Double Book Review: “Growing Perfect Vegetables” & “The Salad Garden”

Tuesday, 18 July 2017

This week I have had my head in the books as I have two new books to review for you! So I better crack on and tell you about them:

Square Foot Gardening: “Growing Perfect Vegetables”

Square Foot Gardening (commonly referred to as SFG) is a planting method that was developed by American author and TV presenter Mel Bartholomew in the 1970s. It’s a simple way to create easy-to-manage gardens with raised beds that need a minimum of time spent maintaining them. This book is a very visual guide to raising and harvesting vegetables at their optimum. I loved this book as it was really easy to read and is packed full of lovely inspiring photographs. It takes you through examples of what to grow in your SFG, how to know when they are ripe and an easy to read table telling you when to sow your veg and when they will be ready to eat. There are also some tips at the back about growing other vegetables which don’t strictly work in a SFG such as perennial fruits. The SFG theory is a great way of getting into growing veg as it only takes up a small space, it’s easy to manage and, crucially, easy to see when things are ripe and ready to use. This book tells you all you need to get you started on the road to becoming your own wee allotment expert. My star rating is:

Available now in paperback, RRP £11.99

“The Salad Garden” by Joy Larkcom

When “The Salad Garden” was first published in 1984, it was held in high esteem by gardeners, chefs and even professional growers. It has now been updated and released to suit the modern market. Consideration has been given to being able to garden in smaller spaces like on patios, window boxes (or a square foot garden!), new varieties of salads are included and the recipes have been given a modern twist too. It’s not just salad leaves that are covered in this book, there are peas, tomatoes, fennel, flowers, root vegetables and much more. I think this book suits a more serious garden who wants to learn a lot more about a wide range of salad. There is a lot of great information about how to grow each vegetable and recommended varieties. It’s just a little less colourful and user friendly than the SFG book but has a LOT of useful information packed into it. My star rating is:

Available now in paperback, RRP £16.99

Happy reading (and growing!)

Lulu xx