How To Grow Food: A Step-by-step Guide to Growing All Kinds of Fruits, Vegetables, Herbs, Salads and More - Softcover

Gianfrancesco, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1770853170 ISBN 13: 9781770853171

Publisher: Firefly Books, 2014

Synopsis

A comprehensive, no-nonsense guide to kitchen gardening on any scale.

"Filled with rich illustrations and photographs, this book will appeal to a wide range of gardeners, making this a useful book for all types of public libraries."
--American Reference Books Annual 2012

"Gianfrancesco's easy-to-understand-and-follow guide provides clearly delineated, step-by-step, fully detailed and remarkably informative instructions for growing an exciting spectrum of edible plants."
--Booklist

How to Grow Food is a complete, illustrated guide to the hundreds of plants that are easy to grow in the home garden. The author emphasizes gardening techniques that can be applied to any size of garden, from a window box to a small side yard plot to the biggest backyard.

This practical book features a comprehensive directory of more than 125 crop plants, from traditional choices to more unusual varieties, to suit all growing conditions in all regions using simple organic and biodynamic gardening methods. Gardeners can choose from roots and tubers; leafy crops; seed and fruit crops; grains; peppers and chilies; stem and flower crops; tree fruits; soft, bush and cane fruits; tender fruits; nuts; herbs; and edible flowers.

How to Grow Food features thorough instructions and a month-by-month calendar of tasks, plus:

• Types of gardens and choosing the best site
• Designing, preparing and planting a productive garden
• Maximizing the use of space, such as vertical planting and fruit cages
• Harvesting, storing and preserving
• Training and pruning plants for maximum yield
• Tools, pests, weeds and growing from seed
• Helpful dos and don'ts
• Plant ratings related to variety, value, maintenance and season
• The author's special selection of star plants.

About this title

About the Author

Richard Gianfrancesco is a plant scientist and gardening book author. He has coordinated hundreds of garden plant tests and trials, which have been widely published internationally.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Foreword

When I was a child, the joy of gardening was all in the eating! Picking fresh peas, raspberries and plums from the garden and eating them was one of my favorite summer activities. As gardening has become a much bigger part of my life, the practice of growing and nurturing the plants has become much more important. Fortunately for me, I now have my own children who share my childhood passion, and as long as I grow what they like, I can spend as much time as I need tending my garden.

As a garden researcher for the past 10 years I've conducted many trials on how to use your time most effectively in the garden and how to get the best out of your plot. How to improve your soil, reduce watering, select appropriate crops and specific varieties and reduce pest and disease damage will all save time in the long run, whatever the size of your garden. Spending time on learning the basics as well as debunking some of the time-heavy myths that many gardening books still profess are worth learning now. But whatever you do, make sure gardening stays a pleasure and not a chore.

Edition details

• Publisher: Firefly Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1770853170
• ISBN 13: 9781770853171
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256