Fruits and Vegetables Books

This is not a gardening book, its a Gen X ad copy, coffee table book. Save your money, buy a real garden book, I garden and found it just useless.

If you want to grow your own food, but don't have any space, this is the book for you. Even though it's set in the UK, and I live in Australia, I found plenty of ideas that I was able to use to successfully grow food in a 2 square metre plot behind my house. There are lots of different options shown (eg rooftop, indoors, balcony, pots), with lots of colour photographs. I liked that there was a focus on design as well- not only should the area be productive, it should look attractive.

Living in a small space with no bed to call my own I picked up this book and read it. It was wonderful! Lots of information on gardening specifically for the urban dweller. The photographs were wonderful, as was the writing. Included information on raised beds, regular beds, container gardening, fruits and vegetables, flowers, and anything else the city dweller might want to grow. Also included really interesting information on pollution and its effects on the urban dweller's garden and information on pests and what can be done to control them. There was also a heavy influence of organic gardening and how this might be done in the city.

An excellent book all around, it's become my new favourite gardening book.

KITCHEN GARDENS IN CONTAINERS by Antony Atha is a nifty book with beautiful close-up pictures for tired eyes. Atha has created a useful and informative work. He shows the gardener how to make plant containers from scratch (wooden boxes, brick enclosures); convert items into containers (baskets, coffee cans, plastic lined buckets, wheelbarrows, etc.); or use the tried and true containers such as clay pots. He also includes material on how to design with plant containers. One nifty idea I am going to try involves growing combinations of food plants in the same container. I especially like the example of the strawberry jar growing cilantro in the side pockets and eggplants on top.

The back half of Atha's book lists container plants in his "Plant Directory." Not all plants are suited for growing in containers. Furthermore, some plants do well together and some do not. Atha divides his directory into herbs, vegetables, and fruits. Each entry includes information about plant tenderness, size, flower description (food plants have flowers), light requirements, propagation needs, and other information. He color codes the sections: purple for herbs; green for vegetables, and terra cotta for fruit. At the end of each section, he includes recipes for the various items. For example, under herbs you will find a recipe for a chamomile and bran face mask. Under vegetables you will find recipes for Borscht and Gazpacho. The fruit section includes recipes for spiced peaches and damson jam. This is a practical book for gardeners with intermediate skills.

This is a practical and useful basic book about growing vegetables and herbs in containers. The writer carefully presents the basics of container gardening and offers suggestions for designing container gardens. There is a useful section about pests and diseases and even a short section on harvesting.

Almost half the book is a plant directory, color-coded, divided into herbs, vegetables and fruit, with a few recipes for each.

This is pretty basic stuff, but the book is well focussed and nicely illustrated. It contains the information a novice gardener needs.

This is a simple, straight-forward diet book. Not a variety of diets but the ones in there are sensible and feasible to follow. I keep the book to refer to when I need some help with my dieting. This is not a fad diet, just common sense. Everyone should read it before starting the here-today, gone-tomorrow fad diets.

I haven't actually followed the diet in this book-- but over half of this book is pages and pages with color photos of every kind of fruit and vegetable, describing what it is, how to store it, how to cook it, how to eat it-- if I didn't have this, I wouldn't know anything about fruits and vegs-- I study it all the time and have taken it into the grocery story with me!

How useful the "Fruit Expert" is depends on where you live. If you're English, this is probably a fine book for you; if you live in the States ... keep looking. I wish I had known this before I bought it; I wish Amazon would give the publisher's city for all their garden books.

This beautifully illustrated and photographed book is a very informative and easy to use reference for everyone who wants expert advice on how to plant and keep a fruit garden. This wonderfully organized book is divided into six sections:
* The Fruit in the Garden: gives advice on how to choose the right type of fruit for your garden.
* The Tree Fruit: a guide to buying, planting and keeping specific fruits that grow on trees, including apples, pears, plums, cherries, peaches and nectarines, apricots, figs, mulberries and quinces.
* The Soft Fruit: a guide to buying, selecting site and soil, planting and keeping, feeding and mulching, and protecting from birds and viruses fruits that don't grow on trees, including berries, currants, grapes, melons and kiwis.
* Shop-Bought Fruit: an illustrated reference on how to recognize fruits available in the market, including tips on how to buy, preserve, ripen and eat them.
* A Glossary.
* An Index.
As an added bonus, both the Tree Fruit and the Soft Fruit sections contain a visual reference to help you identify several different varieties of the same fruit, and a very thorough guide on solving common fruit troubles.
The information given in this book for the fruits listed is very complete; however, since it was written for a British public, it only lists temperate climate fruits. Other fruits like banana, orange, papaya, avocado, pineapple, mango, grapefruit, lemon, etc. are not included in the book, except for their brief entries in the Shop-Bought Fruit section.
I recommend buying this book if you want to start your own temperate climate fruit garden, and complement it with other books when you are ready to add to it some tropical fruits.
--Reviewed by Maritza Volmar

This beautifully-illustrated book with its simple narrative has quickly become a favorite in our house. My four-year-old nature-loving son is always fascinated by the story that recounts lily's discoveries and experiences in her garden and her wilderness surroundings. Each spread also contains interesting facts and histories of the different kinds of vegetation mentioned in the story, which is helpful in keeping adult readers engaged as well!

It all starts with the delivery of a box of delicious oranges from Lily's Grandma in California. From there, we spend a year with Lily in her Maine home and watch as she and her garden grow and change month-by-month. The delightful journey also contains a narrative comparison between Lily's Maine garden and Grandma's California growing season (which never ends!). Lily's Garden is beautifully illustrated and has lovely asides providing anecdotal information on the things Lily is doing in and for her garden (a short history of oranges, how to make maple syrup, vegetables in Lily's Garden, Grandma's Blueberry Pancake recipe, etc.). The joys of the seasons and the excitement of gardening are nicely captured in this fun book.

Looking at the recipes there doesn't seem to be anything much new in here.

I had a student working on a report (actually it was his mother doing the inquiring, he was contemplating "other things") VEGETABLES.
The last part of the project that was being worked-on was for a recipe. His topic was carrots. I hate to tell you what transpired during the
recipe search, but he did not like carrot cake. The mother insisted that he did not need make it. He did not care whether he had to make
it or not, he sure did not want her to include that recipe!
I wound-up ordering the attached list of books. They came into the library a week ago. What a great little series. Do take the time to
peruse Amazon. They are a real "repast!"

There are about five pages worth of useful info in this book. The rest is a bunch of history that may or may not be interesting to you. "Citrus" by Walheim was more on target for my purpose of selecting, planting and caring for an eight tree home grove.

Not an easy read unless you are interested in horticulture. The book really has many parts to it; the most important for me was the history of Florida citrus (very interesting), discussion of different varieties and hybrid varieties and their origins, and precise tips on growing good citrus (given the right climate).

If you're not a green thumb, doing a project on citrus, or brought a tree home from Florida and want to know more than you could ever want to know about what you brought back then don't get this book. If you fall into any of the above categories, an excellent book for it's purpose; which is not to entertain the avid reader after finishing off the NY Times best seller list and Oprah's picks.

All about Florida's citrus and all the history of Florida citru

I'm sure this book is interesting to some, but it left me disappointed. The style was too dry and technical to inspire me.

One of my most-used books; I'm buying this copy for a wedding. Two negatives -- The cost is high, and even as I wish for more color photographs, I ponder how much the price would rise with them. Also, as a new gardener, I struggled with five-syllable foreign terms and phrases. But he compensates well. After "an inoculant called rhizobium that colonizes the roots of leguminous plants", he says, "Pull up some bean plants. If you can see small pinkish white nodules on the roots" then it's okay. (p. 125)

The range of material is wide yet thorough. Can I grow peaches where I live? He compares 10 varieties, with limitations and virtues. He suggests alternate reading for each subject, and offers a capsule review (e.g., "A good one to browse in the library; only serious tree crops enthusiasts need own it." p. 219). The appendix seems all-encompassing to me, with an expansive index, recommended magazines and supportive organizations, mail order suppliers, & real recipes like "Chayote Parmigiana", with text on everything you'd EVER want to know about growing chayote for the dish, including Effort. (p. 300, 301)

Rosalind Creasy broke ground (ha!) promoting edibles in the landscape, and Kourik credits her. Her book has not been updated, however; this book remains timely.

not a bad book, but a little more info than i was looking for. recipes are really for "blending" and not necessarily just for those using a "juicer," and especially if you are just starting out. if you just want the basics, try The Juiceman's Power of Juicing. it is really good!

This book contains absolutely NO juicing recipes, just ones for blending. Because of that, I was thoroughly disappointed in this book. Although, to be fair, the "blending" recipes were a plenty, varied largely in flavor and type and were very interesting.

The title led me to believe that it would contain ways in which to heal myself through juicing. While Dr. Jensen did go into extensive detail about the therapeutic effects juicing can have and mentioned some combinations for certain ailments, it spanned only a couple of pages and was formatted in chart form. (AND the chart is also available in, at least, one other book by him.) It definitely was not the in-depth how-to guide I was looking for.

Dr. Jensen also goes into great detail about ALL of the vitamins, minerals and trace elements the body needs and where one can find them in food items.

He does provide a chart which lists all the food items he considers beneficial to juice, which chemicals are predominate, and for what ailment they can be useful for. Again, though, this chart is in at least one other of his books.

So, while I was disappointed about the lack of juicing recipes, the book contained enough information and facts to allow me to overlook that. All in all, it was a worthy read, and one I would suggest to someone looking to really get a grasp on the physiological needs of the human body and how juicing can help someone attain them.

This book is a good, tasty collection of no muss, little fuss raw recipes. The author assumes you know how to make sprouts (although a brief recipe is included) and have a working ability to substitute for hard-to-find ingredients. Most of the recipes are tasty and work well. My main gripe is that some recipes, particularly those using garbonzos, are very unclear whether you are to soak only, soak and sprout, or what. Some editing/proofreading could have solved these problems. Otherwise, try them out. The "brown bag" lunch ideas alone are worth the cost of this little book, and the cookies are tasty.

Although I want to eat healthier, having a lunch of raw corn on the cob, spinach, pickling cucumber and sprouts isn't going to do much for my McDonald's appetite. Where do you get sunflower sprouts? What is cherimoya? Dried pulse? Many of the ingredients were not available. My grocer hadn't even heard of some of them. Very disappointing book