Books Recommended by the kitchen garden
I have a huge library of gardening books, but some I return to more often than others. We always say, ‘you can’t go far wrong with a good book’.
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You might like to try some food for thought books, biographies or cookery books too.
| Joy Larkcom fits more in her books than most people manage to learn in a lifetime. Grow Your Own Vegetables is one of my favourites. Lasagna Gardening: A New Layering System for Bountiful Gardens: No Digging, No Tilling, No Weeding, No Kidding! I call them Chinese Greens but Oriental Vegetables are well worth getting to know. Oriental Vegetables: The Complete Guide for the Gardening Cook by Joy Larkcom. Joy Larkcom’s The Organic Salad Garden. Now reprinted, the Isobel Gabites classic, The Native Garden: Design Themes from Wild New Zealand I like Dennis Greville’s approach in Get Fresh: How to Grow Delicious Vegetables and Herbs in New Zealand I’m inspired by Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn. |
All New Square Foot Gardening gardening makes vegetable gardening more approachable.
A glossy guide to what to do when in the garden Gardening in New Zealand Month by Month by Dennis Greville. I’ve got a very old edition of The Complete Herbal Handbook for Farm and Stable by Juliette de Bairacli-Levy, to which I often refer. Australian but still much applicable in New Zealand – One Magic Square: Food Plot Designs for All Seasons in Temperate Climates. Xanthe White’s Organic Vegetable Gardening is an attractive new addition to the New Zealand organic library. |
In How to Grow More Vegetables, John Jeavons tells us how to grow many crops in a small space. A tasty new book from the UK, Salad Leaves for All Seasons: Organic Growing from Pot to Plot gives advice on growing salad on your windowsill, balcony or in your garden. A recent addition to the organic library, Organic Gardening Basics: Successful Organic Gardening in 5 Easy Steps by Bob Flowerdew. If sprouts are too small and salad greens are too big, Microgreens might be ‘just right’ as Goldilocks would have said. The Cook’s Salad Garden Revisited: A New Zealand Guide to Growing and Preparing Salads, written by three sisters, is a classic that should be on every bookshelf. As well as its sister book, The Cook’s Herb Garden Revisited. |
