Customer Reviews

The Sustainable Vegetable Garden: A Backyard Guide to Healthy Soil and Higher Yields

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is neither a book for beginners nor a book for experienced gardeners. There are some valuable concepts, quickly presented, but the book fails to connect with real life.

A four sentence quotation will speak for itself. These are "growing instructions" for green onions on page 62: "Use .39 ounce (1 tablespoon + 1 1/4 teaspoon)of seed per 100 square feet (col. BB) or .0078 ounce (1/8 teaspoon)for 2 square feet (.39 ounce x 2 sq ft [divided by] 100=.0078 ounce. On 3 inch centers (col. CC), a 100-square-foot area will hold a maximum of 50 plants (2,507 plants x 2 sq ft [divided by] 100 sq ft=50.14 plants). To ensure 50 green onion seedlings to transplant, you will need to sow 72 green onion seeds (50 [divided by] .70 germination rate [col.AA]=71.43). The 72 seeds broadcast (col. FF) in a flat will take up approximately 1/10 of a flat 6 to 8 weeks (col. HH) before the scheduled planting date."

The same sort of homey advice is offered for corn, beans, etc.

At best, this is a book an experienced gardener might pick up at the library to glean a few useful ideas about biointensive gardening (I found nothing that isn't presented better elsewhere). At worst, unsuspecting beginners will think this book is the authoritative source it claims to be, try to implement it's convoluted techniques, and fail miserably.
All gardening books convey a certain sensibility about gardening that sets the perspective for the endeavor. Sustainable Vegetable is weird mix of new age idealism and rocket science. Trust me, gardening is not as complicated as this book makes it sound!
The Vegetable Gardener's Bible by Ed Smith is THE definitive title on the subject.Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew is good for small gardens. Four Season Harvest by Elliott Coleman is excellent for winter gardening. Tanya Denckla's Gardener's A-Z Guides are excellent.

What is 'biointensive vegetable gardening? In brief it features the following methods: - focus on the health of the soil as the starting point for a productive garden (this is the meaning of 'bio-'); - emphasis on growing the most vegetables in the least possible space for maximum efficiency (hence '-intensive'); - vegetables grown in narrow beds (for ease of access and positive microclimate)which have been 'double-dug' and composted; - closer spacing of plants than usual due to greater depth of soil, assisted by companion planting; -organic nutrition and pest control throughout.

This short book is a great introduction to organic vegetable growing, especially the 'biointensive' method. It is also a useful work for experienced gardeners who want to know about John Jeavons' highly successful methods, but don't have lots of time to study the weightier 'How to Grow More Vegetables'. That book is a real classic of organic gardening, and stands alongside Elliot Coleman's 'The New Organic Grower' as a 'must-have' reference book. However, 'The Sustainable Vegetable Garden' is more than just an abridged version of Jeavons' earlier book. It actually makes many of the key concepts easier to understand and put into practice. It is full of useful diagrams which will be invaluable to the novice and expert alike. You don't just read about how to 'double dig' a bed - there are step by step images to help you see exactly how it's done.

For beginners, just about everything you need to know is covered. Its rare to find a book that explains the details to clearly and concisely. For more experienced gardeners, you will almost certainly discover tools and methods you can use by reading this book. I found I could more or less skip the chapter on composting but was particularly interested in Coleman & Cox's approach to planning how much of each crop to plant in a season. A number of charts and plans are included for you to photocopy and use yourself. In fact, the approah to planning a vegetable garden outlined here is a particular strength of the book.

Here's what the book includes: 1. Thinking about raising food sustainably 2. Before you start 3. What do you want to eat? Choosing what to grow 4. Preparing a biointensive bed: Double-Digging 5. What to feed a biointensive bed: Compost 6. Seedlings 7. Planning and planting crops 8. Growing compost crops 9. Growing more calories 10. Arranging what goes into a bed: Companion planting 11. Keeping the garden healthy 12. Seeds for next year's garden Appendices on supplies and resources and additional tools for garden planning.

So what are you waiting for? Buy it and get growing!

A revised edition of Lazy-bed Gardening (1993), The Sustainable Vegetable Garden is a concise and easy-to-read introduction to concept of biointensive gardening. Essentially a resurrection of ancient farming practices, biointensive gardening is supposed to increase yields (the authors claim four times higher than one should expect from a standard garden) while maintaining a garden ecosystem that preserves the vitality of the soil for future gardens and generations of gardeners. For one to be able to subscribe to the system that Jeavons and Cox outline, one really has to have a sizeable garden plot, so that one can grow calorie-crops as well as compost-crops, so in this respect the book is not suited for the typical urban backyard gardener with only a few square meters of plot. One thing that really put me off was the suggested calculation method for determining the numer of seeds that need to be planted in order to attain an optimal yield-rate. Overall, though, I really enjoyed this book, and it has led me to rethink my approach to gardening.

This is an excellent book for new gardeners and for old gardeners new to the biointensive method. Tells how to build a garden the right way, from the bottom up. If growing one's own food is the best way to stop the insanity of agribusiness, then John Jeavons is a mild-mannered but effective revolutionary leader. He enlightened hundreds of thousands of us with his 1974 groundbreaker How to Grow More Vegetables (than you ever thought possible on less land than you can imagine).

This is not a book to read in winter when you're dreaming of your perfect garden. This is a book that correctly lists the five plants that have been proven to help deter the Striped Bean Beetle when it's eating your garden down to the nubs. And the intercropping to keep the bean beetle away next year. And soil treatments to keep it from coming back. And what kinds of flowers will attract the beetle's predators. And did you know that veggies will generally produce just fine with up to 30% of their leaf surface eaten, or even produce more when it's attacked just like this? I didn't, until I read this book.

Great information, essential information, complicated information. If you're a dreamer who likes a couple of nice sprays of hybrid cherry tomatoes to munch on each September and want a nice book with pretty color pictures, this isn't the book for you. If you've got dirt under your fingernails and a problem with your French Intensive beds, you will eventually need exactly this book.

It is interesting reading if you want to know EVERYTHING about intensive gardening. I view gardening as stress relief, not to eat to live, so I don't like to use my brain this much when working in the garden. I give it 3 stars because I do feel if one really needs this information, it could be useful. An engineer minded person would probably love this book and get a lot of useful info out the main book, How to Grow More Vegetables. I am technical minded, but after working 60 hours a week, I don't want to strain my brain over a garden.

I was very dissapointed in the length of this book. Compared to other organic gardening books, this should be listed as a brochure, or maybe as a synopsis of "How to Grow More Vegetables..." A buyer's money could be better spent. Personally, I would not buy it again. Figuring that it would cost me half of the cost of the book to return it to Amazon, I'll probably just give it away as a gift to a new gardener. This is not to say that there is no useful information in the book, but more information can be found in other, -longer- books

This book is a must have if you're serious about getting the best possible yields from your garden.
Good info, easy to use, and written at a level that most anyone can follow.

I am thankful to find this book, because it is so rare to find any gardening book that actually tells you how many seeds you need for so much ground, or how to predict yield.

The reviews that complain about this valuable information give me an idea why that might be. People are too stupid to either value or use that information.

Well, if you are intelligent enough to be looking for that information, then you'll be happy to have this book.