GrowVeg: The Beginners Guide to Easy Vegetable Gardening

Homegrown vegetables bring a “universe of tastes, textures, and characters to explore,” writes GrowVeg.com editor Vanheems in his vibrant debut. It’s best to start with a small garden, he advises, before slowly expanding the quantity and range of crops as confidence grows. He offers plenty of practical gardening advice: if one’s yard has poor soil, he recommends using raised beds, which drain better and “warm up quicker in spring, so you can get a head start on sowing and planting.” Would-be gardeners without yards, meanwhile, should give container gardening a try. There are lists of which vegetables to plant and when, and, for those having trouble deciding what to grow, Vanheems suggests “writing down what you or your family enjoys eating or would eat more of if you had the opportunity.” Vanheems uses a plethora of household materials for gardening: he shows how to plant pea shoots in recycled lengths of roof gutters, pot herbs in old tin cans, and turn a child’s former sandbox into a starter garden. Aspiring vegetable gardeners will find this an informative and entertaining guide. (Mar.)