Five favourites: books about growing your own
There is nothing quite like eating vegetables or fruit that you’ve grown yourself… As long as we have gardened, and no matter how much space we’ve had, we’ve always prioritised plants that produce food: from peas grown in pots, to the edible hedge in our garden and – on our largest scale so far – an orchard on our land!
Along the way, there have been a huge amount of books I’ve turned to for inspiration, growing tips, and problem solving. These are five of my favourite reliable and well-thumbed, all packed full of ideas and help…
No Dig
by Charles Dowding
This is an absolute bible of all gardening for me. Charles Dowding wrote about his no dig method in 2006, and it completely changed attitudes around gardening – and veg gardening in particular. Previous advice was that soil should be dug over for veg beds or allotment beds, and preparing a veg bed for planting was a back breaking job. Dowding suggests that instead of relentlessly digging over soil (which can actually be detrimental to soil structure as well as tiring for the digger) we put down nutrients and organic matter on the top of the soil, and leave nature to do the rest, letting worms and other creatures distribute and aerate the earth. It’s a method that works in harmony with nature, and is significantly less labour intensive. This book outlines his principles in much more detail. An absolute must buy for any vegetable grower!
Grow your own veg
by Carol Klein
We’ve had this book for a long time, and always return to Carol Klein’s great wisdom! This is something of a beginner’s handbook, covering everything you need to know to grow vegetables and herbs with a harvest throughout the year. With suggestions of what to grow, tips on keeping plants healthy, and advice on harvesting times, this covers all the basics. We’re long term fans of Carol’s enthusiastic approach, and this book is one we come back to time and again.
Grow for flavour
by James Wong
This is a really interesting book, as James Wong focuses not just on growing healthy plants, but on growing vegetables that taste better too. As well as suggesting flavoursome varieties, this book also has tips and tricks to get the fruits tasting sweeter, or the chillies more spicy, all with less work involved. The book also includes 40 recipes to make with the food you’ve grown. This is fascinating both with tips to use as a gardener, but also botanically to understand why plants grow as they do, and how and what their taste is affected by…
The vegetable growers handbook
by Huw Richards
Huw Richards is one of my Instagram favourites (@huwsgarden), his amazing permaculture videos are a constant source of inspiration for what we can do on our land. This book is very focused on efficiency in growing: spending time in the best ways to produce the best crops… It covers everything from the veg themselves to compost, cultivation and setting a mission statement for your veg patch! We might not be quite as organised as Huw with our approach to growing, but this has been great to dip in and out of, for tips and inspiration to maximise productivity.
Creating a forest garden
by Martin Crawford
Slightly different from the typical veg beds or allotment planting, this book is all about creating an edible forest garden. Though you might think you need lots of space for forest gardening, as we’ve shown with our edible hedge, you can fit a lot into a fairly compact area, and this book talks through planning and planting a forest garden of trees, shrubs and perennials. Modelled on a natural woodland, the book covers different “layers” of planting, from taller trees to groundcover, all chosen both for the food they provide and the ways they grow beneficially together. A really fascinating and inspirational read.
