Four-Season Food Gardening hands you all the know-how you need to make growing food 365 days a year your new superpower!
Unlike most other vegetable gardening books on the market, this one approaches the subject through the lens of what you can grow during each of the four seasons, even if you live in a cold climate. Using season-extension techniques, such as cold frames, mini hoop houses, and thick mulches, combined with a thoughtful mixture of annual and perennial crops, you’ll discover that eating from your backyard through all 12 months is possible.
With a hearty dose of enthusiasm and expertise, author Misilla dela Llana of YouTube’s Learn to Grow channel presents this season-by-season guide to growing edible plants, covering everything from what tasks and what crops are best for each harvesting season to step-by-step DIY projects for structures and methods to temper weather extremes. With Four-Season Food Gardening you can keep on growing, no matter what challenges Mother Nature presents.
Inside, you’ll find info on:
- Veggies you can harvest in the dead of winter
- Foods that come from perennial plants you harvest from for many years
- How to build and use cold frames and other season extenders to prolong your harvest
- Tips for incorporating layers of edible plants to maximize space
- Pruning, planting, and maintenance advice for dozens of crops
- Seasonal maintenance and harvesting know-how from a pro
Build a forest of food in your backyard and reap the delicious rewards for years to come!
It has a lot of helpful information and tips.
The book itself is medium size, the pages are soft with a good size lettering. Great images. Well explain, so it can be understood for a semi beginner gardener like me.
Plus, i love garden and kitchen books!
Recommended.
This well-written gardening guide is very comprehensive and detailed covering things I had never even thought about while providing the science and solutions to issues.
Timely book especially with he current uncertainty of the food supply in the U.S.
Lots of great options and ideas to get us all more self reliant.
Outstanding pictures, clear concise writing, valuable information that will be useful for the entire time I garden. This is a book I will reference again and again
This book presents a lot of material. It details equipment, soil testing, growing conditions, container planting, and much more in the introductory chapters. After that, it gets into the different seasonal growing periods, starting with Spring and progressing through the other seasons in order. This includes what to plant in the given season and what to harvest in that season, tending your plants and more.
There are many, many full-color glossy photos in this book, which is a step up from a lot of the books I see these days which are a low-resolution matte finish like they were printed on plain paper with an inkjet printer.
This book is not exhaustive, of course, but it is thorough coverage of seasonal planting and harvesting, broken down into seasons and presented in a form easily accessible to most home gardeners. If you love gardening and want to be more efficient in your planting, or if you are just very interested and do not know where or how to get started, this is a good resource to get you on your way.
The second section of the book is divided into Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. These chapters cover basic how-to's of growing all sorts of vegetables as well as berries and fruit trees. This is followed by 50 plus pages of profiles of the author's favorite crops. These are organized alphabetically. This book is the type of resource that I will be returning to again and again. There is an index at the back of the book that makes finding what you're looking for much easier.
The book is not without its glitches. A section with step-by-step instructions on how to propagate tomatoes from suckers, is confusing and mis-worded. But most of the book is quite easy to follow and rarely overly technical. This book is very practical and goes into depth when needed.
I lived in the Philippines for 20+ years. Knowing that the author of Four-Season Food Gardening is Pinoy, adds to my enjoyment every time I pick up this book.
CONTENTS:
Introduction
--Section 1: Getting Started with the Basics
Chapter 1: Planning Your Garden
Chapter 2: Soil and Fertility
Chapter 3: Extending the Season
--Section 2: Season By Season in the Garden
Chapter 4: Spring
Chapter 5: Summer
Chapter 6: Fall
Chapter 7: Winter
--Profiles of Favorite Crops (ie, all the important info like planting time, planting depth, spaving, soil, sun, hardiness, germination time, maturity, pests, and a blurb about the food item)
About the author, acknowledgments, Index
The book itself is a beautiful, full color paperpack, and contains a wealth of information. Even if you're an experienced gardener, sometimes it's nice to have a printed reference for when to plant what, and what can tolerate -10° and what will die at 0°. This book is so much more than that though! There are tips on pests, soil maintenance and more. The book is divided into seasons and has a very useful guides on what can be planted directly in early spring, what needs to be planted under cover, what you can transplant and what you can harvest that overwintered from the previous season. Then there's the "Profiles on Favorite Crops", the last section. It goes in depth on some of the most popular food crops (and some I'd never heard of!) and goes in depth on their characteristics and care. Despite my years of gardening experience, I've learned quite a bit from Misilla Dela Llana. Four-Season Food Gardening is a well done reference book and a must have on any gardener's bookshelf.
I have a greenhouse and a water barrel collection system and I found this book to have some useful information on container gardening and on layering edible plants. The season by season guide is useful to me, even with a greenhouse as I do not heat it during the winter.
Some gardening books are just for gazing at, this one looks good but also delivers useful information.
The author clearly knows how to work with nature and her cycles. Different sections for the four seasons make it very clear what to do when.
There are recipes for natural sprays to repel pests, wonderful for people with companion animals who want to avoid chemicals.
The information on soil helps build a very strong foundation for your garden.
I could go on and on. Received this book on the first day of Spring and dove in. Less than an hour later I'd learned a lot, and I've been gardening for years.
This book is excellent for the beginner, explanations are careful, clear and thorough. But there's plenty here for the seasoned gardener as well.
So pleased with my purchase.
Will use this book and grow fruits, vegetables and herbs for years to come.
Thank you, Misilla Dela Llana! Great job!
From planning your garden to specific tasks for each season, the book includes all you need to know to keep your fruit, vegetable and herb gardens going all year long. There is also an extensive section on their favorite crops. Each crop has a full color picture or two, some history and instructions for growing it in your own garden.
I learned a lot of new edible food gardening information in Four-season Food Gardening! I love the taste of bok choy in restaurant meals. Now I know how to grow dwarf varieties in only 30 days in containers. I also would have never thought that winter crops like potatoes can be overwintered or even plucked from the ground during winter. There were surprises in the crop section too. Claytonia can be planted in basically any soil or location but is not invasive. It tastes like spinach but is much less finicky. It’s the perfect winter crop and may be a perennial here since winter temps rarely go below 20.
If you want to garden all year or are curious about new crops, Four-season Food Gardening is the perfect book to help you achieve your goal. 5 stars!
Thanks to Cold Springs Press and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.
Just some of the how tos :
• Setting up a rain barrel
• Setting up a soaker hose
• Building a simple raised bed
• Building a Hugelkultur bed (which I found fascinating).
• Plant fruit trees
• Choose a planting method
• Do pest management
• Save seeds
The author shares her knowledge about the types of garden tools and garden beds and so much more. All of this gardening was done outside and I think every single thing had a photo. I’m going to have to say that this is probably my favorite garden book to date. I highly recommend it.
I just preordered my copy. I hope this was helpful.
Thanks Cool Springs Press via NetGalley.
Author Misilla dela Llana spent her early childhood in the Philippines and grew up surrounded by mango, guava, and coconut trees and a tropical climate. Moving to the US meant that many of the specific fruits and vegetables her family was used to weren't viable in her new home, but many others were.
She does a good job of explaining lots of creative ways to extend growing seasons and plan succession plantings very carefully to maximize production even into deep winter. Many cole crops and root vegetables even become sweeter and tastier with hard freezes as long as they're protected by polytunnels or cold frames.
The author has included a selection of plant profiles for various herbs and vegetables which are suited to extended season growing. Profiles include botanical (Latin) name as well as common names and a color photo of the plant/seeds. Planting suggestions, spacing, culture, and habits are included in highlighted text boxes in the profile.
Five stars. Well written and useful. This would be a good selection for public and school library, gardening groups, smallholders, suburban/urban gardeners, and the home library.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.