Product Details
- Author: Edward C. Smith
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- Binding: Paperback
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- Dewey Decimal Number: 635
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- EAN: 9781580172127
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- ISBN: 1580172121
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- Label: Storey Publishing, LLC
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- Language: English
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- Manufacturer: Storey Publishing, LLC
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- Number of Items: 1
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- Number of Pages: 320
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- Product Group: Book
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- Publication Date: 2000-02-15
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- Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
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- Studio: Storey Publishing, LLC
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- Title: The Vegetable Gardener's Bible: Discover Ed's High-Yield W-O-R-D System for All North American Gardening Regions
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- UPC: 037038172126
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Avg Customer Rating: 
Product Description: Wouldn't it be lovely to have a patch of corn, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, and beans just steps from your kitchen door? Would you like to learn how to control your zucchini plant? Ed Smith, an experienced vegetable gardener from Vermont, has put together this amazingly comprehensive and commonsensical manual, The Vegetable Gardener's Bible. Basically, Ed and his family have been growing a wide variety of vegetables for years and he's figured out what works. This book, filled with step-by-step info and color photos, breaks it all down for you. Ed's system is based on W-O-R-D: Wide rows, Organic methods, Raised beds, Deep soil. With deep, raised beds, vegetable roots have more room to grow and expand. In traditional narrow-row beds, over half the soil is compacted into walkways while a garden with wide, deep, raised beds, plants get to use most of the soil. In Ed's plan, growing space gets about three-quarters of the garden plot and only about a quarter is used for the walkway. Ed teaches you how to create raised beds both in a larger garden or in separate planked beds. One of the most important--and most often overlooked--aspects of successful vegetable gardening is crop rotation. Leaving a crop in the same place for years can deplete nutrients in that area and makes the crop more likely to be attacked by insects. Rotate at least every two years and your vegetables will be healthier and bug-free. There's also a good section on insect and blight control. Before choosing what to grow, go through the last third of the book, where Ed takes a look at the individual growing, harvesting, and best varieties of a large number of both common and more exotic vegetables and herbs. Whether you are a putterer or a serious gardener, The Vegetable Gardener's Bible is an excellent resource to have handy. --Dana Van Nest
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Customer Reviews
Great book, but I hope to see corrections and clarifications in a future edition!
Highly useful book, and a future edition that contained a few corrections and clarifications would be just about perfect.
The author mentions companion planting without discussing mechanisms, which makes typos hard to decipher. The "Artichoke" page states that tarragon is a good companion to artichokes, but the "Tarragon" page states that artichokes are a BAD companion to tarragon. Which is it?
The author also instructs novice tomato growers to remove all "nonflowering stems that grow between the main stem and the leaf crotches." What does this mean?! All stems will flower eventually...
(Of course pruning is controversial anyway... some gardeners claim that the complexity of tomato flavor depends upon lush foliage.)
The "Parsnip" section also has some vague instructions in the opening paragraph: "I deposit some seeds and labor in the warm months, and my investment matures the following spring." Does that mean that parsnips should be planted late summer/ early fall? What exactly is done in the warm months? The rest of the text does not explain this.
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I had to buy two of these
My nephew was starting a garden like me I gave him my copy and got a new one. This is a great book and it has helped me to be a gardner.
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Vegetable Gardener...
I wish I would had bought this book long time ago. So much it is written out there but this book gives you a clear explanation and it is so well written.
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Awesome...
I'm a city girl with no gardening experience whatsoever-- this book was a good guide and now my family is enjoying the fresh veggies I planted just months ago. I think this is an amazing tool for the beginning gardener.
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GREAT BOOK!
Mr. Smith has produced an invaluable resource that will become a standard---I've had this book for a couple of years, but this year was the first I've had opportunity to put his words to practice. He's dead-on in his excellent advise, so this year's modest garden will definitely grow next year. I'm wearing out my copy from use---a book well-loved indeed! If your planning a vegetable garden and need help---look no further. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
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