May 202013
The Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardener’s Handbook: Make the Most of Your Growing Season
“Timing is everything,” they say, and vegetable gardening is no exception. Knowing exactly when to start seeds indoors,
what day to transplant them into the ground, when to pinch off the blossoms, and when to pick for peak flavor is the secret to enjoying bountiful harvests all through the gardening season.
In Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardener’s Handbook, authors Ron and Jennifer Kujawski take the guesswork out of gardening with weekly to-do lists that break gardening down into easil
List Price: $ 14.95
Price: $ 9.60
More Gardening Products
Could be helpful, could be disastrous.,
I liked this book, I really did. I read through it and thought it sounded like a neat idea and that its checklists would help me keep on top of my garden chores week by week. So I happily filled in my frost date and dates thereafter on the weekly schedules in the book, then flipped to the page for the current date to check on my garden progress. That’s when I realized that the dates had no bearing on reality at all.
My average frost date is April 15. This book lists “Early fall” as 12-14 weeks after the average date of frost. That’s in July. One of the hottest parts of my season. Huh? Fall doesn’t even start until September. And this is where the book could be dangerous for beginners. It makes fertilizer recommendations based on dates that may be completely inappropriate for your area. If I had followed the instructions here, based on the weekly dates, I would have completely eradicated my harvest.
Clearly it needed to switch from “after frost” to “before frost” midway through the schedule.
The only saving grace is that the sections are marked as “early Summer” “mid Summer” etc, so you could use it as a loose schedule, but not a specific weekly schedule.
Maybe the book deserves slightly more than one star, because there is some good info, but I think any book that could totally destroy a new gardener’s experience and lead them down the path of utter failure is undeserving of a high rating.
Was this review helpful to you?
|At last,
At last a book which will help me remember what to plant when. Every year I forget something until it’s too late to plant it. This handy guide will help keep me on track. It will be especially useful for planting for fall crops. Lots of helpful information stuck in here and there for beginners and experienced gardeners. The format allows anyone to use this book in any zone and I like the space for entering my own notes for the next 4 years. I’m sure I will be referring to it often.
Was this review helpful to you?
|Informative….,
A very affordable book for gardeners. I like the week by week format. I always start too late trying to grow seedlings missing out on some early crops. I made a bookmark with my area’s frost dates and weekly dates corresponding to the book. I feel organized for the first time since I started veggie gardening. The book has reminders for maintenance such as when to start looking for certain insects and diseases like blight. It has timely information in each section!
I bought extras for my dad and friends.
Was this review helpful to you?
|