Fruits and Vegetables Books

THIS IS A GRAND BOOK THAT CAN BRING GARDENING TO ALL OF US. WE BENEFIT FROM THE YEARS OF TRIALS AND SUCCESSES THAT WAS PUT INTO THE RESEARCH THAT BRINGS US THIS BOOK. THE COMBINATIONS THAT JEFF BALL HAS BROUGHT TO US FROM ALL THE MANY HISTORICAL TECNIQUES ARE IRREPLACEABLE. WE WOULD NOT HAVE STARTED DOING IT WITHOUT HIM.
Update:
We have modified a lot of his methods to suit us as we learn. Plus, keep in mind, the book was written some time ago. However, it is a great beginning for ideas and encouragement.

This is the book to have if you want a beautiful and productive garden, especially if you don't have a lot of room. I've been carrying this book around with me for years, just waiting until I finally owned my own house so that I could build the raised beds and the interlocking system that he describes in this book.

My neighbors were a little bemused when they saw us out in the back yard, building our garden: "Oh, those are those raised beds, eh? I've heard of those" I'll tell you, when we had a cold spring and I turned my beds into little greenhouses (by covering pvc arches with clear plastic) I got a few more odd looks, but when it finally warmed up I took off the plastic and my tomatoes were three times the size of everyone else! With that head start, they were soon over six feet tall, and producing more wonderful tomatoes than I could handle.

Oh, and not needing to weed the garden (thanks to using his system of plastic mulch) and being able to water the whole garden by just turning a knob (thanks to setting up a drip irrigation system under the mulch, as he explains in the book) made taking care of my garden much easier than the traditional row gardens my neighbors have. As time passes, and my soil gets better and better, the advantages of this system will continue to accrue.

It's sad that this book is out of print, but it's definitely worth some effort to find a copy!

I read this book in one afternoon. I applied the ideas and have had a far more productive garden in less space with far less effort than before. Ball's book presents specific information, complete with shopping lists for materials and sources of hard-to-find products. He also includes information on companion planting, scheduling and organic approaches. I wouldn't be without it!

This is our first year for a garden, and this book is just the ticket. It lays things out very simply for the beginner. It has been invaluable for us.

I've always loved Jerry Baker's tips and knew I had to buy his vegetable gardening book when I decided to start my very first garden in 2001. I liked the fact that he included both gardening organically and with the use of chemicals. His ideas and tonics are simple and environmentally friendly which I think is very important today. He also encourages planning first and then planting. My first time out I had great success and am looking forward to planning next years crop. I highly recommend this book for beginners as well as those of you who don't want to waste time experimenting but learning from someone who has been gardening for many years.

This is a very good book which is full of useful gardening information and Jerry Baker's writing style is entertaining to read. I have been gardening for about 4 years with limited success. This book has provided me with lots of valuable information to hopefully improve my garden in the years to come. It has also given me the confidence to expand my garden and to try to grow some vegetables I have been afraid to try in the past.

The reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 is because it is not as organized as I would like and not as thorough as I had hoped. Being the novice gardener that I am, some of the information actually caused me to have more questions than answers.

It is still a very good book that is enjoyable to read, and is darn well worth the money.

What more could we want? This perky lady has stuffed another of her popular books with all the great nutritional ideas, easy-to-make recipes and interesting uses for juice anyone could want! This is the ultimate reference book - I prefer it to all her other books, although I have them all. She's the spokeslady on QVC - you know, the chirpy one who seems so smart. Well, read the book and you know she's not only smart, but she knows how to make healthy stuff taste GREAT! Good Work, Ms. Calbom! Thanks SO much for your work!

This book is an excellent start for those who are looking to improve their health by juicing. I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking to find information about the basics about juicing. I find myself using this book as a reference guide at all times.

Last year at x-mas my wife and decided that since we just had a baby and funds were low,that we would buy each other one gift that we picked out around $20.00.
I picked a beard trimmer and my wife picked out the Juice Ladys book.So I thought I would be nice and buy her two Juice Ladys books.
Well the books came and I looked through them,and found to my surprise that the same recipes were printed throughout both books.
A lot of the recipes can be used for the same things.So instead of printing the recipe then putting what it can be used for the recipes are reprinted over and over.
So in retrospect I suggest buying one book instead of two or three with different titles,because they have the same recipes.
I hope this has been of some help for those looking to buy this or other Juice Lady books.

I got this book as a "bargain" book at another big name book seller (bn) for about [cheap]. I'm glad I did. Unfortunately, I have yet to use any of the ideas in it, but I have to wait until I get a bigger yard! The book's set up is nice, spiral bound w/fold out pages, great illustrations. The author makes it look so effortless. The instructions that I have read are very thorough, right down to the supplies needed. Over all a nice set up.

I love this little gem!
This succinct guide contains 20 first class photographed and illustrated projects. Often garden "project" books suffer an utter lack of grace and refinement to the extent of becoming downright gauche. The ideas herein are delightfully decorative and infinitely tasteful.

As an artist and former art director, I respect the quality of illustration, handy layout design, and talented use of resources.

Mr. Bird offered a practical construction idea for cages that provide protection from birds and squirrels. He has a project for fruit trees in pots. A pear "tunnel" - a pergola, or archway covered with pears as a romantic garden feature.

He offers ideas on a charming bean arbor, decorative beds and borders, ways to use PVC pipe in large planters to disburse irrigation water more efficiently; and he offers plans for a very attractive double-groined trellis structure constructed with simple re-bar and installed as an apple arch.

Richard Bird has an innovative "step-over apple hedge" suitable for smaller gardens that is jaw-droppingly elegant. It essentially is an espaliered apple tree with just one horizontal tier that like most of his projects; it is not difficult - but it does require patience, and rewards they that wait.

For a pittance, this is a real jewel of a garden book. I am impressed.

KITCHEN GARDEN by Richard Bird is one of the many books I've acquired about growing comestibles outside the back door. When purchasing a book, I look for well presented, novel, and useful ideas. KG was printed in China and contains less than perfect but colorful and informative photos, and plenty of useful information. The book includes sections on: 1) vegetable (potager, salad bed), fruit (strawberry bed), and herb plots (taste of Asia); 2) container-grown fruit and vegetables for rooftops and patios; 3) climbing fruit and vegetables (bean arbors and pear tunnels); and 4) decorative beds and borders (apple border, herb border).

Each section includes a photo of a project, such as a potager, printed on a foldout page. Associated with each foldout page is a diagram of the project and other pertinent information including illustrations of various tasks required to execute the project, tool lists, plant lists, and other items. Although some of the presentations require more space than others, even folks living in townhouses with a space no larger than a deck or patio can benefit from the ideas offered in this book.

One of my favorites sections is the `Patio container garden.' You might ask what could anyone say about container gardening that has not already been said, but the answer is plenty. For example, Bird shows you how to secure your recently planted container so that birds and animals don't disturb the contents. Having watched a squirrel roll around one of my containers yesterday (apparently playing, there was nothing in it but soil), I can attest to the random, senseless, and wanton destruction of run-amuck wildlife. Bird also shows in his patio container section how to irrigate a strawberry jar. In all the years I've reviewed books and plant catalogues, I have never seen his novel approach depicted.

If you're looking for a cookbook approach to kitchen gardening, as opposed to an encyclopedia of possibilities where you supply the creative combinations, Bird's book of clearly described and carefully planned projects is a good place to begin. For intermediate gardeners.

The Organic Home Garden is a navigator to both growing an organic home garden and creating a sustainable lifestyle through hope and love. It resonates with life and will bring both inspiration and practical bounties to the reader. The photos are beautiful and the writing smooth and human. Its extensive organic techniques along with practical applications put this book above many of its kind. An inspirational and knowledgeable book that is first rate amongst my garden books.

Decent overview of general gardening. Not much info on zone specific gardening techniques or when is best to start different crops. A good book for beginners.

Newcomers to organic gardening will find Patrick Lima's Organic Home Garden an excellent, basic introduction which covers fresh and healthy foods and how to grow them with a minimum of additives. From selecting hardy varieties of seeds and seedlings to choosing appropriate compost and controlling pests and diseases through non-chemical means, Organic Home Garden is packed with charts, drawings, and even recipes.

The origins of food plants is a fascinating subject in its own right while the light it shines on human history is a splendid bonus. Knowing that barley and wheat came from the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia in the Middle East helps to explain why civilization first arose there and not somewhere else. Those foods helped to sustain a "surplus" population that could devote itself to the arts and invention, leading to the modern world. Indeed all wealth has as its base the growth and storage of food in excess of that which is needed for the sustenance of the food producers, resulting in non-food producing people who can devote themselves to competing schemes of how to steal the wealth and how to protect it (i.e., war). Looking at the history of art through still life and other works of art centering on fruits and vegetables is also fascinating. Essentially this is what Jonathan Roberts has done in this very attractive, richly illustrated book.

To give you some idea of his intent consider pages 122 and 123. On the right-handed page there is a photograph of "Banana Skin c. 1500" from the "Museum of London Evacuations, London Bridge, Southwark, U.K., 1999" showing the black skin of a banana with the obvious import that the banana had already reached the London produce market in c. 1500, just eight years after Columbus's first voyage. Remarkable. Then on the left-handed page there is an image of the oil on canvas painting, "Bananas, 1952" by Lucian Freud, showing an entire stock of bananas still on the tree. Roberts employs a number of famous works such as Van Gogh's "The Potato Eaters" and Botticelli's "Madonna of the Pomegranate" to illustrate the text; indeed there is art work from the Twelfth Egyptian Dynasty through Greek and Roman times to the still lives of the Renaissance to William Hooker, Gauguin, Cezanne, etc., to moderns like Edward Burra and even examples of Russian propaganda art and American advertizing.

The text is a little repetitive and there are some boilerplate phrases that appear several times, but there are only a few typos and I noticed no errors of fact (which isn't always the case in books like this: Roberts himself notes copious errors in, for example, Gerard's "Herball" 1597). Still, I think Roberts did a good job of going beyond the normal range of "coffee table" text while not being too technical. What really appeals, though, is the artwork.

I enjoyed this book although as always I would like more information; indeed an entire book devoted to each and every fruit and vegetable featured here (there are at least sixty, from apples and avocados and pears to beans, carrots, melons, to peppers both black and red, to pumpkins and zucchini, the latter not mentioned in the text, but there is an unmistakable illustration on page 141)--and more--would be ideal.

Mr Roberts's talent in explaining foods' beginnings make this elegant 228-page volume a real page turner.

This book is an excellent overview of the natural history of fruit and vegetables-where they originated, how they have changed and developed over time, and how they have influenced history. The first part details various aspects of our most common fruits (as least 29 main types are discussed), the second part that of vegetables (at least 25).

It is interesting to trace the place of origin of our most cherished delicicies. Tomatoes (western South America), potatoes (western South America), strawberries (the modern is a hybrid from a Chilean variety and a Virginian variety), banana (SE Asia), apple (South East Asia and Eurasia), orange (SE Asia), cracked black peppercorns (Southern India), carrots (Eurasia-probably Afghanistan), maize/corn (America-possibly the Andes originally), fermented grapes (Eurasia-possibly even fermented by homo erectus), watermelon (Africa), cucumber (India), pumpkin (Americas), leek (Central Asia), onion (Central Asia), avocardo (modern types come from Central Amercia), lemons (Eastern Himalaya), kiwifruit (Southern China) and many others. Beetroot grows wild near the sea in the Mediterranean. A tomato native to the Galapagos Islands has evolved resistance to seawater, but the seeds must be digested and 'voided' by tortoises-giant ones-before they will germinate. Charles Darwin would have been impressed.

Readers might be interested to know that the Romans and Greeks, for example, would have never even heard of such delights as tomatoes, potatoes, and corn, as these were all native to the Americas. Oranges, which are a cross between a pumello and a mandarin, didn't reach Europe until the Dark Ages, and neither did our modern apple.

With increase in trade and exploration over time many subspecies were crossed and produced vigorous hybrids, which in conjunction wih selective breeding and vagaries of taste over time, has produced many of the modern forms we see today. It is interesting to note here that not all modern forms are necassarily the best -the Jonathan apple for example, became very popular simply because it is bright red and looks good in the supermarket-but it is not the best eating apple.

Another interesting aspect is the carrying of many original types from the east by Islamic ventures, and to the east by Christians and various explorers. Cross-fertilisation thus eventuated by accident. Subsequently, many species were further cross-fertilised with North and South American types after the expansion into the Americas by Europeans after 1492.

Not all fruit and veges stand the test of time. The ancestor of the bean appears to have gone extinct, and some apple varieties seem to be going that way, crowded out by the Golden Delicious, and the ever-red Jonathan. Others took a long time to get going-such as the tomatoe. For long its association with the poisonous Mandrake stifled its development in the European Middle Ages. Today it is one of the most versatile and most widespread fruits grown. (It is actually a fruit or berry, rather than a vegetable, as is commonly believed).

This book is more than just an excursion into delectable dishes. The nature and origin of fruit and vegetables has profoundly affected culture and history. The potato famine of Europe and Ireland in the 1840s is described, (with at least 1.5 milion deaths in Ireland alone, out of a population of 8 millon). The development of agriculture in humans thousands of years ago was facilitated by mutant strains of such things as almonds, wheat, peas, and bananas (one of the oldest harvested fruit).

Magnificent, and pass me the pepper! Don't underestimate the power of food on primates. Nations have risen and fallen on the vagaries of corn, potatoes, fermented grapes, grain and the like, and their resistance to disease, peoples taste and historical oddities.

There are some beautiful paintings, inscriptions, and archealogical illustrations throughout, inspired by some of history's greatest artists and cultures.

Highly recommended for the lover of food and dining.

This is an excellent book. Written the way she teaches a workshop. My first impression of her as a person was that she was an intelligent woman, this book is well thought out and a great help to anyone wishing to paint still life.

The author is a warm and intelligent painter who expresses her passion for painting. and inspired a sense of excitement and possibilities in me. The chapter on drawing is extremely helpful. Although the paintings shown are mainly traditional in composition, there is a filip of creativity in subject matter and composition that is moving forward. I believe I can transfer the lessons to painting that I attempt here in the cold and rawness of Canada, Europe being beyond my reach....

Generous with sumptuous photographs of her work; generous with sharing her techniques and colors and study sources; generous in giving me the feeling that I can paint stills as wonderful as hers. Thank you Joe Anna.

I really like this book. I love to grow plants from seeds and this book helps me understand how that works and how I can grow even more things from seeds. As well as grafting and other techniques I've never tried. It is a bit technical, but I am only a home gardener so it's pretty easy to work out.

I was pretty disappointed with this book. There`s a lot of methods described to make more plants, but I don`t feel any of them is described in a lot of depth. Furthermore, the author uses a LOT of chemicals when growing and propagating plants, which is something I feel opposed to as a organic grower. I really can`t see why this book was elected one of the 75 best books by The American Horticultural Society?

My mum turned me on to plants when I was quite young, and I had tried to read some of the horticulture books that she had in her library (boring!). I bought this book for myself, because I wanted to learn more about propagation, so at first, I did not think this book would be much help since I prefer hard covers to paperback (personal choice), but even before I finished reading it, I was putting some of what I had read to use, and have on numerous occasions been asked questions that I could answer thanks to this books information. This book is full of useful information on how-to that you can put to use almost immediately, and it is not a dull read.

I have recently had a co-worker and a close friend of mine ask me about grafting, and I have referred them to this book. My friend liked the material on grafting that I spoke with him about so much that he wants to borrow my book for more information on the subject, and I have since put another copy of this book on my wish list to give it to him as a gift for his library.

I would like to purchase this book but I am challenged by all your leads off the subject.

I read this book the month it came out in 1994. I'm not sure how I found out about it but oh well...

Tomatoes are one of god's gifts and if you have the least bit of interest in this amazing fruit, get this book. The history of the tomato and how it arrived on people's plates after centuries of neglect is way more interesting than any Bond film. The author's research is meticulous.

Also, the back of this book has historic recipes from the 1800's that use tomatoes. This of course could spur someone to pursue a career in archeological gastronomy. The bottom line is I love this book and it is one of my top 5 most prized books.

-- Indiana Tomato Lover

The author is a hard working person. So it's very convinient for readers to read the aspect of hitory. However, it's merit also is it's weakness. We could not get any personal viewpoint of the author. We could only get the results of author's research.

This book is a useful tool to track the evolution of gardens in China. It goes through the various stages of the Ming dynasty and illustrates how garden evolved from being a necessity of life, to being purely aesthetic. While this opens the door to a rarely covered aspect of Chinese history it a lacks certain scientific level, which leaves out several question that should have been answered. Such as...
1. What is the correct pronunciation og "herbs"? Is there really an "h" at the beginning or no?
2. It does not cover the history of non-biological herbs such as dill and rosemary.
3.Can rocks be considered plants? If so, what is the nutritional value of rocks?
4. Once the gardens evolved to an asethic level (such as in Rock gardens) did Chinese gardeners actually plant the rocks and expect them to grow?
5. What was the role of the invisible species of plantes, which have not been discovered yet?
Despite these faults the book remain a great work on the subject, the likes of which have never been seen before.

I've been designing gardens in Portland Oregon for the past twenty years and have spent over a year in China studying gardens there. Chinese gardens are extremely complex and full of symbolism in almost every element . This book documents a shift in the purpose and meaning of gardens in Suzhou during the Ming . Without it you really cannot understand the economic basis for the creation of these gardens and the shift from rustic food producing sites to completely aesthetic gardens displaying wealth and taste. This is a work of scholarship , and casual garden readers will probably not like the style , especially since it pricks the bubble of the timeless Oriental Garden pretty much once and for all. If you really want to understand Chinese gardens read it . But prepare to learn. As James C.Rose once said in a similar situation ... if you really want a Japanese garden you'd have to be Japanese , but you wouldn't like that ...in his book Gardens Make Me Laugh.