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

The Kew Gardener's Guide to Growing Vegetables is a new volume in the series of plant/culture books from Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. Due out 3rd March 2020 by Quarto on their White Lion imprint, it's 144 pages and will be available in hardcover format.

Whenever gardeners think about inspiration and knowledge on a worldwide scale, the Kew gardens are at the very top of a very short list. They've been going strong for almost 260 years at this point. This book includes an herbal compendium for the culture and care info of the most commonly cultivated vegetables arranged around projects to grow and maintain them in good condition. The projects are varied, practical, and do-able(raised beds, perennial beds, wildlife friendly plantings, windowsill plantings (fresh greens in winter and early spring are the best thing I know), trellis and supports for vining and sprawling plants and more).

The graphic layout is appealing (see cover) and contains many charming retro botanical print inspired artworks. The photographs are clear, lush, plentiful, and really well done. Leafing through the book in midwinter is guaranteed to get any gardener's fingers itching to dig in the dirt. It's bursting with colorful plants in rude good health in beautiful display. Individual plant profiles also include information about lesser known cultivars along with good tips for culture, harvest, and use. There's quite a lot of good information here for gardeners from beginner to expert. Tips and tricks are highlighted in sidebars or bubble graphics throughout the text and include small projects like forcing rhubarb, extending harvest seasons, succeeding starting from seed, and more. Small historical tidbits on the plants and uses throughout time are included in the profiles for individual vegetables.

This would be a nice addition to the gardener's repertoire. Worth noting for readers in North America that most of the culture advice in this series is slanted toward growing conditions in the UK. It will translate perfectly well to the areas of the rest of the world which have similar conditions but adjustments might need to be made for readers outside those areas.

Four stars. I especially liked the inclusion of more unusual vegetable varieties which deserve more popularity, like celeriac, groundnuts, artichokes, sweet potatoes, jerusalem artichokes, and more.

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