You’re excited to plant your first vegetable garden—but where to start? In The First-Time Gardener: Growing Vegetables, you’ll find the answers you’re looking for.
*Winner of the GardenComm 2022 Media Awards Silver Award of Achievement in the Photography/Book General Readership Category*
Homesteader Jessica Sowards, the warm and energetic host of YouTube’s Roots and Refuge Farm, is the perfect teacher for new gardeners, offering not just know-how but inspiration and time-management tips for success.
Before you sink your hands into the soil, she’ll answer all those questions rolling around inside your head:
- Where do I put my new garden?
- How do I prepare the soil?
- What vegetables should I plant?
- Is it better to start new plants from seed or should I buy transplants?
- What about watering, feeding, and taking care of my garden?
- What do I do if bugs show up?
There are no stupid questions here. Everyone has to start somewhere, after all. Not only will you learn how to prepare, plant, and tend your first vegetable garden, you’ll also learn:
- How to design an eco-friendly layout
- How to grow with the seasons
- How to maximize your harvest, even if you only grow in a small space
Jessica wants your first food-growing experience to be a positive one, and she’s prepared to go the distance to make sure tending the earth becomes your new favorite hobby.
A single growing season is all it takes to fall in love with growing your own healthy, organic, nutrient-dense food. With Jessica as your guide, you’ll soon discover all the satisfactions, challenges, and great joys of growing your own food garden.
This book is part of The First-Time Gardener’s Guides series from Cool Springs Press, which also includes The First-Time Gardener: Growing Plants and Flowers and The First-Time Gardener: Raised Bed Gardening. Each book in The First-Time Gardener’s Guides series is aimed at beginner gardeners and offers clear, fact-based information that’s presented in a friendly and accessible way, including step-by-step instructions and full-color illustrations throughout.
I would highly recommend this book.
With this book you have all the information you need to get started, and more. As you garden you'll need to find solutions to problems as they arise. She encourages you to keep a garden journal to record your outcomes and let the garden teach you valuable lessons. It's about learning and growing yourself also!
She's honest about the fact that gardening is hard work; that every gardener will make mistakes and sometimes fail; and that there will be situations that cannot be controlled, only overcome. Throughout the book she encourages you to persevere just as she does, because the rewards are worth it. It's helpful to keep these realities in mind and let go of any romanticized view of gardening.
I like that when she offers various alternatives for your garden, she also addresses the way to properly use them and cautions about what could go wrong if you don't.
She has a heart for your success, and tells you in advance so you can avoid setback and discouragement.
Just a few highlights of what I appreciate about the book:
⦁ The foundation of what every garden must have to produce food, the "non-negotiables", are laid out before you, as well as the "negotiables" which are the decisions you make based on your needs, your landscape conditions, and your personal preferences and creativity.
⦁ The pros and cons of various options help you make well-informed decisions.
⦁ Insights about issues I'd never considered are shared in this book. For me, it's helpful to read it several times to make sure those nuggets of wisdom sink in.
⦁ It's written in a friendly, conversational style as if your gardening friend is teaching you -- and she is!
⦁ Jessica is an expert communicator. She knows how to write concisely without unnecessary words. Because it is so well-written, there's a lot of information, helpful tips and encouragement covering all the bases of growing your own food, packed in a comfortable sized book.
⦁ Inspiring photos of her garden and the text are artistically arranged to make it a pleasant, relaxing read. It's packed with info, yet easy on the eyes because it feels more green, than stark white space on the pages.
Jessica has a heart for gardening, for people, and for teaching her passion to others. That love certainly comes through her writing.
I found Jessica on YouTube and loved all of her wonderful tips gathered together in one place. Everything is explained very well and the truth, to be inspired by your garden space, to make it beautiful I hadn't really considered. Yes, make it beautiful and functional, make it a space you want to spend time in and you will be there to notice the small difference day by day and appreciate them, and catch any issues before they become major problems. Well done, Jessica!
I thought her book would be a good idea because she’s so great in her videos. It’s the basics. I would not recommend this to a skilled gardener. She talks about setting up your garden, the plants needs, how to plant, zoning, etc. My favorite thing is the advice on how to do things inexpensive, and where to source containers and soil. She is fun in her language. The book is well organized, and it’s really beautiful. There are lots of pretty pictures of her personal garden. It really gets you excited about the process of growing food for your family. If you are a new gardener this book is really a must have. Ps. Jessica if you read these reviews you’re I think your cattle panel arches are WAY more beautiful than any expensive store bought trellis.
I definitely recommend this book!
The most important lesson I've learned from her is that it's ok to make mistakes. It doesn't make you a bad gardener, you are just a student who will always be learning. I feel empowered to go ahead and plant things and experiment to just see what happens! Will that plant grow here at this time of year? Let's find out! I'm excited to keep learning.
P.S. I hope she writes a book about keeping farm animals next, I'm getting chickens and have no idea what I'm doing. Oh and a cook book!
I guess I'm not exactly a beginner at this point since I've been taking care of someone else's established garden for about 9 years.
So I have found out about some of this stuff over those years by talking to other people and on the internet.
And a lot of what I have learned matches up with what this book says.
Some of the information in this book doesn't apply for me since I don't start plants indoors and I don't used raised beds. So I didn't read all the pages in this book.
However we usually do get tomato plants which were started in a greenhouse by someone else or from places like Home Depot.
Some things I've learned and can recommend are:
Get your soil tested by Cooperative Extension or someplace like that. With fertilizers more is not always better. My cucumber plants keep giving me a lot of foliage and flowers but not very many cucumbers. There's too much organic material (manure) in my soil and the pH level of the soil is 7.6 which is too alkaline. My soil report says all it needs is small amounts of nitrogen fertilizer right now and only at the beginning of the season.
I have saved myself many hours of backbreaking work by covering the empty rows between the plants with a weed barrier fabric. These fabrics allow air and water to get into the soil but it blocks the sunlight to kill the weeds. This book mentions the weed barrier fabrics and also using mulch or compost covered by wood chips for the same purpose which I may do for the spaces between the individual tomato plants.
Most cucumber varieties are designed by Nature to climb like a vine. I built some simple circular cages that I place around my cucumber mounds. I use the thin fencing wire with the square openings in it. I tie them into a circle with zip ties. You can make four cuts into the wire where four of the squares intersect. Remove the cross shaped cutout and bend the cut wires back to create a place to reach your hand into the cage. Wear gloves and safety glasses when working with this type or wire. The cut off ends of the wire are sharp and they can swing back and hit someone in the eye. Cut off or bend back the cut off wires at both ends of the cage also.
Books like this talk about organic gardening methods which can apparently take a few years to work well. I use the deadly SEVIN pesticide when my plants first start growing and I even spray the SEVIN into the soil within the rows. But then I switch over to organic pesticides when the plants start getting flowers so as not to harm the bees.
I may switch over to soaker hoses this year for watering. Soaker hoses don't get the leaves of the plants wet. Wet leaves can cause fungal diseases like powdery mildew on cucumbers and zucchini.
There are traps that come with bait that are specifically designed to catch Japanese beetles which appear in large numbers at certain times of the year.
Here's a bee safe product to kill the dreaded squash borer moth which destroys zucchini plants:
Safer Brand 5163 Caterpillar Killer II Concentrate, 16 Oz
This book has tons of info for any gardener, from being a rookie, to being a pro. I promise you will learn something useful in this book. Beautiful pictures and illustrations that make it easy to do and understand. Words that come from her heart and easy to understand and view while reading it. This book is a must for anyone that wants to know how to garden or just to increase your knowledge about it. This book was a no brainers for me and I sure hope you feel the same. God Bless you and your family Jessica!
Jason
As someone who has watched so many of her videos, I wish that she used this platform to go more in-depth with her processes- given more numbers, more graphs more charts, just deeper information in general, but maybe that will come in another book. Jess, if you're reading this, please give us more books.
Thanks! I appreciate you!
Bless.
I have been homestead dreaming for a while now. Although I live in the suburbs and it will be a while before we get out to the country, I figured I could learn homestead skills while I wait. This year I decided I would learn to garden.
If you're like me and are pretty clueless about gardening, this book is for you. Jess really breaks it down. From what to grow your plants in, what soil to use, how to start seeds, pest control, to when to harvest the fruits of your labor. She covers it all.
The book has beautiful photos and beautiful words. I love Jess's take on the garden and growing as a gardener. I will definitely be referencing this book a lot as I start my first garden this year.
I have a few other gardening books, but they are pretty standard "here's what's what, and tips" and read like some kind of encyclopedia that a robot could have written. Great if you know what you're looking for already or just want to know what gardeners do, but this reads like your good friend who knows you don't know what you're doing and wants to give you the best advice while validating all your insecurities and helping you grow as a person and a gardener. It sounds super corny, but I didn't know I needed that. It's so easy to beat ourselves up over our own ignorance because we have access to instant info at our fingertips. The author does a fantastic job of informing, and encouraging without being overly jargony or preachy. It's crystal clear that she loves to garden and is grateful for the opportunity to grow gardeners that do as well.
The book itself feels academic, with professional photography, easy to read font, and a classroom-esque format.
I hope she gets to write more books like this, or wherever the garden takes her. She has an authentic voice, and advice you can see in practice at her YouTube channel, Roots and Refuge Farm.
The only thing I didn't like was the small font in the printed book, so I also purchased the ebook where I am able to increase the size comfortable to my eyes!
I will use this guide often!
I recommend this book to everyone looking for a helping hand in the garden!
Thank you so much, Jess, for this wonderful gardening reference. We will cherish it forever!
The book is well-written, and perfectly captures her knowledge and love for gardening. It's a wonderful tool for new gardeners, as all the knowledge is broken up into manageable pieces.
She presents information in a clear and concise manner. She doesn't just tell you how things must be done, but instead gives you a piece of information, and also explains why something should or shouldn't be done, and some examples are backed up with a bit of scientific fact (in a good way That helps clear things up, not in a way that would overwhelm)
Most of all, this book is full of encouragement
Encouragement to try gardening, encouragement to experiment, encouragement for your successes, and encouragement to try again when you experience failures. As a first year small raised bed gardener, I can attest that being encouraged to try something or try again when things get difficult is half the battle for me.
I definitely recommend this book if you're a new gardener and want to learn as though you are learning from a good friend in the pages of the book.
To the author: Well done Jess!
Second, I finally moved to a place where I can plant some veggies, but I wanted her simple breakdown of where to begin and what my options are. Like many, we are overrun with options and it can be overwhelming. This book really does break it down and make it seem doable for someone who doesn't know everything there is about gardening, veggies, weeds, raised beds, trellises, etc...
I've already read through it and am excited to implement some of her advice. My favorite part? Create a space you love and go -be- in it.
I definitely recommend this.