books
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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| 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 Back in print after nearly ten years, many of the best vegetable recipes seem to have origins in Digby Law’s Vegetable Cookbook.
A not very comfortable read of how An English Boy in Nazi Germany is easily moulded into the perfect Hitler Youth recruit. Use your pantry, your garden and your brain to cut your grocery bill with The $21 Challenge. |
All New Square Foot Gardening gardening makes vegetable gardening more approachable.
Australian but still much applicable in New Zealand – One Magic Square: Food Plot Designs for All Seasons in Temperate Climates. A recent addition to the organic library, Organic Gardening Basics: Successful Organic Gardening in 5 Easy Steps by Bob Flowerdew. Sophie Gray with her Destitute Gourmet: Everyday Smart Food for the Family Cuisine Food Editor, Ray McVinnie’s Eat Donna Hay’s No Time to Cook: Fresh and Easy Recipes for a Fast Forward World Jasper Jones: A Novel is an Australian 10pm Question with hints of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. I find Jamie Oliver’s recipes inspiring, innovative and very workable. His Jamie at Home: Cook Your Way to the Good Life is a particular favourite. |
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. Lots of seasonal recipes for cultivated and wild food in The River Cottage Year. From the doyenne of slow cooking, Joan Bishop’s New Zealand Crockpot and Slow Cookbook.
Pie (Edible) is the history of the pie (humble or otherwise). Tamar is the story of resistance in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands Ghost story and fairy tale for young adults Keeper introduced me to the beautiful game. Go the Phoenix! Also for young adults, The 10PM Question is appealing and captivating for any reader.
The recollections of the utmost cruelty from the childhood of one of the UK’s first female, black judges. Ugly Nigel Slater’s recollection of England in the seventies is Stephen Fry’s memoir, Moab is My Washpot |
