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 have been to, and loved, North, Central, and especially East Africa for over fifty years. Only six times have I been to Africa on holiday; more often, perhaps twenty or more times, as a television producer. Working in Africa gains a perspective of reality that the glories of vacation do not. Each has its place, each its pitfalls like stalled plane rides with emergency landings in the bush or attacks by wildlife. But, in the end, the magic of the “otherness,” what an old friend called “primitava” captures one’s soul and changes your life.
Keen to rekindle their love of East African wildlife adventures after years of filming, extreme dangers, and rescues, producer Pero Baltazar, safari guide Mbuno Waliangulu, and Nancy Breiton, camerawoman, undertake a filming walking adventure north of Lake Rudolf, crossing from Kenya into Ethiopia along the Omo River, following a herd of elephant making their annual migration.
Stumbling onto an elephant poaching, the team become embroiled in true financing of terrorism for al Shabaab –ivory sales–and are determined to stop the slaughter at any cost. Ivory trade financing terrorism involves UN refugee camps with two hundred thousand displaced Somali persons, powerful…
A documentary team hiking through East Africa collides with a gang of deadly poachers, in this gripping adventure by the author of Kidnapped on Safari.
Years of filming, extreme dangers, and daring rescues have taken their toll on documentary producer Pero Baltazar and his team. To relax and reconnect with the East African wildlife they love, Pero organizes a walking safari for him, his camerawoman Nancy Breiton, and their elite guide Mbuno Waliangulu. Still, Pero has trouble truly disconnecting from work. When the team comes across a herd of elephants making their annual migration north of Lake Rudolf, Pero decides…
