Burpee The Complete Vegetable & Herb Gardener: A Guide To Growing Your Garden Organically [Kindle Edition]

Karan Davis Cutler (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Burpee has created a truly encyclopedic, but non-intimidating, guide to organic vegetable gardening that can be used and appreciated by anyone, whether or not they've ever stuck a seed in the ground. All the essential information is here--how to condition the soil, how and where to plant, sprouting schedules, what kind of yield to expect from each plant variety, and harvesting tips--in beautiful, bountiful, illustrated detail; the book's largest section, "Plant Portraits," contains explanations of the many cultivars of each vegetable and herb. If you're a novice vegetable gardener or new to organic gardening and can only afford one gardening guide, this may be your best value.

Product Description

A Backyard-Gardener’s Guide to Growing a Bountiful, Great-Tasting Harvest

The Complete Vegetable & Herb Gardener features:

• A full-color encyclopedia of over 100 vegetables and herbs with detailed, expert advice on growing them successfully from planting to harvest
• Planting and growing techniques that keep maintenance to a minimum
• Entries on how to grow unusual edibles, such as refreshing mesclun for salads, colorful edible flowers, spicy mustards, and more
• Descriptions and photos of a host of succulent vegetables, both hybrids and heirlooms, from common to exotic
• Complete information on improving even the poorest garden soil using safe, organic techniques, plus practical advice on making compost
• Recommendations on garden tools you need–and those you don’t
• Information on controlling pests and diseases organically, without resorting to poisonous sprays
• Spectacular full-color photographs of vegetables and herbs, food gardens, and edible landscapes, plus 30 black-and-white line drawings

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 46618 KB
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (November 24, 1997)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B002CJM6QS
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #252,035 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #44 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Lifestyle & Home > Home & Garden > Gardening & Horticulture > Herbs

More About the Author

Karan Davis Cutler is the author/editor of three garden books--Vines (Camden House), Salad Gardens (Brooklyn Botanic Garden), and Tantalizing Tomatoes (Brooklyn Botanic Garden)--and the author of many garden articles. She worked as the managing editor of Harrowsmith Country Life for six years and was a newspaper garden columnist for the Rutland Herald and Barre Times Argus from 1987 through 1991. She has received eight Quill & Trowell awards for outstanding writing from the Garden Writers Association of America. While tending gardens in northern Ohio and then in Vermont, she has grown nearly every vegetable in this book.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

169 of 169 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply the BEST gardening book around., April 1, 2001

By 

Life and Things "diamonds" (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Burpee : The Complete Vegetable & Herb Gardener : A Guide to Growing Your Garden Organically (Hardcover)

This book could easily be worth $50 and it would be worth the investment. I've been a gardener for a number of years, and out of the entire bookshelf of gardening books that i own, this book, hands down, is far more comprehensive than all of them put together. The first section of the book, a complete book in intself, will teach you just about everything you ever wanted to know about almost every aspect of gardening, and is comprehensive enough that if you learned it all you would be well on your way to becoming a master gardener. The second section, the plant portraits, gives you more information about each vegatable and herb in your garden than you could ever dream of knowing about, and more information than you would even be able to find. Like tomatoes? there are almost eight pages dedicated to them alone. The entire book is filled with beautiful color photographs, and it is packed with tons of hard-core information. Not like the "fluff" and tons of meaningless words without any content that practically all the other books are filled with. Recently i have moved to all hydroponics, and most of the rest of my gardening books are now about worthless to me, however this book is still prooving to be an invaluable source of information. The only thing this book does not cover very well is insects and plant diseases, although it still does quite a bit better than most gardening books do. Of course, if it did, this book would probably be over 700 pages long, "complete vegatable and herb gardener" style. The book "The organic gardeners handbook of natural insect and disease control" is a very good book on this subject. Spend the money and get both of these books. You wont need anything else.

77 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vegatable Gardening Made Really Easy, November 1, 2001

By 

Richard Szkodzinski (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Burpee : The Complete Vegetable & Herb Gardener : A Guide to Growing Your Garden Organically (Hardcover)

Very similar in content and structure to Ortho's Complete Guide to Vegtables. The difference comes in the experience the writer has growing and maitaining the various plants. I find using both books gives different perspectives for growing and caretaking of plants but conatins the same basic information. For instance the Ortho book has better Garden Setup and maintenance data, and raw data on the various gardening aspects like fertilizer and pest eradiction. The Burpee book focuses on plant and cultivar details a little better. The book is filled with plenty high quality pictures of plants and their fruits using multiple pictures of various cultivars within plant families.
The book is geared for both beginners in gardening and the handy do it yourselfer types. Chapters progress you through the steps from site selection and plant selection to harvesting, crop rotating and soil conditioning over winter and indoor greenhouse seed starting. The book also contains references to various cultivars within vegtable species, so a beginner gardener could not only successfully select and grow well know vegtables, but could also grow and use the odd often hard to find fresh herbs.
I consistently flip between both this book and Ortho's book. I find using them in this manner makes the information extracted complimentary and thorough.

53 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect for the beginner!, August 3, 2001

By 

John G. Maylone (Tollhouse, California) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Burpee : The Complete Vegetable & Herb Gardener : A Guide to Growing Your Garden Organically (Hardcover)

I've dabbled with vegetable gardening all my life. Now that I'm retired, I wanted to get serious about it and expand my postage stamp garden. It doesn't take a lot of skill to grow tomatoes this close to California's central valleys and I wanted to go beyond the slam dunk crops and grow a variety of things that I enjoy eating.

The Burpee book is perfect for my purposes. It has two major parts; the first section deals with gardening in general and provides a broad base of information on how to prepare for and raise your own vegetables. The second part is an alphabetical tour of more than 100 of the most commonly grown vegetables with a general description of each vegetable or herb and its varieties, and some specifics on how to grow and harvest that particular plant.

I was looking for a single reference book that would get me into some serious vegetable gardening, and I hit the jackpot with this book. It is definitely a keeper. I won't say that I'll never need another book on vegetable gardening, but I should be so lucky as to live long enough to outgrow this one!