Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces [Paperback]

Gayla Trail (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 2, 2010

Your patio, balcony, rooftop, front stoop, boulevard, windowsill, planter box, or fire escape is a potential fresh food garden waiting to happen. In Grow Great Grub, Gayla Trail, the founder of the leading online gardening community (YouGrowGirl.com), shows you how to grow your own delicious, affordable, organic edibles virtually anywhere.                  
 
Grow Great Grub packs in tips and essential information about:
 
- Choosing a location and making the most of your soil (even if it’s less than perfect)
- Building a raised bed, compost bin, and self-watering container using recycled materials
- Keeping pests and diseases away from your plants—the toxin-free way
- Growing bountiful crops in pots and selecting the best heirloom varieties
- Cultivating hundreds of plants, from blueberries to Thai basil, to the best tomatoes you’ll ever taste
- Canning, and preserving to make the most of your garden’s generosity
- Green-friendly, cost-saving, growing, and building projects that are smart and stylish
- And much more!
 
Whether you’re looking to eat on a budget or simply experience the pleasure of picking tonight’s meal from right outside your door, this is the must-have book for small-space gardeners—no backyard required.
 
GAYLA TRAIL is the creator of the acclaimed top gardening website yougrowgirl.com. Her work as a writer and photographer has appeared in publications including The New York Times, Newsweek, Budget Living, and ReadyMade. A resident of Toronto who has grown a garden on her rooftop for more than 10 years, she is the author of You Grow Girl: The Groundbreaking Guide to Gardening.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Recipe from Grow Great Grub: Root Vegetable Fries

Ingredients:
1 large carrot
1 large potato
1 large sweet potato
1 large beet
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
1/2 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary
Salt and pepper

Roasted potatoes are good and all, but a roasted root vegetable medley is just as easy to make and a little bit fancy, too. Substitute any root vegetable, including starchy potatoes, turnip, parsnip, celery root, or rutabaga. While the veggies are roasting, toss a garlic bulb or two into the pan at about the 30-minute mark--the result: easy, creamy garlic! Yum.

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Cut the vegetables into 1/2"-wide spears and toss in a roasting pan with olive oil and herbs to coat. Keep the peels on; that’s where the vitamins are.

2. Roast for approximately 40 minutes, turning regularly until all sides have turned a golden brown and the fries are cooked straight through.

Serves 2–4

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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Root Vegetable Fries
 
Roasted potatoes are good and all, but a roasted root vegetable medley is just as easy to make and a little bit fancy too. Substitute any root vegetable, including starchy potatoes, turnip, parsnip, celery root, or rutabaga. While the veggies are roasting, toss a garlic bulb or two into the pan at about the 30-minute mark—the result: easy, creamy garlic! Yum.
 
1. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Cut the vegetables into 1⁄2"-wide spears and toss in a roasting pan with olive oil and herbs to coat. Keep the peels on; that’s where the vitamins are.
2. Roast for approximately 40 minutes, turning regularly until all sides have turned a golden brown and the fries are cooked straight through.
 
Serves 2–4

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Clarkson Potter; 1 Original edition (February 2, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307452018
• ISBN-13: 978-0307452016
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 0.6 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,136 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #20 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Landscape Design > By Technique > Organic
  • #31 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Landscape Design > Vegetables
  • #72 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Sustainable Living

More About the Author

Gayla Trail is a writer, photographer, and graphic designer with a background in the Fine Arts, cultural criticism, and ecology. She is the creator of the popular gardening project, YouGrowGirl.com and the author of three books on gardening: You Grow Girl: The Groundbreaking Guide to Gardening, Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces, and "Easy Growing: Organic Herbs and Edible Flowers from Small Spaces as well as an in-demand gardening personality and spokesperson with a focus on urban gardening, growing food, sustainable living, and community. Her work as a writer and photographer has appeared in the New York Times; O, the Oprah Magazine; ReadyMade; Domino; Budget Living; and more.

Gayla's love for gardening began with parsley seeds planted in a Styrofoam cup when she was five years old. Inspired by the potato plants her grandmother grew in a bucket on her senior centre's fire escape, Gayla has always gardened in whatever space she had available, including a hot and exposed building rooftop, a community plot, windowsills, shared yard space, fire escapes, a concrete parking pad, stoop steps, and a small urban backyard.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

213 of 214 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Great Book By Gayle Trail - Makes Gardening Easier and More Fun! February 7, 2010

By Bold Consumer TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I bought "Grow Great Grub" because I got so much out of "You Grow Girl". I really didn't see how the author could come up with that much excellent material again, but she did.

You probably should stop reading and just buy the book. The quality is excellent. Photographs are beautiful. The book is easy to read and doesn't waste time. Well done!

Pictures of what vegetables are supposed to look like always help. I'm always turning to my neighbor and asking, "Did I plant that or is it a weed?" Usually the neighbor says it's a weed, but I'm never sure.

The text covers harvesting, drying, preserving, and storing, only one of which I want to do, harvesting, but the other topics are beautifully covered for those who are ready. I'm pushing my luck just to grow and harvest a plant from seed. Maybe next year I'll preserve and store.

She lists plants that grow well in depleted soil, shady or very hot spots and makes coverage interesting on topics of nutrients, fertilizers, containers, pests, building self-watering planter boxes cheaper than buying, a great idea.

I learned about heat-loving spinach I was already growing, but had no idea what it needed! Lists of recommended varieties of vegetables and those that work well in containers are especially helpful.

Now I know when to harvest vegetables, something that always baffled me, including when to dig up onions, when to stop watering, and hang them to cure, and when my radishes were ready to harvest, unfortunately I didn't learn that in time for the current crop, how radishes can be used as a pest repellent for squash, that carrots are slow to germinate but ready to eat at any size, and when potatoes are ready to harvest. I had been about to pull mine out to check. I'm glad I didn't. I had no idea some gardeners say squash plants produce too much squash! I can't wait to have that problem. She covers spacing and staking squash plants, preferred pot size for these space hogs, when to pluck them for best taste, and how to help pollinate, "to make sure the job gets done."

Sections cover special needs of tomatoes, potatoes, blueberries, cucumbers, squash, and radishes, etc.

My notes include why not to let water splash up on lower leaves of tomato plants and how to give them certain nutrients while making leaves and stems, when to stop so they will produce fruit, and when and what to give them at that point. There are special planting needs, since they have lots of root growth, and companion plants for best use of space. Then she gave the best definition I've heard of the differences between determinate, indeterminate, semi-determinate (new to me), dwarf hybrid tomatoes, and which one is right for me.

There is a section on growing fruit in small pots. Now I think I'll grow some strawberries after all. Blueberries - hedge or containers. I think I'll do both. I learned why nothing grows around my pine tree and why blueberries might, why, what and how to prune out to increase growth and discourage fungal problems, needs of high-bush and low-bush blueberries, which one is right for me, how to get the best crops by promoting cross-pollination, when and when not to pick flowers off so the plant can put its energy into growing healthy roots, why/why not to grow fruit from seed, how to prepare citrus soil for fruit plants, when and when not to water, how much sun and heat they need, and how long it takes for them to grow fruit, I might have given up, and finally, how to plant, elevate, and hand-pollinate.

How did she make all this so interesting and easy to read? I don't know, but I'll be referring to this book often. It's a keeper!

239 of 255 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Not so great for the beginner gardener March 1, 2010

By Caroline

Format:Paperback

So you're like me: you have a small, but comfortable apartment and you want to have some greenery to spruce things up. A practical soul, you don't just want flowers. You want to be able to grow your own herbs and vegetables, and look forward to your windows popping with color in the summer. But this is your first real foray into the world of container gardening.

This book is not your bible.

While it is beautifully composed, and contains a helpful chapter about canning, there is a distinct lack of real facts and procedures. In short: this is an impratical book. Questions about drainage, how to compose your garden, or how to trellis are barely answered. While the sections on individual produce to grow are inticing, they lack the information you need to really make a go at things. This book can be a good starter, but only when complemented with other, more in depth books, and a good gardening center that can guide you through the practical steps.

As an alternatives, try McGee and Stuckey's The Bountiful Container. Less pretty picture, but far more useful information.

52 of 55 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars If you've ever had any interest in growing your own food, BUY THIS BOOK NOW. February 2, 2010

By Karen Walrond

Format:Paperback

When you first open this book, you'll notice it's beautiful. Seriously beautiful. The photographs are vivid, and the layout is really extraordinary. But then once you get past that, you start to realize it is crammed full of all kinds of information that would be helpful to both the novice gardener and the serious food-grower.

A really, really exemplary sophomore effort by Trail. Run-do-not-walk to buy this great work.