The Vegetable Gardener's Bible, 2nd Edition [Paperback]

Edward C. Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2, 2009

The invaluable resource for home food gardeners! Ed Smith's W-O-R-D system has helped countless gardeners grow an abundance of vegetables and herbs. And those tomatoes and zucchini and basil and cucumbers have nourished countless families, neighbors, and friends with delicious, fresh produce. The Vegetable Gardener's Bible is essential reading for locavores in every corner of North America!

Everything you loved about the first edition of The Vegetable Gardener's Bible is still here: friendly, accessible language; full-color photography; comprehensive vegetable specific information in the A-to-Z section; ahead-of-its-time commitment to organic methods; and much more.

Now, Ed Smith is back with a 10th Anniversary Edition for the next generation of vegetable gardeners. New to this edition is coverage of 15 additional vegetables, including an expanded section on salad greens and more European and Asian vegetables. Readers will also find growing information on more fruits and herbs, new cultivar photographs in many vegetable entries, and a much-requested section on extending the season into the winter months. No matter how cold the climate, growers can bring herbs indoors and keep hardy greens alive in cold frames or hoop houses.

The impulse to grow vegetables is even stronger in 2009 than it was in 2000, when Storey published The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible. The financial and environmental costs of fossil fuels raise urgent questions: How far should we be shipping food? What are the health costs of petroleum-based pesticides and herbicides? Do we have to rely on megafarms that use gasoline-powered machinery to grow and harvest crops? With every difficult question, more people think, "Maybe I should grow a few vegetables of my own." This book will continue to answer all their vegetable gardening questions.

Praise for the First Edition:
"In every small town, there is a vegetable garden that people go out of the way to walk past. Smith is the guy who grew that garden." — Verlyn Klinkenborg, The New York Times Book Review

"An abundance of photographs . . . visually bolster the techniques described, while frequent subheads, sidebars, and information-packed photo captions make the layout user-friendly . . . [Smith's] book is thorough and infused with practical wisdom and a dry Vermont humor that should endear him to readers." — Publisher’s Weekly

"Smith . . . clearly explains everything novice and experienced gardeners need to know to grow vegetables and herbs. . . . " — Library Journal

"this book will answer all your questions as well as put you on the path to an abundant harvest. As a bonus, anecdotes and stories make this informative book fun to read." - New York Newsday

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Wouldn't it be lovely to have a patch of corn, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, and beans just steps from your kitchen door? Would you like to learn how to control your zucchini plant? Ed Smith, an experienced vegetable gardener from Vermont, has put together this amazingly comprehensive and commonsensical manual, The Vegetable Gardener's Bible. Basically, Ed and his family have been growing a wide variety of vegetables for years and he's figured out what works. This book, filled with step-by-step info and color photos, breaks it all down for you.

Ed's system is based on W-O-R-D: Wide rows, Organic methods, Raised beds, Deep soil. With deep, raised beds, vegetable roots have more room to grow and expand. In traditional narrow-row beds, over half the soil is compacted into walkways while a garden with wide, deep, raised beds, plants get to use most of the soil. In Ed's plan, growing space gets about three-quarters of the garden plot and only about a quarter is used for the walkway. Ed teaches you how to create raised beds both in a larger garden or in separate planked beds. One of the most important--and most often overlooked--aspects of successful vegetable gardening is crop rotation. Leaving a crop in the same place for years can deplete nutrients in that area and makes the crop more likely to be attacked by insects. Rotate at least every two years and your vegetables will be healthier and bug-free. There's also a good section on insect and blight control.

Before choosing what to grow, go through the last third of the book, where Ed takes a look at the individual growing, harvesting, and best varieties of a large number of both common and more exotic vegetables and herbs. Whether you are a putterer or a serious gardener, The Vegetable Gardener's Bible is an excellent resource to have handy. --Dana Van Nest --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

A committed organic gardener, Smith is a proponent of staggered planting in raised, wide and deep beds that provide conductive root systems and produce abundant harvests. He explains his system, from optimum siting and soil preparation (he prefers broad-forking over rototilling or double-digging) to companion planting and compost ("The path to the garden of your dreams leads right through the middle of a compost pile"). For beginners, he takes the mystery out of such subjects as hardening off ("like a little boot camp for vegetables") and deciphering the shorthand used in seed catalogues. An abundance of photographs (most of Smith's own garden) visually bolster the techniques described, while frequent subheads, sidebars and information-packed photo captions make the layout user-friendly. The book concludes with an alphabetically arranged listing of vegetables and herbs in which Smith offers advice on every aspect of cultivation, as well as a selection of the most flavorful varieties. Smith doesn't necessarily break new ground here, but his book is thorough and infused with practical wisdom and a dry Vermont humor that should endear him to readers. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC; 2 Original edition (December 2, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 160342475X
• ISBN-13: 978-1603424752
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 0.9 x 10.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (245 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,374 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #22 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Landscape Design > By Technique > Organic
  • #23 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Landscape Design > Reference
  • #31 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Landscape Design > Vegetables

More About the Author

Edward C. Smith is the author of Incredible Vegetables from Self-Watering Containers. He tends a garden of over 1,500 square feet filled with raspberries, blueberries, flowers, herbs, and nearly 100 varieties of vegetables, including some heirlooms, in his home state of Vermont.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

316 of 322 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Serious gardening....... April 18, 2004

By Dianne Foster HALL OF FAME

Format:Paperback

Ed Smith is a serious gardener. His approach to vegetable growing is best suited to half acre gardens in the northern areas of the United States. Smith lives and gardens in Vermont and judging by the contents (great photos as well as text) of his book, THE VEGETABLE GARDENER'S BIBLE, I suggest his gardening effort constitutes year-round full-time employment for him. I am a dedicated urban gardener, but one with a less than one-eighth (<1/8) acre plot of land, much of which is covered by a house and driveway. I cannot begin to use most of the material in Smith's book, however, even for urban gardeners like me, Smith provides much useful information.

My experience has shown that vegetable growing in the city has one advantage over growing vegetables in the hinterland...most of the pests that plague the countryside have not moved to town...yet! When I grew green beans on a half acre plot in the country, I fought a daily war with bean beatles. I've yet to see a bean beatle in my urban back yard. On the other hand, the larvae of the Monarch Butterfly found my parsley last year. Smith's section on pests includes something I have not seen in other gardening books..a picture of Monarch Butterfly larvae or Parsley Caterpillers as Ed calls them, munching away.

Smith is an organic gardener so he advises pest control methods that deter unwanted visitors without damaging the larger envirnoment. He also advises moving the Parsely Caterpillar out of harms' way when you battle other insects. However, the birds living in my yard consider Parsley Caterpillars a delicacy, much to the horror of my granddaughters who watched the pretty little green and yellow striped caterpillars with interest last summer as they grew bigger and bigger until one day they were discovered to have been eaten by a feathered predator who left only a few body parts in his wake.

Smith includes much that will be of interest to anyone setting out to grow vegetables for the fifteenth or first time. Although most of us don't have a green house for winter gardening, most of us do have a sunny window sill that can be used to germinate seedlings for transplanting. Most of us can compost (check out WormWoman.com on the Internet if you live in an apartment).

Smith advocates growing vegetables in (W)ide rows, (O)rganically, in (R)aised beds with (D)eep soil. Even with my small yard, I can do that. We built raised beds with timbers, and filled them with compost made entirely of yard and kitchen waste and the result is fabulous. He provides a nifty section that shows you how to construct a raised bed on a patio or balcony. You may not have a half-acre spread, but you can use Smith's Bible if you want to grow vegetables.

102 of 103 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Reference May 31, 2005

By Erika Mitchell TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

This book is a reference manual for vegetable gardeners, particularly those gardening in northern climates. The book is organized into 3 main parts: From Seed to Harvest (covering planning, preparing beds, starting seeds, maintaining the garden, and harvesting), The Health Garden (covering soil, compost, and pests), and Vegetables & Herbs, A-Z (alphabetical guide to individual vegetables). The book is amply illustrated with color photographs and illustrations. End material includes zone maps, a list of suppliers, a list for further reading, and an index.

Smith sums up his approach to gardening in the acronym "WORD", which signifies Wide rows, Organic methods, Raised beds, and Deep soil. He's come to this approach after many years of trying many different methods, and found that this method seems to give him the best, most reliable harvest with the least effort. In this book, he explains the parts of the WORD method in detail. For example, he notes that he found rototilling actually to be counterproductive, since it tends to develop a hardpan of packed soil just under the surface. This hardpan limits root growth, which tends to stunt plants. Instead of rototilling, he advocates building deep raised beds, which provide for full root systems and better growth.

The articles in the alphabetical reference section are quite useful. Each includes a brief description of the vegetable, notes on when and where to plant, and notes on harvesting and storing. Instructions are also provided when needed about how to transplant. Each article comes with a quick reference chart that covers sowing (depth, temperature, days to germination, etc.) and growing (temperature, spacing, watering, companions, seed longevity, etc.) Overall, the book is very informative, the text is clear, and the pictures are quite helpful, making the book useful for experienced gardeners as well as beginners.

134 of 139 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars It's a * * WONDER* * book! July 24, 2004

By Leslie A. Harris

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

THANK YOU Mr. Smith for writing this book! I couldn't say enough about how helpful it's been to me. Wanting to be careful and do things right, since I'm a beginning gardener, this book tells in simple, everyday language with photos on how to start and keep up a vegetable garden. Here's a list of a few things it covers:

* designing your garden

* insect control

* soil care

* what veges to NOT plant with other veges

* diagrams

* lots of veges and all the info you could want about them

* herb section

* seed companies

* other recommended resources

* and MORE