The Great Vegetable Plot

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small gardens - Rated
I have found this book very useful for suggesting varieties of seeds to grow, spacing, crop rotation and suggestions for vegetables I would never have thought of. I only have 6square metres of veg garden which limits what you can grow and have found this full of useful tips about maximising use of space. Don't be put off by the fact that she has a huge amount of space it is full of good advice for those just starting out.

Mike - Rated
This is an excellent book on vegetable gardening, but not for complete beginners, as it does not have step-by-step instructions on how to set up a plot. For those starting out I would heartily recommend Joy Larkcom's superb 'Grow Your Own Vegetables' (very comprehensive but no photographs) coupled with Dr Hessayon's 'Expert' book on vegetable gardening (very well laid out but a little out of date on vegetable varieties).

But Sarah Raven's book is excellent in other ways. The colour photography is absolutely superb and will spur you on to try and grow something just as good! There is also a really excellent alphabetical section on vegetables, which stresses how important it is to choose the best varieties for taste, colour and texture. She describes her personal favourites, and also has a lot of information on propagation, planting times, successional sowing, special growing requirements and harvesting for each vegetable. The section on herbs is excellent, with lots of advice on which varieties, for example, of basil and parsley are well worth growing and which are not. For potatoes and tomatoes, she also has specific growing information for each recommended variety, for example 'Pink Fir Apple' potatoes and 'Gardener's Delight' tomatoes. As she is a former chef at River Cafe, this advice is hugely valuable.

In the rest of the book there are comprehensive sections on specific vegetables that are commonly grown, including tomatoes (very informative), peas (including growing in guttering for an early crop), potatoes, carrots, beans, etc.

This is a superb book which I use throughout the year, and is especially recommended for those who are keen to know which vegetable varieties to grow for taste, colour and texture rather than purely for size and yield.

Picture Perfect but Slightly Lost the Plot - Rated
I picked this book up as I was attracted to the fantastic pictures of Sarah Raven's enviable garden. These pictures, showing her bountiful harvets and attractively planted crops, certainly encouraged me to develop my own, much more inferior vegetable plot. But for me, it is too much of a glossy lifestyle book than a step by step guide. I got a pretty good idea of life chez Raven, with descriptions of how integral the garden is to family life, accompanied by pictures including their rustic outdoor pizza oven and artistic arrangements of borlotti beans. I found the layout confusing and heavily interspered with such pictures. Maybe that's because I am impatient and I just want to look up how to grow lettuce, with diagrams maybe, and advice on what to do if something goes wrong, which for beginners like me is likely. I'm sure there's lots of good advice in there, if you want to read it like a novel rather than a reference manual that you can dip in and out of. I have found that for growing individual vegetables, following the seed packet instructions is just as good if not better as its instructions are more succinct. This book for me will only really provide guidance on the overall arrangement of a vegetable garden when I get to the stage where I want it to look pretty and I have the time to sit down and read the text without being distracted by the pictures.

a good book for a complete beginner - Rated
This book is not what I after (I was after a book that is concentrating more on the structure of a vegetable plot). However, it does have a good guide on growing basic vegetables like carrots, potatoes, salad leaves etc...

There are quite a few receipes in this book but personally do not find them useful but some ideas are cool though!