Veg. I grow it; I nurture it; I shield it from cold winds, protect it from voracious pigeons, warm it against sudden frosts. And then I share it with friends, family, and neighbours… and we eat it. In between times I might write something gardeny or historical, but you’ll usually find me back on my veg plot, a little urban allotment in the west of England. I do a lot of reading there too!
Let’s face it: we all want to know howto doit. And while the best thing is to consult your green-fingered neighbours, the next best is to turn to a good book. The RHS is the world’s oldest gardening club and ever since my county neighbour, Thomas Andrew Knight, slipped into the president’s chair in 1811, it’s been offering sound horticultural advice. In Knight’s day, women like his daughter Francis provided fine, watercolour images: nowadays we can reap the rewards of close-up camera work.
An infallible guide to vegetable growing for gardeners with little space but big ambitions. It's time to get your hands dirty!
This gardening book will help you learn how to grow, nurture, and harvest more than 50 types of fruits and vegetables. The bright photos, step-by-step illustrations, and foolproof advice will get you growing in no time.
Perfect for beginners as well as keen gardeners. This planting book will teach you how to plan your space, be it a small raised bed, some pots, or a large vegetable patch.
Maximise your harvest and explore different planting themes that suit your…
We backyard veggie growers owe a deep debt of gratitude to the Native Americans who passed on to us their protein-rich maize, squash, potatoes, and beans. One beneficiary was that great contemplative gardener Henry David Thoreau who tended a bean field on the shores of Walden Pond at Concord, Massachusetts. "What shall I learn of beans or beans of me? I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them and this is my days work," he wrote. He still does not disappoint – even after 160 years.
Henry David Thoreau is considered one of the leading figures in early American literature, and Walden is without doubt his most influential book.
Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.
It recounts the author's experiences living in a small house in the woods around Walden Pond near Concord in Massachusetts. Thoreau constructed the house himself, with the help of a few friends, to see if he could live 'deliberately' - independently and apart from society. The…
Organics, raised beds, permaculture, vertical gardening: there are plenty of exciting new ideas coming out of the veg patch. One of the most persuasive is Charles Dowding’s no-dig brigade. Many of my ‘can’t dig’ friends are joining up too, prevented from wielding a spade by sore backs, arthritis, and other such ailments. This regime of hand weeding and hoeing, and freshening the soil with generous helpings of homemade mulching composts is so much kinder to the planet than plastering it with artificial fertilisers.
No dig organic gardening saves time and work. It requires an annual dressing of compost to help accelerate the improvement in soil structure and leads to higher fertility and less weeds. No dig experts, Charles Dowding and Stephanie Hafferty, explain how to set up a no dig garden. They describe how to: Make compost, enrich soil, harvest and prepare food and make natural beauty and clean ing products and garden preparations. These approaches work as well in small spaces as in large gardens. The Authors' combined experience gives you ways of growing, preparing and storing the plants you grow for…
A well-followed YouTuber, Huw Richards is a relative newcomer to the vegetable garden, one of the new generation. I like the way he explores the rich potential of the raised bed – that’s right: just one. And he manages to incorporate every backyard trick from harvesting pea shoots to making compost. As ambitious as it’s appealing, his Veg in One Bed will probably persuade most backyard veggie growers to expand their plots before the first season is even over.
"Huw Richards is the future of gardening" (The Guardian)
"This beautifully illustrated book teaches you what to do month-by month in order to have success in the garden"(The Sun)
"Ideal for new allotmenteers and gardeners starting to dabble in growing their own crops" (The English Garden)
In just one raised bed, greenfingered wunderkind Huw Richards shows you how to grow vegetables, organically, abundantly and inexpensively so you have something to harvest every month of the year.
Grow your own vegetable garden with this practical, straightforward gardening guide.
Zucchini? Or courgette? Sweet corn? Or maize? Runner bean? Or stick bean? Our kitchen gardens are complicated by linguistic confusion. I resolve them through the pages of the old, yet highly respected The Vegetable Book – An Unnatural History. For example: "Vegetable marrows, brought to England [from the Americas] about 1700...are known as Italian small marrows, or zucchini, or courgettes(little marrows)." This little gem was written by Buddhist Yann Lovelock way back in the 1970s. It remains a revealing read.
We give flowers. We spend hours nurturing our gardens. We use plants in dyes, construction, cosmetics, and medicines. And we don’t give them a second thought.
Here’s the irony – we are entirely dependent on them. Fifty Plants that Changed the Course of History examines some of the plants that have had the greatest impact on human civilization. It’s a useful reminder that we should never take plants for granted.
I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The team attempts a new route up the East Face without the use of supplemental oxygen, Sherpa support, or chance for rescue. When three climbers disappear during their summit attempt, Zieman reaches the knife edge of her limits and digs deeply to fight for the climbers’ lives and to find her voice.
The plan was outrageous: A small team of four climbers would attempt a new route on the East Face of Mt. Everest, considered the most remote and dangerous side of the mountain, which had only been successfully climbed once before. Unlike the first large team, Mimi Zieman and her team would climb without using supplemental oxygen or porter support. While the unpredictable weather and high altitude of 29,035 feet make climbing Everest perilous in any condition, attempting a new route, with no idea of what obstacles lay ahead, was especially audacious. Team members were expected to push themselves to their…
