Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardener's Handbook: Perfectly Timed Gardening for Your Most Bountiful Harvest Ever - Softcover

Kujawski, Jennifer; Kujawski, Ron

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1603426949 ISBN 13: 9781603426947

Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC, 2011

Synopsis

Whether you’re a seasoned gardener determined to increase crop yields or starting your very first vegetable garden, this guide will help you manage your schedule and prioritize what’s important.

Detailed weekly to-do lists break gardening down into simple and manageable tasks so that you always know what needs to be done and when to do it, from starting seeds and planting strawberries to checking for tomato hornworms and harvesting carrots. Enjoy a bountiful harvest with this organized and stress-free approach to gardening. 

About this title

About the Author

Jennifer Kujawski grew up helping in the family garden. She has many memories of the experience, both fond (eating peas straight from the pods) and not-so-fond (squashing potato beetles between rocks). Jennifer earned degrees in botany and horticulture and worked as the assistant manager of USDA’s National Plant Materials Center in Beltsville, Maryland. She has written articles for numerous publications, including American Nurseryman and Native Plants Journal and was one of the authors of the Community Forest Buffer Guide (Chesapeake Bay Foundation, 2001).  Jennifer currently works as a freelance writer and editor for such organizations as University of Massachusetts Extension, USDA’s Forest Service, and Massachusetts Nursery and Landscape Association. She is passing along the family gardening tradition to her young son in the 2,000 square foot vegetable garden she tends with her father.

Ron Kujawski’s indoctrination into vegetable growing began at an early age, when he worked on a family onion farm in upstate New York. That experience provided the motivation to pursue a career that involved teaching and research in plant sciences and horticulture. Though now retired, he continues to write, lecture, and consult in the horticultural field while maintaining a passion for gardening, which he shares with his daughter, Jennifer, a professional horticulturalist.

From the Back Cover

WHAT TO DO AND WHEN TO DO IT

Daily and Weekly To-Do Lists

Easy-to-follow lists help you plan, plant, and care for a productive, organic vegetable garden.

Works for Every Gardening Zone

You schedule every gardening activity around your region's last frost date, so the lists work in every zone, whether your final frost is in February or May.

A Customized Gardening Journal

Write it in, refer to it in the garden, get it dirty. You will rely on this book as the journal that carries you from one successful growing season to the next.

Reviews

Using the first and last frost as guideposts, father and daughter Kujawski guide would-be gardeners through the growing season and beyond, with plenty of tips and tricks to ensure a great harvest. Beginning with basics like site selection and soil preparation, the Kujawskis walk readers through the basics of seeding and planting, transplanting sensitive plants along with canny tips like using cover crops like clover or grasses as well as vinegar and clove oil to keep weeds at a minimum. Though the authors do offer suggestions on making the most of the harvest by freezing and canning, the book will be most useful during the growing season itself. Once readers have set the wheels for a small garden in motion, the book's weekly worksheets, with timely advice on which plants can be planted or harvested as well as maintenance tips for specific crops, are likely to be the most useful. Gardeners will appreciate the book's soft cover, though its pages are likely to get dirty from frequent consultations in the back yard, which is probably the intent. (Dec.)
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The Kujawskis’ handbook supplies “breadth and brevity rather than depth of information” as it provides a week-by-week, yearlong gardening calendar suitable for all gardening zones and useful for all home growers, especially newcomers to the pursuit. The father-daughter authors note that getting started is “often a matter of overcoming inertia,” and begin by discussing the properties of soil and its testing, techniques for space saving, and location, location, location. Enhanced by many useful line drawings, this how-to covers the finding and using of last-frost dates for readers’ customized weekly planners, which accurately schedule indoor sowing (20-15 weeks before last frost); fertilizing; (trans)planting; pest control; harvesting; and more. Making each week’s to-do list clear and manageable are charts placed alongside easily read boxed information, such as “Garden Smart in Hot Weather” and “Weed Management 101,” that complement lined blank pages with ample room for personal notation. Instructions for “putting food by” for winter consumption, resource listings for growing tips, recipes, seeds, and suggested further readings complete this year-round gardener’s companion. --Whitney Scott

Edition details

• Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1603426949
• ISBN 13: 9781603426947
• Binding: Spiral-bound
• Number of pages: 200