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Book Description
The ultimate guide to creating a fuss-free kitchen garden
Product Description
'A vegetable plot is a beautiful thing to make, with the extra bonus of producing the best possible things to eat. If you get it right, the whole place can become your market, your haven and your playground.'
So says Sarah Raven in The Great Vegetable Plot, an indispensable practical guide to creating the perfect vegetable garden with the minimum of fuss and effort. By eschewing the timely and unnecessary steps that can frustrate even the most patient gardener, Sarah's principles of speed and simplicity can help you to craft a plot that perfectly suits your needs - and lets you enjoy fresh, home-grown crops all year round.
Sarah's straight-forward approach focuses on easy and rewarding vegetables that don't require huge amounts of time or space, meaning you don't need to devout hours to slavishly tending your plot. Beautifully illustrated with over 250 photographs from award-winning photographer Jonathan Buckley, this inspiring guide is ultimately all about pleasure - from the enjoyment you'll get from planting and growing your own produce to the priceless reward of having a wealth of fresh vegetables just outside your door.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
96 of 99 people found the following review helpful
I picked this book up as I was attracted to the fantastic pictures of Sarah Raven's enviable garden. These pictures, showing her bountiful harvets and attractively planted crops, certainly encouraged me to develop my own, much more inferior vegetable plot. But for me, it is too much of a glossy lifestyle book than a step by step guide. I got a pretty good idea of life chez Raven, with descriptions of how integral the garden is to family life, accompanied by pictures including their rustic outdoor pizza oven and artistic arrangements of borlotti beans. I found the layout confusing and heavily interspered with such pictures. Maybe that's because I am impatient and I just want to look up how to grow lettuce, with diagrams maybe, and advice on what to do if something goes wrong, which for beginners like me is likely. I'm sure there's lots of good advice in there, if you want to read it like a novel rather than a reference manual that you can dip in and out of. I have found that for growing individual vegetables, following the seed packet instructions is just as good if not better as its instructions are more succinct. This book for me will only really provide guidance on the overall arrangement of a vegetable garden when I get to the stage where I want it to look pretty and I have the time to sit down and read the text without being distracted by the pictures.
40 of 41 people found the following review helpful
This is an excellent book on vegetable gardening, but not for complete beginners, as it does not have step-by-step instructions on how to set up a plot. For those starting out I would heartily recommend Joy Larkcom's superb 'Grow Your Own Vegetables' (very comprehensive but no photographs) coupled with Dr Hessayon's 'Expert' book on vegetable gardening (very well laid out but a little out of date on vegetable varieties).
But Sarah Raven's book is excellent in other ways. The colour photography is absolutely superb and will spur you on to try and grow something just as good! There is also a really excellent alphabetical section on vegetables, which stresses how important it is to choose the best varieties for taste, colour and texture. She describes her personal favourites, and also has a lot of information on propagation, planting times, successional sowing, special growing requirements and harvesting for each vegetable. The section on herbs is excellent, with lots of advice on which varieties, for example, of basil and parsley are well worth growing and which are not. For potatoes and tomatoes, she also has specific growing information for each recommended variety, for example 'Pink Fir Apple' potatoes and 'Gardener's Delight' tomatoes. As she is a former chef at River Cafe, this advice is hugely valuable.
In the rest of the book there are comprehensive sections on specific vegetables that are commonly grown, including tomatoes (very informative), peas (including growing in guttering for an early crop), potatoes, carrots, beans, etc.
This is a superb book which I use throughout the year, and is especially recommended for those who are keen to know which vegetable varieties to grow for taste, colour and texture rather than purely for size and yield.
But Sarah Raven's book is excellent in other ways. The colour photography is absolutely superb and will spur you on to try and grow something just as good! There is also a really excellent alphabetical section on vegetables, which stresses how important it is to choose the best varieties for taste, colour and texture. She describes her personal favourites, and also has a lot of information on propagation, planting times, successional sowing, special growing requirements and harvesting for each vegetable. The section on herbs is excellent, with lots of advice on which varieties, for example, of basil and parsley are well worth growing and which are not. For potatoes and tomatoes, she also has specific growing information for each recommended variety, for example 'Pink Fir Apple' potatoes and 'Gardener's Delight' tomatoes. As she is a former chef at River Cafe, this advice is hugely valuable.
In the rest of the book there are comprehensive sections on specific vegetables that are commonly grown, including tomatoes (very informative), peas (including growing in guttering for an early crop), potatoes, carrots, beans, etc.
This is a superb book which I use throughout the year, and is especially recommended for those who are keen to know which vegetable varieties to grow for taste, colour and texture rather than purely for size and yield.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
I have found this book very useful for suggesting varieties of seeds to grow, spacing, crop rotation and suggestions for vegetables I would never have thought of. I only have 6square metres of veg garden which limits what you can grow and have found this full of useful tips about maximising use of space. Don't be put off by the fact that she has a huge amount of space it is full of good advice for those just starting out.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
A treasured book full of glourious photos and advice.
Alongside Sarah Ravens wonderful grow your own cut flowers this has got me wanting to grow veg and sarah's view on why we should grow veg is spot on for me anayway - the pleasure... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Arthur P
great book
Having been sucked into the Sarah Raven phenomenon by one of her recipe books, I thought I'd give her gardening book a try.
This is a great book. Read more
This is a great book. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Helena
The Great Vegetable Plot
As a keen amateur allotmenteer I was very pleased to recieve The Great Vegetable Plot as a gift from a kind relative. Read more
Published on 19 Mar 2010 by C. A. Gallagher
Inspirational
We recently bought a house with a vegetable garden and as an enthusiastic but clueless novice gardener I needed some advice. Read more
Published on 17 Aug 2009 by Fiona Lake
A really inspirational book
I grow my own and have a number of books on the subject. I love this book mainly because I want to be Sarah Raven. Read more
Published on 15 Nov 2008 by Scary Sue
a good book for a complete beginner
This book is not what I after (I was after a book that is concentrating more on the structure of a vegetable plot). Read more
Published on 4 April 2006 by M. parry
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