I think during quarantine we all turned to earth and/or the kitchen a bit more so I was excited to get my hands on this one. I was very satisfied with it, it gives general advices and then plant profiles and teaches how to grow a wide variety of spices. I'm sure there's spices to everyone's tastes!

I want to thank Netgalley and the author for gifting me the ebook. This book is amazing! I am really into cooking and drinking spices and this is so informative. I highly recommend! Will be reading again multiple times.

I liked this book about growing spices. There is a lot of useful information inside this book - all you need to know about various plants like coriander, dill, celery, ginger, vanilla, turmeric, saffron, and more. I liked that author included the medicinal tips for each plant.

I would recommend it to those who have some gardening experience and want to try to grow spices. Thanks to the publisher for the opportunity to read this! All opinions are my own.

Grow You Own Spices. By Tasha Greer, Contributor: Lindsey Feldpausch, Illustrator: Greta Moore. 2021. Cool Springs Press (ARC eBook).

Grow Your Own Spices tackles techniques for how to grow, fertilize, plant and more for over 30 types of spices, such as: vanilla, cardamom, turmeric and ginger. Also offered are medicinal tips about compounds found in the spices and how those compounds can used as remedies; e.g., sesame seeds are abundant in lignans and tocopherols, and turmeric aids in reducing inflammation in the body. And the pages are prettied up with photographs and illustrations. Overall a satisfactorily informative book to help people understand the ins and outs of spices, which require care distinctive from herbs and garden fruits and vegetables on the vine.

Thorough information on commonly-used but uncommonly-homegrown spices - from garlic to cinnamon to turmeric to vanilla. Tips on how to grow (including when your climate doesn't mimic the spices' natural habitats), how to harvest, and how to prepare/store. If I can find some of these seeds or seedlings, I plan to try a few!

"Grow Your Own Spices" provides basic planting, care, and harvesting instructions for growing your own spices. The author started with general care information, but then she gave specific advice along with plant profiles. She started with spices that are easier to grow but also included more difficult ones that need more controlled climates and a long period of time before producing. She included spices grown from seed, from roots, and more. Each plant profile included information about that spice, information about growing it and harvesting it, and some information about how to use it or prepare it for storage. While she included some very good information, I think that a beginner gardener would have trouble with the trickier spices without having more experience or advice provided. I've already grown some of the spices from seed, and they're reasonably easy even for a beginner. Overall, I'd recommend this book to any gardener interested in trying to grow their own spices.

She included information on growing allspice, annatto, bay laurel, caper, cardamom, cinnamon, celery, caraway, chicory, cloves, nutmeg, anise, horseradish, ginger, garlic, lemongrass, galangal, fenugreek, dill, fennel, cumin, coriander, juniper berry, lavender, licorice, mustard, nigella, paprika, peppercorns, poppy, wasabi, vanilla, tamarind, turmeric, sumac, sesame seed, saffron.

I absolutely LOVED reading Grow Your Own Spices by Tasha Greer!

I found it to be the most helpful and in-depth guide to growing several spices across different climates. I enjoyed that it covered selecting the seeds, parent plant, etc, along with growing, composting, ph, harvesting, storing, and much more.

I think this book would be perfect for those wanting to start out growing spices as well as those that have tried in the past. I will be adding this to my collection.

I received an eARC from Quarto Publishing and Cool Springs Press through NetGalley. All opinions are 100% my own.

Not often that there is a book available about growing your own spices, extremely well illustrated and great photos. It has extremely helpful information on growing and harvesting spices in various climates and conditions.

I cannot keep anything alive that needs attention on a regular basis. In the age of COVID I wanted to take less trips to the grocery store. Growing my own spices seems logical, but given my black thumb, out of reach. This is a good introduction to growing spices. It is well written, clear, and concise. I look forward to growing some of my own spices in the future. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my copy.

Wonderful resource for those wanting to expand their knowledge beyond the average herbs and spices grown today. Although several of these require certain conditions be met in order to have success in their growth, it was interesting to know more about these spices and their history and uses in everyday life. I appreciated the nice pictures and how information was arranged about each of these spices.

If you love cooking with herbs and spices, this is definitely the book for you. Why not grow what you use?

Reading through the tropical spices section made me wish I were in a hot climate and able to grow them.
But whilst it is not always possible due to the climate requirements, there are plenty of spices you can tackle in your garden.

In addition to detailed information on the spices, there are more general tips and techniques such as growing roots, bulbs and rhizomes; growing the ingredients for Thoi soup, It is packed full of information but presented in an accessible way with plenty of great photos.

This is a nice and very informative book about how to grow you own spices. It's a nice companion and I'll be using it as a guide while I try to grow my own spices at home. I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review

For a long time, spices have been the final frontier for kitchen gardeners. There’s a natural progression from leafy herbs to easy vegetables, then fruit and the trickier crops. And, as the author says, many kitchen gardeners grow garlic and let their coriander run to seed. But spices are exotic, tropical things, aren’t they? Well yes, but they may not be beyond our grasp. Many spices can be grown as annuals in a temperate climate, with no more trouble than tomatoes. Perennials will need winter warmth, but can be brought indoors as houseplants. Tasha Greer has brought together all of the current best practice on growing spices at home, as a reference guide for the adventurous gardener.

Grow your own spices is a short but detailed look at growing a small variety of spices. If your interested in some of the more difficult spices and wish to be able to grow your own then this book is for you. From Coriander, mustard, and celery to root spices, or longer seasoned like cumin, or saffron. This book offers a detailed look at a multitude of spices that are harder to grow than normal spices like mint, marjoram, or basil.

What did I like? The book is quite detailed in what you have to do to be successful to grow some of these different herbs, and spices. Book offers care, harvesting, and growing details on each plant and occasionally a medicinal tip. Pictures scatter the pages which help you identify the plant, and it offers you some tidbits on more complicated processes that the harder plants need. I enjoyed looking at the details and recommend this for gardeners who would like more information on the more difficult to grow herbs and spices.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC to peruse, and I voluntarily left a review. Five stars....wealth of information with some great pictures and detail.

This handy little guide was extremely useful for gathering ideas for my newly renovated garden, although some.parts were a little advanced for a novice gardener like myself.

I really enjoyed the medicinal sections as it was interesting to see how different herbs and spices are used for curing ailments around the world.

I feel like this is a book I could come back to as a reference when I'm more confident in my garden and ready to plant.

I love all things gardening. It reminds me of helping my Grandparents in their garden when I was a child, and that love of watching things grow has carried over into my adulthood. The book itself is relatively short, but they pack it full of information. From planting, harvesting, seed care, and more. It is also full of beautiful photos and drawings that make it a visual pleasure to flip through.

A definite must have for the anybody that loves to garden!

For adventurous gardeners who want to go beyond the standard culinary plants, 'Grow Your Own Spices' by Tasha Greer is an invitation to diversify into the world of spices.

This tiny book encourages the reader to consider growing their own culinary spices, ranging from relatively easy projects like cumin or dill to 'greenhouse-only' nutmeg, and many in between.

While there's good breadth here, the book suffers slightly in terms of depth, and there's a somewhat odd tone (somewhere between political and alarmist) that doesn't quite sit right - warning you gravely of a cumin shortage and against buying seeds from China, without fully explaining why both might be a problem.

Not many of us may have several years to invest in growing our own vanilla pods, and many others may have legal concerns (indeed mentioned in the text) when trying to grow poppyseeds, but despite the outliers, there is something here for most gardeners, both experienced and novice.

Advance reader copy kindly provided by Cool Springs Press.

A fascinating book detailing the procedures for growing and harvesting numerous spices. The instructions are clear, well set out and with plenty of inspiration. I will be using this for growing garlic on our new allotment.

A stunning reference book that will be used over and over.

This is a beautiful book with lots of great photos. I enjoyed the layout, with different sections on spices with short seasons, that favor cold weather, etc. My main problem with it is that it doesn't seem set up to really help the average novice or intermediate gardener actually be successful with most of the spices featured. Sometimes there's just not enough information, like the two pages on sumac. First of all, nobody really needs to grow that as it grows wild just about everywhere (one variety or another). But more than that, she doesn't talk about how to actually harvest it. I love foraging sumac to make "sumac ade" in the late summer. You take the fresh red clusters of furry "berries" (drupes really) and soak them in cool water, then strain through cheesecloth to remove the tiny hairs and sweeten it. It's a lovely pink color and tastes like natural lemonade, but better. Our family also just likes to pick a few of them during hikes and suck on them like nature's Sweet Tarts. Sumac is a popular spice in middle eastern spice mixes, but I've never had success gathering it for spice because first of all rain leaches the wonderful flavor out of it so you have to get just in the right time between when it ripens and before any rain gets on it. Secondly, I've never been clear if I'm supposed to grind the drupes, somehow rub off the fuzzy red spice part or what. This book tells you that it's a popular spice and what varieties you can grow if you're not in a hot region, but it doesn't tell you how to actually harvest it or warn you about the rain thing. There are a lot of other examples of this, where I know enough about a plant to know there's a lot that's not mentioned that make it difficult to proceed without another resource. For a beginner who doesn't know these plants that well, they're not going to realize how much information is lacking that they need. Also, the information about winnowing and separating chaff seemed similarly minimized. I've tried doing this with wild herbs and spices and it is a really time consuming, difficult process with a lot of plants. A paragraph or two does not really cover how tricky this can be with some seeds. Other plants like cinnamon really set most home gardeners up for a pricey disappointment in my opinion, but as long as you're okay with that it can still be a fun learning experience (even the author admits her cinnamon failed, even though she swears anyone can grow it).

This is one of those books that's a joy to read through and will get you excited to try the hobby. I don't know if it's enough to help you be 100% successful (or even 50%) but it will still be a fun read for many and does contain quite a lot of information nonetheless.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review. (Side note: Many of the pages in my ARC were inserted upside down, making it really difficult to read for review. I didn't mark down my review since it's no doubt not going to be the case for the people who read the finished book, but it made it unpleasant and frustrating to try to read this book.)

This is beautifully illustrated book with a lot of good information about spice plants. It could be useful for those people who want to learn more about spices and how to grow them. I am studying herbalism and this inspired me to try and also grow one or two spice plants, especially my namesake ginger!
I received a complementary copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.